Category Archives: Windmills and Wells

Tuesday windmill

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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.

Friday night windmill

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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.

Wednesday windmill

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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!

Fallen Farm 12

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Last year I had a fun time doing a magical mystery tour of the state’s technological and energy industry highlights for the Reuters new service, and along the way I spotted this old farm. I suppose I could title this series “Forgotten Farms” just as easily, since many of these buildings haven’t fallen, but you get the point.

While going through some past photos for another project yesterday I came upon this particular shot, and I have no idea why I haven’t shared it with you sooner. In keeping with my strict policy of not trespassing, this was shot from a section line road and not on private property. The farm resides next to the wind turbine “farm” up near Regan.

Going through old photos is a blast. I’m new to this photography thing, so by “old” photos I mean ones I’ve taken since I got my camera from Bob’s Photo a couple years back. An SLR camera was something I wanted since high school, and I’m trying to make up for lost time by taking pictures almost daily. It’s a great release!

I’m no Don Quixote

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Among my favorite features of the rural North Dakota landscape are windmills, functional and otherwise. As with the fallen farm scenes, there’s just something attractive about the windmills that catches my eye. Perhaps it’s because, as with the old abandoned farmhouses, I marvel at the fact that someone made it not too long ago in order to eke out a living from the harsh plains. Some are barely standing, others are still maintained. This is one of the latter.

It’s unfortunate I couldn’t get an angle without the power pole in the background, but at least I did capture the gradient of the evening sky. This windmill is on 26th street in Bismarck, actually, although I’m sure it’s outside the city limits. Since the enhanced 911 conversion, rural roads are given street names and numbers, making it hard to determine where that line is drawn.

Winter welcome wagon

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One would think that winter would make finding nice photos around town difficult. That’s somewhat true, but then I venture upon sights like this. The wagon in this picture sits near the entrance to a yard southeast of Lincoln. One of the benefits of poking around rural roads surrounding our fair cities of Bismarck and Mandan is spotting stuff like this, a piece of North Dakota history.

Sunrise…on my tummy…

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…makes me happy…oh, sorry. Didn’t mean to kick into John Denver mode there. Yes, it must be a disorder: I was lying in a field at sunrise this morning, listening to my iPod and waiting to see what the sun would do. So much for sleeping in! Before getting down on the ground to get this angle, I was on my feet for a while. So I guess you could say I was outstanding in the field. Okay, I’ll quit the puns. Here’s the pix:

I was hoping that we’d get more of the red/purple thing that the sun has been doing the past few days, but that wasn’t the case. I believe it’s because of the clouds on the far horizon, which don’t give the sun a chance to refract or something to that effect. Not only did that strip the sunrise of its colors, but it also prolonged the time I had to shiver until the sun poked its head above the clouds. The wait was worth it, as I got quite a few neat shots. This is one of them.

There were some ups and downs to this little adventure. It seems that I can’t leave the house without something blogworthy happening, and today was no different. While I got lots of nice sunrise and pre-sunrise pictures, I also had some other trials. First, the cap for the lens I was using fell out of my pocket out in the middle of this field, and I noticed it once I’d hiked back to the truck. Being of the stubborn sort, I hoofed it back out there and actually found it within five minutes! To help, I brought the camera and lined up the picture the same way, then followed my tracks back toward the truck. Whew! Canon charges an arm and a leg for those things. Oh, one more thing:

This is what the last few photos looked like. Yuck. As it turns out, the beautiful little prime lens I was using to shoot this somehow sucked a bunch of dust into itself. I got home, looked at the pictures, and was immediately horrified. Inspection of the lens showed that yes, there was some nasty gunk on the lens…but not on the outside! Somehow it had gotten inside. That’s a mystery to me.

A lot of those other dots are caused by a dirty sensor on the camera. This is a problem unique to digital cameras, since film uses a new surface for each exposure. When you own a digital camera where you change lenses a lot, there comes a time to clean it. Sensors attract dust, and dust shows up when you point the camera at bright stuff with narrow apertures (I think this was f/22). Drat.

I just ordered a couple of different sensor cleaning kits, so it’s time to try them out. It’s never fun to stick foreign objects into a $1500 camera, but I honestly don’t trust anyone else to do it for me. I’ve always been the same way with my motorcycles, mountain bikes, and other stuff. There are too many horror stories flying around out there. So I’ll be sticking a solvent swab into my computer very soon. Hopefully I’ll do it right, or it’ll be hard to come up with more photography for the ol’ Blog!