I took my 40,000th photo with my trusty Canon camera today. I was paying a second visit to one of the coolest locations I've ever visited for photos, and the first shot I took was deep within the infrastructure. For some reason my camera jumped from 39,999 to 40,001! I don't have photo number 40,000. Weird. I do, however, have the above shot (in addition to many cooler ones). I have to make sure I have clearance to post anything else from this facility, but I'm sure this shot of the portable toilets will be okay. They're actually pretty unremarkable, until you put them in context:
I didn't ask how they got up there, and I don't know how they're going to get them down. All I know is that they look like pretty much the last place I would want to be in a blustery North Dakota winter! Brrr!
Here's to another 40,000 photos...I wonder how long it'll take? Now that I'm a husband and daddy, I don't have nearly as much free time to go running around with my camera. I take lots of family pictures, though, as you can imagine. One can never take too many of those!
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I love to use music references in the titles of my blog posts. Sometimes pop music fits the bill, other times those old hymns are the ticket. I have to say, I prefer the hymns.
I don't do much black and white photography, but this just seemed to fit.
I'm actually out of words right now; I got up at 5 o'clock this morning to prepare four pages of testimony for a committee meeting in the House of Representatives later this week. So for the most part all you get today is the picture!
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I'm sure there comes a point in every photographer's life when they discover the Golden Hour, a photography term for the first hour before sunrise and the last hour after sunset. That's when the light gets really cool, painting your outdoor subjects with an array of color.
Only a severe case of cabin fever could have kicked this man's butt out of bed this morning at somewhere before six o'clock. I've really needed to get out with my camera, and my little boys (ages one and two years) have been giving me some hectic nights and very little sleep. I finally had one morning in which to try sleeping in, with no work or church to contend with...and I got up earlier than ever. I must really love photography! That I do, as well as just getting in the truck and roaming. This time bore plenty of fruit.
I found this barn along a gravel road. I bundled up and followed some packed-in snowmobile tracks up to it for a Golden Hour capture that made my early awakening worthwhile. I have plenty of other angles and other photos from other scenes discovered along the way, but I think I've already found my favorite. It's facing south so the impending sunrise is not visible, but its color is unmistakably present.
When the sun has set, your sunset and evening photo opportunities have just begun. In the morning, don't wait for the sun to rise to get stunning sunrise pictures. Bismarck and Mandan have plenty of sights that look entirely differently when painted from the palette of the morning or evening sun!
I've been working on my Bible reading habits lately. In the Bible, tithing (which we Americans tend to think of in a monetary context) is often considered with the "firstfruits" of one's substance. I don't consider tithing simply in the context of putting a check in the offering plate; we should give to God the first fruits of other important things, such as our time. Because of that, and in kind of a Psalm 63 sort of way ("O God, thou are my God; early will I seek thee..."), I have begun a habit of reading my Bible first thing in the morning.
This morning I woke early, but not as early as I'd hoped. As I readied my gear in my office for a mad dash outside, I saw my Bible on the desk. Thankfully I was able to stop and set things down, sit and read as I usually do, and to pray before I left. Among my prayers was something along the lines of "Lord, please show me something beautiful through my camera today." Well, in that respect He certainly answered my prayer. I saw some really wonderful things on my trek today, capturing most of them with my camera.
This reminded me of the hymn "Sweet Hour of Prayer" although I don't pray for an hour every morning. I had that "Sweet Hour" before I even set out for the "Golden Hour." By doing so I got the morning off to a fantastic start, one far better than if I'd simply dashed to the truck and hurried out on my own.
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I'm always fascinated when finding these wells out in the middle of an otherwise nondescript field. The metal protruding from the ground around this one leads me to believe that they were previously powered by windmills, which were then replaced by a handle. This one sits along north 15th Street here in the Bismarck area. Do you suppose it gives ice cubes in the winter? :)
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I was looking for something else and came across this photo, which I forgot I'd taken. I was on my way back from a week-long shoot in Nevada and was able to click a few shots of the old Memorial Bridge just as they began the process of preparing the new bridge's construction. As you can see, the barge and cranes are in place for the cofferdams used to pour the concrete of the new bridge's pilings. If someone found a way to talk me into an airplane again (I only fly on motorcycles) I might try to get the same angle with the new bridge in place and the old one gone! Odds of that happening are very slim, however.
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