There’s talk of plenty of power lines down this weekend, and even perhaps some phone or cable television lines. Even a FOX TV affiliate! I suspect these lines northeast of Bismarck have been down for far longer than that. I suppose the inhabitants of that bird house probably gave up and went with cellular.

I was afforded the opportunity to take my camera and hop in the truck for an outskirts adventure. I’m still leary about doing too much hiking with my camera due to deer season and recent mountain lion encounters in North Dakota, so I kept things on the road and next to the truck.

The river had a “tube” of fog hovering above it as I neared the river bottoms. While I found a lot of other fun roadside stuff to occupy my viewfinder, I did want to get a good view of this phenomenon from above. Sadly, access to all the high ground on the Bismarck side is hard to come by. I did find one “trail” that could be loosely construed as a section line road, from which I was able to nab a few shots. By that time much of the fog had receded or dissipated, as the sun was quickly burning it off. No matter…I still filled at least one camera card with fun stuff this morning, and put a pretty good dent in another one.

Note the date on the weather vane.

In a field such as this, especially during a breezy day, any object serving as a stable perch is sure to be popular. Thus the town hall meeting here on this tree, which was covered in birds as I rolled up in the Monster Truck.

They soon took flight once I arrived, even though I kept my distance. No matter; I found a unique object as the sun broke through the clouds to the west. The sun lit up said tree as well as the water droplets on the far side of the field. The resulting rainbow, and the possibility of the birds alighting once more, kept me around for a little longer. The birds would have none of it, and the mosquitoes arriving on site were as big as birds, so I elected to move along down the road.

The title of this post comes from my favorite song by The Stranglers, which is also a fantastic sunset-viewing song. I went to the river bottom last Saturday night to chase the sunset. I’d scoped out the location early in the day with my little 2 yr old, but he was safely snuggled in his crib by the time I threw the truck into four wheel drive and started climbing berms with my camera in the passenger seat. What follows is an example of why you should arrive early for a sunset photo and stay a while after the sun has disappeared beyond the horizon.

This is the shot I went down there to get. Obviously I got it. But the sun and its colors were just getting started…

This tree was out in the river channel a ways and proved an ideal foreground subject. By this time the sun was beginning to cast a deep gold color across the sky. It wasn’t the only thing sticking out of the water, however.

As clouds moved in from the south, the sunset took on more of those familiar red and pink hues, offsetting the deep blue of the sky. I had found a new foreground: these three sticks, stumps, branches, or whatever.

This is a long exposure to smooth out the ripples of the river as well as the wake left downstream of each of these protruding branches. It was tricky to get it just right.

The end of the sunset, with the reds and pinks turning to purples and pale blues. Time to check for ticks, hop back in the truck, and start working my way back to civilization. Mission accomplished.

As you can see from these photos, one sunset can provide quite a variety of different shots. These were all taken within 100 yards of each other, yet they look like different locations on different evenings. It’s simply a matter of patience. Start with a good location, arrive early, stay late.