A friend actually posted a photo of this farm, taken from the road, a while back, and I was astonished that I hadn’t seen it before given its proximity to my property. So, the next Saturday morning I had available I bolted over to take a look. I had a new set of tires on my truck and was eager to see if they performed better on snow, ice, or even mud than my last ones (let’s face it, they couldn’t do worse), and I hadn’t been out on a photography jaunt in far too long.
It most certainly lived up to expectations. There were several wonderful old buildings like this one, and the conditions were spectacular. Fall and winter present some difficult photo circumstances, actually, since the sun is so low in the sky and causes all kinds of long, nasty shadows. It was a foggy day, which diffused all that light spectacularly. But I also needed conditions to be clear enough to fly legally, too, so it was a bit of a balancing act. Thankfully, I did catch a window of time in which things were absolutely perfect for once.
As the haze thinned and thickened I got different lighting and color conditions. I chose to let it ride rather than trying to conform all shots to one particular cast. I like the cool blue color provided by a hazy winter sky sometimes! It gives a different look to the old wood textures of my subjects as well.
Thankfully, this window of spectacular diffusion was as perfect as it was fleeting, and I had a target-rich environment in which to exercise my craft. This was long overdue, which I’m sure is obvious by the infrequency of posting here on the ol’ Blog.
Winter in North Dakota can actually be quite stunning at times, and there are some ways in which North Dakota looks like no place else. One has to be ready to capture it when it happens, though. Finally, for the first time in a long time, I was that guy.
I had, as my friend Eugene Graner likes to say on the radio, “a profitable day”. Photographically speaking…I’m still broke. But hey, I’m stoked about all the pretty pictures! And on this foggy Saturday, there were many. I’ll continue to post more from that weekend, and the subsequent trip the following Friday, over the next several days.