Meet the star of the show (UPDATED)

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This is the magnum opus that created such a buzz during this year’s Capital A’fair: a 3D chalk drawing by Shawn McCann. His illusion took many hours of work and thankfully didn’t encounter any rain this year!

The effect of this chalk-drawn illusion becomes far more dramatic when an element of realism is introduced. In this case, we’re talking about the artist himself. Once we have a real person perched atop the faux protrusion of the drawing, the effect is complete.

Pretty cool, huh? This is the effect Shawn was shooting for. It looks really neat with the capitol in the shot for added perspective. Some days I’m really happy I have such a wide angle lens, and this is one of them.

As Shawn will point out, this is drawn to work from a very specific perspective. While this is a really neat angle to fit the capitol into the shot, it blows the illusion because of the way things are drawn.

Update: I took my boys to take part in the fun this afternoon (for about four minutes, given the blazing heat) and the chalk is weathering fast. In the afternoon the sun casts a shadow across this piece, so I stuck with a tight shot. Around noon would be better. You probably have another day or so to check it out, even less if the rumors of rain I hear are true!

This is one bear with a splitting headache

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I’m old enough to remember Clyde, the former star of the Dakota Zoo. If I remember correctly, I think he was the world’s largest Kodiak bear. A life-size wood carving of Clyde has been placed inside the zoo’s Discovery Center in his honor…that’s one tremendous bear!

A friend of mine once told me that there are three things that concrete does: it gets hard, it turns gray, and it cracks. Well, wood carvings do a couple of those things. As the wood ages it often develops cracks in inconvenient places. This carving of Clyde appears to have done so. I don’t think it detracts from the statue or its tribute at all, but it did make an opportunity for a “splitting headache” joke!

This statue really is quite large, as was the real Clyde. To get this shot I had my camera on a monopod, with the foot wedged into my collarbone, and the camera fired by remote as I held it aloft. Oh yeah…I was standing on a stump at the time, too. Here’s to you, Clyde!

This isn’t the only remarkable tribute to Clyde, although it’s far more permanent than my other favorite. Right after Clyde’s passing, someone made an enormous sand sculpture of Clyde lying on his back on the sandbar beneath the original Liberty Memorial Bridge. It was quite plainly visible while driving over the bridge until nature took its course and slowly whittled away at it. I wish I had been a photographer back then! I’m sure pictures of it are floating around somewhere…just not in my collection.

Butterfly surprise

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I was out roaming this weekend when a friend called to tell me that butterflies and caterpillars were having a heyday in her flower beds, especially around the milkweed. Since milkweed is poisonous, Monarch Butterflies eat it to prevent birds from eating them. Amazing how God’s creation works out, isn’t it?

Naturally I bolted over. I lamented the fact that I sold my razor-sharp 100mm Canon macro lens this spring to buy more accessories for my new 7D camera. Then I had an epiphany: during some free time at work last week I stumbled upon the fact that my 10-22 wide angle lens will focus to around four inches! That’s very close, and means I still have a “macro lens” in my arsenal. That’s what I used on the butterflies.

As you can see, it works just fine. That really made my day, since I’d really been missing that 100mm lens! Now I’ll have to try more situations with my wide angle at short distances, and see what kind of ideas it gives me…

July Flame

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July Flame
I’m seeing fireworks
They’re so beautiful
Tell me why it hurts

July Flame
Ashes of a secret heart
Falling in my lemonade
Unslakeable thirsting in the back yard


On the last day of July I braved the heat and humidity to capture the sun as it set between a couple of those awesome buttes north of town. These are just north of the Square Buttes, but part of the same formation. The lyrics are from my favorite July song EVER, “July Flame” by Laura Veirs. You can check it out on iTunes by clicking here.

By the way, that island in the foreground is made up entirely of birds. LOTS of birds. And from the sound of things, they were having quite a bird party.

Boy…July sure came and went quickly, didn’t it?

Blockhead photographs blockhouse

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I like hiking up to the blockhouses at sunset. I don’t like hiking back in the dark so much. I got a great view of the evening sky in between, though! I got there too late to capture the sunrise, and there were clouds moving in from the northwest AGAIN…but there were some shadowy rays tracing off into the darkness as I began to head down the hill, so I did not come back empty-handed.

Catchin’ some rays

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I need some wildlife video for a project I’m working on, so I worked my way down toward Fox Island to see what I could find. Along the way I couldn’t help but notice this beautiful sight in the sky, with awesome streaking rays of sunlight radiating overhead. I was able to catch it before a huge, looming cloud obscured the whole thing. Then I got some really nice HD video of a very cooperative deer before heading home.

Tuesday night sunset

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My last-minute dash to Menards accomplished its purpose, but put me a little behind the sun. As I rolled into Double Ditch I had to scramble to catch the end of the fleeting sunset. The sky above was so perfectly blue that I didn’t actually fret too much about missing what was happening on the horizon. A few wispy clouds speckled the sky, and the weather was perfect.

WorldWide PhotoWalk wrap-up, Bismarck-Mandan edition

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This weekend I was able to participate in the Bismarck-Mandan section of the third annual Worldwide PhotoWalk. I didn’t get an official count, but there were close to thirty participants from as far away as Jamestown. It was a blast, and the Bismarck walk was coordinated by Brian Matthews of BisManPhoto.com. There were a lot of really amazing photos posted, far better than mine I think. But what the heck, here are my favorite photos so far:

This old log has some new beginnings contained therein. I was shooting handheld so I didn’t get to stop my aperture down to get the depth of field that I wanted. I still like the way it turned out.

More new beginnings as this plant climbed up the rotting remains of an old stump, with the bud at the top catching a beam of sunlight from the early morning sun.

Another of the many statues which adorn the stretch from Sertoma Park to Pioneer Park (and a few points between). I like the range of colors in this one. It was in the shadow of the trees so I had to crank my fill flash and get creative in how I bounced it to eliminate those pesky shadows.

This cranky Sandhill Crane was soon mollified after I let him peck my monopod a few times and began talking to him. As a bird lover I have a way with ’em, and soon he was fluffing up his feathers and even showing off his wing for me!

I’m old enough to remember the actual Clyde. This statue in his honor towers over the inside of one of the Zoo’s buildings (I think it’s called the Discovery Center). I extended my monopod as far as I could, propped it on my shoulder to get it up to the level of the statue, and used my remote to trigger the shot. Note that he must have a wicked migraine, as the wood has developed a big crack in it.

We had two hours to walk and started outside the Dakota Zoo entrance an hour before it opened, so naturally most of us ended up at the big cat exhibits for our last few minutes! I chose to lay on my back with my widest (10mm) lens and point straight upward at this cat. Then one of the girls on the walk poked her head in to get some shots of her own, and she was just the ingredient my composition was missing.

As I said, I think the other participants blew my shots away. You can venture over to BisManPhoto.com to check them out. Sign up for an account and wait a little while until you’re approved. New members are screened manually to avoid spammers. Once you’re on, you can participate. Hopefully you’ll be intrigued enough to join us on future photo walks!

(UPDATED) Sunset for North Dakota’s energy industry? Byron Dorgan’s committed to it

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If you paid attention during the 2008 presidential campaign, you likely heard candidate Barack Obama foretell that he would bankrupt the coal industry, and that under his energy policies “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

For decades now, North Dakotans have been duped into thinking that we need to continue to send Byron “Skybox” Dorgan, Kent “Countrywide” Conrad, and Earl “The Pearl” Pomeroy to Washington on our behalf, because they’ve accumulated so much seniority and clout. They’ve grown very bold and comfortable in this role, scaring North Dakotans into repeatedly sending them back to office and doling out federal dollars when they return. They warn that any replacement would have to start from square one, wielding no effective influence on behalf of North Dakota and the interests of our state. So…what have we gotten for that? Zero. Well, unless you count the government health care takeover…

Now on his way out the door, and employing a “scorched earth” policy toward his country and the North Dakotans who enabled him, Senator Dorgan has these foreboding words for our nation’s energy industry:

“Regulations are coming in the future. If coal does nothing, coal will lose.”

North Dakota’s economy has remained robust during the national recession for a few different reasons, one of which is the solid energy industry. The policies of these liberal Democrats will decimate that. We don’t have the next election to use as an incentive to bring Byron Dorgan back to earth…what about his cohorts? I don’t think they’re any more interested in North Dakota’s economic future than he is. Once their re-election chances are sealed one way or the other, can we expect such candor from Conrad and Pomeroy?

UPDATE: This story from KFYR TV news shows that Byron Dorgan and his hairpiece are completely detached from reality. He’s pushing legislation to push people toward electric cars, while simultaneously trying to strangle the industry which generates much of the electricity that would be used to charge them. He also ignores the load that charging a bunch of these magic vehicles would put on an already strained electric grid.

That’s why I’ve always considered liberal/progressive/Democrat policies as suicidal. He’s attacking us from both sides: making energy production more expensive and difficult, while forcing us into a corner with his pie-in-the-sky electric vehicles (which ought to be FANTASTIC in a North Dakota winter). Senator Dorgan is long overdue for replacement, as are his like-minded comrades in Washington.