I started this blog as an online photo diary, so I’m not really concerned about driving up social media likes. In fact, if all attention to this thing dried up completely I’d still be posting away, typing my drivel and business as usual. Having said that, I’m still surprised by the amount of traffic I see. Now that I have a Facebook page for this blog I’m starting to see the response ramp up there as well. Thank you all for apparently finding my photos and/or musings interesting enough to follow.
I’ve been playing around with panoramas a little bit lately via a number of means. First, there are 360 degree apps for iOS that are pretty cool. Next is the built-in panorama feature that arrived with my iPhone 5. Third is the photo stitcher in Photoshop. I also have the one that came with my Canon cameras, but I don’t use that one. Here are some of the results. Note that clicking on the image will bring up a larger version in a new window.
I got the opportunity to climb a tall building at the same time as a call from my wife telling me that the clouds were amazing. She wasn’t kidding.
Here’s a panorama from the front of the Lewis & Clark riverboat as we slowly chugged toward the Northern Pacific railroad bridge.
This is a cool blue sunset from one of my little boys’ favorite sandbars. They’re chasing a toad behind me, so they don’t appear on camera playing in the sand here.
The clouds advancing on us as I showed the fellas the old cemetery at Fort Abraham Lincoln were very striking. The sunset had just waned and we were ready to march back to the truck and load up our bikes.
Setting up for our own Independence Day celebration. The capitol and rodeo grounds had nothing on this show. It was spectacular! The food was good, too…and parking was easy.
This surprised me as Sam Sprynczynatyk and I were about to set up the crane and preparing our lighting gear for the video shoot for Tigirlily’s new single, which was released via the Internet yesterday. I snapped a quick panorama before setting up the gear and waiting for the girls to arrive.
Getting Camera 1 ready for the monster truck show. My little guys visited me at work that night, and they were pretty enthralled. A couple of nights before they’d watched me on the roof of a local hospital, shooting video and stills of the helicopter landing and taking off. Daddy’s got a pretty cool job, they said…but their uncle is a MAILMAN! I guess I can’t top that.
More sandbar stuff, because I have made good use of the tail end of the summer in order to enjoy sand, sun, Spyro Gyra, my sweetie, and my sons. Superb.
“Bubble Bliss” at the Gateway to Science Center. I think I’ll still be posting and blogging about that sometime soon, if I get the time. I got encapsulated in a very large bubble, which was a new experience.
Each of these flags represents a murder. It’s part of a traveling display to bring awareness to the blight of abortion on North Dakota. I long for the day when such tragedies never take place in our great state.
There’s no dramatic foreground or interesting perspective here; I just loved the colors of this sunset so much that I pulled over on a hill along Valley Drive, just south of the playground, and snapped a few shots to stitch together in Photoshop. I’d just taken my little boy to TCBY for rainbow yogurt to tell him how proud Daddy is of him, and the sun provided us with quite a spectrum of its own. I didn’t get a blue tongue from it, however.
Once again, clicking on these photos will bring up a larger version. They’re not full-size, however; the largest one of this is over 880 MB! Prints are always available, of course. Thanks again for the likes and supporting this online photo diary with your following. I hope to provide plenty more interesting material in the future.
Years ago I spotted this truck along the walking trail on the west side of the Missouri. I started at the trailhead in the Captain’s Landing township and walked past this truck parked in someone’s backyard.
Naturally, something jumped out at me: a serious error in the word “Bismarck”. Since this wasn’t typed, I didn’t really call it a “typo”. I figured someone in the sign shop got a phone call after the first R or something. There obviously was no keyboard or computer on which to blame the error.
I’d often wondered what the other side of the truck looked like, but, not wanting to go rooting around in someone’s back yard, I figured I’d have to find out another day. That day came recently when, on another walk along the trail, I noticed that the truck had been moved out into the open. It was time to “innervestigate”, as Tigger says in my boys’ Winnie the Pooh books.
Both doors are significantly faded, but it’s easy to see that the other one contains Bismarck in its properly spelled form – 
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the alternate spelling of McKenzie Drive in southeast Mandan. This is the sign at the intersection just south of Moritz. How in the world did that go unnoticed for so long? I have no idea…I’d like to think strict vigilance to the traffic in my surroundings. Maybe the sign itself is a recent replacement, although the new ones are lowercase. I don’t know, but I spotted it this time.
Tools of the trade. From the M4-configuration rifle to the “RV”, these guys have the tools to go along with the tactics. One of the team was gracious enough to lift the children up through the top hatch to look around.
Here’s the bomb squad robot. Visitors could go up in the trailer and see how it’s operated remotely, and other tools of the trade were on display as well.
Driving through Mandan this weekend I was surprised to find this dumpster along 1st Street. That’s a pretty cool tribute to Mandan history! It just goes to show that there’s a never-ending supply of neat stuff to discover around Bismarck-Mandan, no matter how much time one spends poking around with one’s cameras.
After a total blast of an evening last night, I decided to toss the family into the truck and head to Double Ditch, where we spent the waning hours skipping stones and getting our feet muddy. One goal was that elusive sunset photo, something I used to take a couple times a week back when the kids were so little and schedules were more flexible. I got it tonight…sorta.
