One thing about fall in North Dakota is that it doesn’t last long – get out and enjoy those fall colors while they last! Before long they’ll be gone for the year.
A light unto my path
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Category Archives: Weather
Rainy day redux
Rainy day road trip
The rain let up briefly when I grabbed this shot of a rough-looking windmill. The valley in the background is still slightly obscured by the rain, and just after I snapped this shot it picked up again. Thankfully I have lens hoods to keep the front element dry when I poke it out the window of the truck! Yes, I did get out and hoof it in the rain a bit as well.
Humidity, thou art mine adversary
The nice, cool camera, having been chilled to perfection in my home, now met the hot, moist air. You can see what happened after that: it fogged up. The filter, the lens elements, the mirror, the prism, the viewfinder, and (presumably) the sensor. I took one shot last night, and this was it.
This has happened to me twice before…once at sunset, and once at last year’s Buggies & Blues. Third time’s the charm, I hope, and that I will have learned to let my camera gear acclimatize to the outside temperature before attempting to use it. Don’t be like me and lose a great shot due to a lack of foresight! Make sure your camera is matched to the conditions before you get ready to click that shutter. Have a good weekend!
Lightning crashes…and curiosity pays off yet again
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! –Charles Dickens
As I sat in the chair reading Dickens this evening I was reminded of a conversation with a friend earlier in the week. He remarked that I’m one of the most curious people he’s met, and that it was meant as a compliment. It’s true, I’m notoriously curious…and that’s one major reason I started this Blog way back when. That’s why the passage quoted above struck a chord within me as I read it tonight.
As a boy growing up in the Rocky Mountains (if at all) I remember looking out over the city below one night and realizing exactly what Dickens describes; each light in the city represents a home, full of people, doing whatever they’re doing, feeling whatever they’re feeling, and so on. It was an epiphany upon which I dwelled some time ago as I stood atop U-Mary hill with my camera, taking a wide-angle photo of Bismarck-Mandan. In fond remembrance I decided to take another such photo tonight.
As I reached the top of the hill I realized that a storm was approaching. I’ve taken almost 80,000 photos in my lifetime, but never really chased lightning; however, in this case it was a target of opportunity. As luck would have it, I was in the right place at the right time as a few giant lightning bolts danced across the frame. I may have to try this more often!
(Yes, the post title is a hat tip to the song title by the band Live)
April showers, viewed from afar
Didn’t get a blizzard…disappointed? Take a look at these
Since we got cheated out of the blizzard that everyone was anticipating last night, I thought I’d share a few pictures I took of the nasty spring storm we received in Bismarck-Mandan back in 1997. This was a particularly wicked storm, as the snow was very fine and icy. It packed in so tightly that the roads had to be cut open with snowblower-equipped payloaders, instead of simply plowed.
At the time I lived north of Century in the vicinity of Montreal Street. Since only the major roads were cut open, I had to hike around six blocks down to Century Avenue, where the big KFYR-TV 4×4 engineering truck was waiting to transport me to work. As you can imagine, we were pretty busy in a news capacity at that point.
It was a surreal walk down to Century Avenue. The snow was taller than even full size pickups parked along Montreal Street, and as I walked down the road I noticed that I wasn’t leaving any footprints. The snow was made of such fine snow crystals and packed so tightly that I wasn’t breaking through the surface. Every now and then I’d see part of a pickup cab poking up through the snow, but for the most part I couldn’t even tell where the street was, much less where cars were parked.
After the roads were beginning to clear, a crazy friend picked me up in his Escort GT and we went out to document the whole thing. At this time I had merely a little Canon point-and-shoot film camera, but I think it tells the story:
It was a Saturday storm, and I remember being quite put out at having some of my motorcycles stranded at the Hall of Ports for the annual Freedom Riders Motorcycle Show! At least I got to bring home some trophy hardware later.
Anyway…if you’re feeling slighted by the lack of blizzard conditions (especially after all the hype over the last few days), maybe this will help get you through it!
Been a while since I could take a photo like this one
Vanishing point
The plan was for the capitol to actually vanish into the fog as I perched at the bottom. Interestingly, the fog didn’t work that way; while it was certainly thick enough looking horizontally through it, the fog wasn’t dense enough to totally obscure things while looking vertically while remaining as close to the building as I wanted. Standing far enough away to allow the building to be obscured by fog blew the perspective I wanted to achieve. In any case, it’s still a neat photo even if the effect is somewhat less than I’d anticipated. I didn’t freeze my fingers for nothing.
While I didn’t bump into him, it turns out I wasn’t the only other photographically inclined person poking around the capitol grounds at night. Check out a brief video of the weekend’s foggy festivities by Sam Sprynczynatyk by clicking here!
Spiky Saturday
