Pun intended. This was taken below Double Ditch recently as I took my sweetie and our little guys on a little adventure. On the one hand the clouds didn’t really light up with sunset colors the way I wanted, but on the other hand they were quite dramatic. I had a cool foreground and the colors of the waning sunset reflected brilliantly off the water. Not bad, after all. This is one of those that looked better at home than it did through the viewfinder.
One thing we’ve been short of lately is photogenic clouds. Ironically, those dry, hot August days haven’t been really conducive for great summer sunsets. In order for the sun to really provide a dramatic sunset, it needs some clouds to bounce its light, create shadows, and fill the sky with color. The other night we got just that kind of clouds.
The wispy tendrils of these clouds were of a type I haven’t seen in a while, so I was excited to bolt out to one of my frequent photo haunts to put them into perspective. Of course I used one of my favorite foreground features: an old windmill.
Now we have too many clouds to do much of a sunset photo at all, but the light rain is also a welcome sight. I didn’t get to chase sunsets much at all for most of this summer, and plan to do a lot more now that I’ve got the opportunity, so when the rainy days pass by I’m sure more shots like this will appear.
According to the Tribune, “Sentimental Journey” will visit Bismarck this Thursday through Sunday. It’s a B-17 bomber available for five dollar tours and $425 rides, and it’s worth visiting. I’ve had the opportunity to check out this plane from head to toe, and here’s a preview.
“Sentimental Journey” will be in town from Thursday through Sunday. For more information or to reserve a flight, visit www.azcaf.org.
I don’t watch much television anymore, but I do try to catch the occasional local newscast. If you do the same, you may have seen ads running for the business portrayed above. They appear to have a regular schedule booked in the 5 o’clock news. Being the curious sort, I often check out local businesses’ websites when I see them advertised somewhere. In the case of this tree service, I guess I’d better bone up on my Thai.
This is a trimmed screen shot of cntree.com. As you can see, there’s nothing about tree services on it. It’s occupied by a squatter who has filled it with spam posts, mostly in Thai. The featured article, according to Google Translate, is “How to choose shoe size”. There are a couple of English ones at the bottom. Oops.
Frankly, part of the responsibility for this snafu lies with whoever produced the ad. I’ve produced hundreds of television commercials in my career, and a plethora of other videos and multimedia products. Nobody’s perfect, most of all yours truly, but I try to always check every URL (website address) I’m asked to put into those products, regardless of who provided it. The last thing you want to do is have the black eye of a wrong website address or contact information on the product. This ad has been running for weeks on local television, but apparently nobody has caught this? I sure hope they can get it rectified…either by securing the domain and getting a website up or by at least getting the doggone ad changed.
So, if you’re looking to find your shoe size, types of alloys, glasses that fit your face, or high back chairs…apparently C&N Tree Service can help. It could be worse: they could be putting out cereal boxes with the number of a phone sex line on them by mistake!
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 – they even remembered the C. Then, on my way back to the Bizzo, I came across one that I had driven by innumerable times and never seen:
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.
So, I went out in search of a misspelling. I found one, but certainly not the one I expected.
One more sunset to share before the weekend. I worked late last night and spent what time I could with my little boys and my sweetie when I got home, but I didn’t have to go out with the cameras. I had this shot in waiting…from my iPhone, no less! Have a great weekend…
Last year, after missing the event entirely, I set a reminder in my phone to check on National Night Out sometime toward the end of July this year. I wasn’t disappointed. In fact, after a little poking around I found that it’s typically in the beginning of August. Good to know. As you can see, there were some bouncy, climby attractions for the kiddos. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Perhaps the largest presence there was by the Bismarck Police Department. They had a lot of cool equipment and Chief Donlin joined a large contingent of staff to answer questions. More on the various things they brought to display in a bit.
This event was sponsored in large part by Target. They were serving burgers and hot dogs, but I was so busy talking to different officers and taking photos that I never did find time to grab one. It was great of Target to show such hospitality; they had an army of people working the event to make sure that everyone had a good time.
Of course, you’ve got to have big fire trucks as well. These guys actually got sent out on a call or two during the course of the evening. Such is the nature of the job.
State Patrol. I couldn’t help but start humming a Junior Brown song at the sight of this car. My littlest guy was quite enamored of this exhibit and the trooper’s presentation.
The kids were each given a fire helmet if they wanted one, including pink ones for the girls, and then allowed to take a crack at putting out a “fire”. My little guys came back to this multiple times. The firemen manning this station were great, and it looked like they were having a blast along with the children.
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.
Burleigh County had spike strips on display. I’m glad I have never had to be on the receiving end of a chunk of these! I bet they get used more often than you’d think.
Early in the evening, a bunch of the Target girls came over to see if any of the SWAT guys wanted cute tattoos. I even heard the word “cupcake” bounced around. Although I doubt there were any pastries drawn, I think some of the team were good sports and went along with it.
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.
This battering ram really needs a smiley or a “KNOCK KNOCK” on it, a la Expendables. I’ve seen and/or heard what this thing can do, and wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of it!
My little guys had a lot of fun on the other attractions, too. While my youngest loved the bouncer more, my 6 year old scaled this climbing wall like a pro! He climbed it four times, ringing the bell three of those. I’m so proud.
Officer Fuller was there, doing his part for community outreach and giving out sticker badges to hopeful Junior Officers. He gets all the fun duties like being on the news and stuff. 🙂
If you missed this but wish you’d been there, don’t worry: you should be able to set yourself a reminder for the beginning of August next year, and come out to meet the people who work rough hours dealing with challenging situations to keep our communities safe and orderly. Also, get a burger before 8 o’clock rolls around and you realize you’ve been socializing and photographing the whole time and missed your chance!
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.
Now, as long as the NCAA doesn’t declare it “Hostile and Abusive™” and start telling North Dakota we’re banned from post-season play, I suppose it’ll be able to stay…
I have noticed this post the past few times I’ve traveled into town on River Road, and decided to use my lunch break yesterday to investigate. What caught my eye was the plant that had climbed the north side of the post and eventually made it to the top. I don’t know why I found it so intriguing, but I did.
As you can see, the roots and base of this plant actually reach a couple of feet up the post before the main part of the plant takes over. This thing really wanted to get to the top! It reminds me of when I was growing up in the Rockies and would spot one lone little tree springing out of the side of a rocky cliff in the middle of nowhere. God sure made these things tough. It reminds me of a phrase I heard from my pastor once: “even a mosquito doesn’t get a pat on the back until it starts working.” This plant has put in quite a summer.
Well, at least until winter approaches and the cycle starts over, this little plant has become King of the Post for all its hard work and tenacity.