Monthly Archives: June 2012

Lightning crashes…and curiosity pays off yet again

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A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! –Charles Dickens

As I sat in the chair reading Dickens this evening I was reminded of a conversation with a friend earlier in the week. He remarked that I’m one of the most curious people he’s met, and that it was meant as a compliment. It’s true, I’m notoriously curious…and that’s one major reason I started this Blog way back when. That’s why the passage quoted above struck a chord within me as I read it tonight.

As a boy growing up in the Rocky Mountains (if at all) I remember looking out over the city below one night and realizing exactly what Dickens describes; each light in the city represents a home, full of people, doing whatever they’re doing, feeling whatever they’re feeling, and so on. It was an epiphany upon which I dwelled some time ago as I stood atop U-Mary hill with my camera, taking a wide-angle photo of Bismarck-Mandan. In fond remembrance I decided to take another such photo tonight.

As I reached the top of the hill I realized that a storm was approaching. I’ve taken almost 80,000 photos in my lifetime, but never really chased lightning; however, in this case it was a target of opportunity. As luck would have it, I was in the right place at the right time as a few giant lightning bolts danced across the frame. I may have to try this more often!

(Yes, the post title is a hat tip to the song title by the band Live)

Nice ride…do you mind?

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It’s that time of year, when fledgeling robins leave the nest and learn to fend for themselves. We have a lot of worms in the soil on and around our property, so naturally we have a lot of robins as well. Early in the summer we start seeing the speckled robin chicks around the place, ambulatory but not quite taking flight with any great proficiency, hanging out for their parents to help them find sustenance.

This one somehow found a way to perch on my boy’s Hot Wheels bike, and I think he really liked the feel of the tire on his toes. He spent a great deal of time there before flying off toward the wood pile in search of his mommy. She was hovering about but reluctant to swoop in with dinner since my two little guys and I were there watching, so we decided to head into the house for their bath time and let the robins have their dinner.

Lesson learned on vacation

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While on family vacation at Cross Ranch this weekend, I took a little time to attend a photo seminar and to strike out along the shoreline of the Missouri River for a little while with my camera. I consider any photo trip to be a success if I come back with even one interesting photo. In this case, I spotted the fisherman above.

For me, photography is a storytelling tool. I thought it very interesting that this guy had utilized the very shallow water over a sandbar to set up shop, complete with a chair and a pair of rodholders, to enjoy a little fishing. While in the middle of the Big Muddy, and technically still in the water, he’d used the sandbar to find a nice parking spot out in the middle of it all. But there was more to the story:

I didn’t even notice this until looking at the photos back at home, but he’s watching a gaggle of geese going ashore on the far side of the river. Things like this made it interesting to pore through my collection of various shots in this setting. While this was the only interesting thing I saw on my photo walk, I was able to explore different aspects of my shots as I cropped in for more detail.

Back to the storytelling aspect of my photo walk…I wanted to show that this fisherman is actually out in the middle of the river, so I employed a trick from the photo seminar I attended at the Cross Ranch Visitors’ Center: use telephoto to compress more distance within the frame. I was already shooting this setting with my 300mm lens, so by backing off a little bit I was able to include a lot of river in the foreground and show that this scene really does take place out in the middle of the Big Muddy. I like the black and white treatment because I think it conveys the simplicity of just sitting out in the water with a tiny boat, a lawn chair, and a couple of fishing rods while the world goes by.

When I went back to camp with my camera, I thought I’d made the bare minimum of one interesting photo. What I found was, although I only shot one setting, I had captured details which only made themselves apparent later when I had the opportunity to look at them full-size. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, my photo trip had been far more successful than I could have known simply looking through the viewfinder.

A photographer’s favorite street sign

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Poking around in northwest Bismarck I came upon this sign for Adobe Drive. Of course I had to stop and grab a photo; I’m a huge Adobe fan since I use Creative Suite products at home and at work for video, audio, animation, graphics…the works.

That got me thinking…if I was a developer and wanted to plat out a neighborhood, it’d be great to put together Adobe CS product names like Illustrator Avenue, Premiere Lane…or something double geeky like Flash Drive!

Of course, there are naming conventions for streets in Bismarck that would disallow that, but it’s still fun to think about.

Thursday Night Solstice Sunset returns, courtesy of Lost Lander

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The new Liberty Memorial Bridge has one fatal design flaw: the pedestrian walkway is on the south side. There’s very little to look at that way even on the best of days. The view to the north, however, is an entirely different story: the historic Northern Pacific railroad bridge, a wide expanse of open river, and of course the sunset. After my second consecutive 13+ hour work day I determined it was time to walk out on the bridge, on the longest day of the year, and see the sun set at its northernmost point. The sky even decided to cooperate, so it was a beautiful way to wrap up the day.

As I was brainstorming a way to frame my shot, I noticed the river boat pulling a Crazy Ivan underneath the NP bridge. It hovered there for a while before chugging upstream. It was a perfect example of the nice, leisurely feel I was enjoying for the evening. My long work week had come to a close, I was out with my camera on a gorgeous summer evening, and all was well. I also had Lost Lander playing on my iPod, augmenting the mood:


This video for Lost Lander by Stefan Nadelman is so visually stunning and absolutely perfect for this song, I just had to include it. Please give them three and a half minutes of your time and watch it. He calls it “the additive evolution of prime numbers” and it looks both organic and hypermathematical all at the same time.

Have a good weekend – get out and enjoy this wonderful world!

Surprises abound at the Dakota Zoo

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My boys and I took in the Dakota Zoo last weekend and, while the exhibits were a lot of fun, we also had a surprise au naturel while walking from one part of the zoo to another. In a little slough behind the main building, just south of the waterfowl pond, I spotted movement across the water. It was a procession of little ducklings followed by a protective mama! They swam a sort bit, found a nice place to come ashore, then proceeded to gather for a nice little nap.

I watched intently as they gathered closer and closer, grooming feathers and rubbing bills, until they were packed in tightly enough for comfort. The vigilant mother kept an eye on me despite the distance, and slowly little duckling eyes began to close.

Once they settled and I’d taken a LOT of photos from a couple of different angles, it was time to let them have their nap in peace and move on to see more of the planned exhibits. It was cool to catch such an unexpected display within the zoo boundaries!

Oh yeah…I was on Rush last week

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In a little spur-of-the-moment thing, while stirring a pot of pasta at home, I picked up the phone and dialed 1-800-282-2882. To my surprise, I found myself talking to Mr. Snerdley, and I chimed in with my take on Measure 2. Last week Rush mentioned North Dakota and Measure 2, pointing out that people are way too worried about government getting enough money and not worried enough about keeping their own. That may be the case for some out there, but I had an alternate viewpoint to present, one on which I’ve elaborated here on the ol’ Blog before.

I didn’t get a chance to make one point: if Measure 2 had simply said, “State, county, and local governments may not levy, impose, or collect taxes on property” I would have voted an enthusiastic YES. That would have accomplished the job and allowed the legislature to react accordingly. That would give plenty of time for debate as to how to react and allow for the legislative process to work through any unexpected issues in the process.

Measure 2, however, nosed the issue into a constitutional corner. By prescribing what I call the “magic formula” method of the legislature to fund local government, the measure went too far…irreversibly so. In that case, if adjustments needed to be made, they could only be done by another constitutional measure. What a mess. It also worked retroactively, allowing no time for debate on specifics.

I spoke to a friend who was a huge proponent of Measure 2 from the beginning, and he told me that Measure 2 was simply “too long.” He’s the one that opened my eyes to the possibility above, that it should have simply done away with property taxes and stopped there. Instead, by codifying a solution for property tax replacement into constitutional law, it became a lesson in what I call “bad mechanics” and doomed itself to failure.

Anyway, you can check out the brief transcript of the Rush segment here. Not my most eloquent minute and a half, but at least I didn’t screw up my first nationwide radio appearance.

Friday night light in the nick of time

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I got to bolt out with the cameras for a little bit on Friday evening, and my first target was the sharp display of light rays piercing the cloud cover. Of course, a photo like that deserves a nice foreground object, and I chose the Square Buttes north of town. I have a couple of spots marked in the GPS that provide a perfect vantage point of the buttes from across the Missouri River, but it takes a while to get to them. Along the way I began to sense that the clouds may be clearing slightly, diminishing those rays, so I stopped for this quick shot.

I arrived at my usual spot as planned, and by now it was obvious I had mere minutes before the clouds broke. I opted for a couple of quick roadside shots rather than a carefully planned hike, but I like what I came away with. This is the northern end of the Square Buttes, a portion that doesn’t look very square at all. I knew that there wasn’t enough time to hike to a point where I could include the wide, flat tops for which these buttes are known, so I opted for some “bumps and water” in the foreground instead.

One artifact of note is the “glow” where the hills meet the darkening sky. I originally saw this in Photoshop and thought it was an artifact of processing, as I did lighten the foreground a little bit. I thought I had been heavy-handed in that processing; however, a close inspection of the original raw photos shows that the glow on the hills was actually there. Whether it was caused by the rays somehow or the breaking cloud cover behind the hills, I don’t know.

With that, the sky cleared briefly and I had to reboot my little photo trip in search of a different type of photo. A storm rolled through shortly thereafter, but I was caught out of position and didn’t manage to capture the ominous front as it approached. Instead I returned to the garage and set out to tinker on stuff for a while, but my cameras and I returned to sunset duty on Sunday – this time with two little boys attending – and I’ll post the results of that photo dash soon.

Yay – Fort Lincoln Trolley resumes operation this weekend

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I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the Fort Lincoln Trolley is resuming operations this weekend. Last November I took a hike down the tracks to survey the damage they’d sustained from the flood, and it didn’t look good.


The damage inflicted by the Big Muddy last year is jaw-dropping all along the river’s course, and this is just one of many tragic stories. The hill eroded underneath the track just north of Fort Lincoln.


This particular section left a long stretch of rail, along with whatever ties were strong enough to remain attached, literally hanging in open air.


While the rails were not broken, they were certainly bent and in serious need of rescue. I’m so excited that the repairs have been performed given the extent of the damage! The dark spot to the right of the tracks in the upper right portion of this photo is an enormous crack in the earth.


This isn’t the first time that the trolley folks have had to deal with erosion of the hills upon which their track resides; however, I don’t know whether previous damage was anywhere near as serious as this. The hill itself looked like it had some issues, so hopefully they were able to reinforce it as well as the tracks.


As you can see, a large section of the hill simply separated and tumbled toward the river below as the hill was eroded from its base by the overflowing river. I used my monopod as a makeshift jib to suspend my camera in the air over the tracks for this treacherous shot.


View Bismarck-Mandan Blog in a larger map

Central North Dakota was re-imaged last year after the flood waters receded, and that product has made its way to Google Earth. As a result you can see the damage from space. Click “More” then “Zoom Here”. After that use the + on the left to zoom in closer.

As you can see, it’s a fun ride. It serves as a shuttle back and forth from Fort Lincoln, but it’s also fun to just take a ride down and back if you’re pressed for time. I’m excited to see what it looks like as we cruise over it in style, aboard a new electric Trolley car! It was rolled out for last year but then the tracks failed, so few got the chance to try it. My family will be on it soon!

Hopping aboard another meme

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I was a “gamer” in the sense of the Atari 2600, Apple // and Commodore computers, a beta tester for a few Mac game companies, and begrudgingly even X-Box. While I don’t own a modern game system or even have a clue about the major PC games out there these days, I do still have vintage game systems hooked up in the house and garage and a healthy collection of games on my iPod Touch. In that respect I guess I’m still a “gamer.”

It must be a deeply rooted trait, since I had one instinct as soon as I saw these road markings denoting new “bike lanes” in certain parts of Bismarck. Okay, one instinct besides the apparent waste of money. While there are two or three different sets of markings, concerning in that they lack consistency, this particular set looks like a set of “boost arrows”. These features, appearing in any number of driving games, cause wild acceleration once they’re driven upon. Sounds right up my alley. Sadly, they are of no effect outside the virtual world.

Interesting side note: although these things are only weeks old, many of them are badly faded. It took a while to find one worth photographing. Perhaps the City Commission could have reviewed the bids more closely or something, because the paint clearly is not holding up in areas of significant traffic.

In any case, I figured I’d hop on board a common internet meme, select “Impact” as my font, and bang out a quick little graphic. Note the historic Provident Life Weather Beacon in the background. My contribution to “teh Intarwebz” this week is complete. Have a great weekend!