During a morning photo trip with some friends a while back, I captured this windmill casting a reflection on the water below. I have a fascination with certain landmarks these days: broken down farm buildings, old wellheads, and windmills. Every now and then I catch one in a neat location like this, where I can try to capture the surrounding area as well. In the case of this sunrise shot, its mirror image in the water below works just fine.

This particular windmill sits along a little gravel road northeast of Bismarck, north of Sterling. We have so much to see just around Bismarck-Mandan that it’ll take a LONG time to exhaust the possibilities! But I’m trying…

The sky was particularly dramatic on Tuesday night. I, despite getting out of the house a little late, was sliding my truck around the corners of some of my favorite gravel roads…chasing the sunset.

I stopped by my new favorite foreground object, this well. It stands in the middle of a wheat field, and I’m astonished that I ever even noticed it. I took some pics a while back in front of a solid red sky, but tonight there was a far more interesting backdrop.

After a while, the sun began to fade. That’s okay, there were still plenty of good photos to get. The departing sun was just getting started, as its rays began to blaze glowing linings around the clouds. All the action was starting to take place over the hills, though, so it was back into the truck to leadfoot my way northwest in search of higher ground.

Although I was on the Bismarck side of the river, and quite far away, my new telephoto lens was able to provide this shot of the wind farm at Center. By this time the sky was getting darker, the colors more saturated, and the sun’s rays were causing some really cool effects on the remaining clouds.

After that it was back home to my family. I got to thinking about that well, and how amazing it was that I discovered it. It reminded me of John chapter 4, where Jesus is talking with the Samaritan woman at the well. He said, “But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” It’s true: only Jesus satisfies. I spent years –well, decades, really– feeling spiritual about my snowboarding, feeling spiritual about my motorcycling…people can feel a spiritual bond to anything they choose, but none of them will satisfy. In the book of Acts, Peter said, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” I used to think that terms like “Born Again” and “saved” were part of a clever branding effort by evangelicals. Boy, was I shocked when I realized that Jesus declared that “Ye must be born again” !!!

It seems like a miracle that I discovered true Biblical salvation just like it seems miraculous that I could spot a lonely wellhead sticking out of a wheat field while sliding by at 60 miles per hour. Thankfully both miracles came to be. Now I have a far greater appreciation for the beauty of God’s creation, and especially for the part of it that falls within the parcel that we call North Dakota. Bismarck-Mandan…there’s no place I’d rather live!

A little Smashing Pumpkins lyric reference for y’all there. The song “1979” is a dreamy little tune that’s been on my mind lately, and 1979 is the year that I first returned to North Dakota. Today a few photography buddies and I piled into a vehicle and pointed our headlights at the dawn for real, exploring some of the Prairie Pothole Region northeast of Bismarck-Mandan. The photo above is a wide shot of the sky that greeted us.

We stopped many times and took photos of many different objects, but I’ll stick with this stop for now. The rest will be in future posts. This windmill happened to be in the right place at the right time to enjoy a blazing sunrise, and we were able to capture the moment from a dirt road adjacent to the land upon which it stood. Four guys, all with Canon gear but a variety of lenses, each digitized the scene through their eyes.

In a closer look at the top of this windmill, you can see that we weren’t the only ones appreciating it on this bright and early morning. The early birds, perhaps already done getting the proverbial worm, were present as well. On the wide open prairie there are few places to perch, so this was likely a frequent haunt for local feathered friends.

The crew on this trip include my friend Mike, the walking Encyclopedia Photographica, who’s on the mend from major back surgery. You can’t keep a good man down, and he’s the glue that holds this ragtag bunch together. He and I were able to dash down some gravel roads on Tuesday night in my truck, and hopped out a couple of times for some photos. It was the first time he’d walked uneven ground since his surgery, and it marks the new beginning of some awesome pictures! It’ll also mark the resumption of my photographic education. After all, I’m just a newbie at this…and learning is half the fun!

I absolutely love it when the grass is green, the sky is blue, and I find another object at which to point my camera. After work I hit the dirt roads and went muddin’ with my truck, saw lots of cool birds and new places I’d never been…then drove into a patch of rain which washed pretty much all of the mud off the truck. In a way, things came full circle.

I haven’t been out with the camera much lately, as demonstrated by the sporadic posting lately. The fact of the matter is that I had a three month old son with pneumonia, involving a three night hospital stay, the Mandan Art Show to prepare for, a freelance DVD job that kept me up late for several nights, and some nasty weather to boot. Tonight broke that string of events…sorta.

I grabbed my photo buddy Ken, whose work is showcased a lot on KFYR TV’s Sky Spies page, and we headed north to catch the sunset. Little PJ was still suffering from a cold, but on the mend. His RSV test was negative, he’d had a fun day at home with mom and afternoon with dad, so it was time to dash out and see what the sky had to present.

I drove us out in the middle of nowhere, near my favorite Northern Lights spot, and found this windmill. I haven’t actually been on this particular road in the daytime, so I never knew it was there before! We took a number of shots from a variety of angles, and this was my result. It’s amazing how different my shots look from the ones Ken took. We had different angles, resulting in a different chunk of sky, so I had none of the gold or brilliant color that he had. Instead I opted for the cool blue of the northwestern sky.

We were about to head for higher ground and set up for the sunset when my beloved wife called to tell me that PJ had spiked a nasty fever. We threw the gear in the truck, pointed it back toward town, and I came home to tend to my little man. A little bit of baby Tylenol cured the fever, and he spent the rest of the evening playing and laughing with daddy until bedtime. I saw that Kevin Lawrence used one of Ken’s windmill photos on the 10 o’clock news, so apparently the brief venture up north turned out as a photographic success for both of us.

These hazy skies are really pretty uninspiring for an amateur photographer. So what does a guy do when the skies are dreary? Find something old. I didn’t have to look far; in fact, on my drive home I spotted this old windmill. There are actually a lot of these around town, and I think there’s even a local guy who will refurbish them for a price. They look better in their original state, don’t you think?

Some of our office members (myself included) got whatever stomach flu is making the rounds, which led to a 102.1 fever on Tuesday. I went back to work Wednesday but came right home after work to sit back and recover fully. The agony of having two new lenses in the camera bag and a stomach that’s still sorting itself out was tolerable…but just barely.

On my way out the door I talked to one of our clients, who said the same stomach bug had worked its way through his office last week. Look out!