This is the photo which started it all twenty years ago. I’d finally been able to enter the world of photography, something I’d wanted to do since I was a teenager. Digital photography had become a thing, and the production company I worked for had a most amazing photographer on staff, a man who I referred to as an “Encyclopedia Photographica”. Mike has been a wonderful mentor and encouragement to me, and thanks to him I hit the ground running. In fact, he got me into the line of work which became my vocation and my career, and I still haven’t gotten even with him for that! (j/k)

I was actually going to title this post “Not with a bang…” in reference to the T.S. Eliot poem “The Hollow Men”. 2025 has been one of the lowest years of my life, and 2021-2024 weren’t spectacular, either. But I have a new lease on life, as they say, and I’m poised to make 2026 one of the best years ever. So instead, as I ventured out with my camera for the first time in nearly four months, I determined it would be fun to look back on my New Year’s photos of our beloved capitol building since I started the blog exactly two decades ago.

Surprisingly, photographing the capitol on New Year’s Eve has not been an annual tradition for me. I’ve made it happen many years, but not all. Here’s an angle from 2009. In 2007 and 2008 my children were born just before Christmas, so naturally my wife and I had other business to attend to – and to celebrate during those years.

Variety being the spice of life, I opted for a different angle in 2010. This became a theme in future photos.

In 2011 I included the Sakakawea statue. Or is it Sacajawea? Or Sacagawea? Every time I master it, the culturally enlightened change it.

By the way, this was one of those years where I decided to take a two-wheeled selfie in front of the capitol.

In 2011 I started a new job, one which I no longer hold, but which granted me access to a building with a great view of the capitol grounds from higher ground. That’s when I discovered this angle. And I worked this spot like a rented mule over the years while I was there.

For 2013, I used a traditional angle. I don’t remember enough to speculate whether I phoned it in, or if I chose this angle due to the snow or the sky or some other circumstance.

2014 was a rough year. I spent New Year’s Eve in a hospital bed at Mayo Clinic, not stomping around the capitol grounds in the snow with my camera. No photo that year.

2015 was the year I had fun with it. I worked a few different angles, because we had a new layout to enjoy. This angle was previously impossible due to a row of trees which were removed when the layout of the parking lots and sidewalks was updated over the summer. This freed up a new possibility, which I exploited right away.

I also opted for a close up vanishing-point angle in 2015. If you look back on the Blog, there’s a third angle of the tower in my January 1st post.

I mixed it up a little in 2016 by taking the photo at a different time of day, not just a different angle. This is from my new favorite high spot, but framed differently to feature it in a new way.

2016 also happened to be an incredibly prolific photo year for me. While going back through photos this morning I was astonished by how many photo spots I had logged that year. I hope to do the same in 2026, call it a ten year anniversary tour or something!

2017? Yeah, I did kinda phone it in there. I did like the snow, though. I was working ridiculously long and irregular hours, often with minutes’ notice, and I just didn’t have the time or energy to get too creative with the New Year’s capitol photo. This is the only angle I shot.

I skipped 2018. I’m not sure why; I took plenty of photos of Chmielewski’s Christmas Corner on January 1st, but I didn’t do anything at the capitol. Go figure.

In 2019 I opted to take a gander from the southeast. It worked out pretty nicely! Note the sky; that makes a difference in this photo. The “northern lights” …thing… in the State Museum looks pretty cool, too.

Apparently in 2020 I no longer cared if the numbers were obscured a little bit, I just opted to roam around in search of fresh angles. I found them.

This one was particularly fun. And I didn’t fall to my bloody death, so that’s a plus. At this time I already knew something was brewing with this new coronavirus ravaging east Asia, but there’s no way we could have planned for the scope of what happened next.

I took an “I can improve on that” approach to my new favorite angle, this time including the columns of the state library building. I like the way it turned out. In fact, this inspires me for another angle I’ll have to try in the future…

Then, of course, there’s the old standby. I liked the sky conditions that night, so I went up and included this shot as well. What the heck, it’s a dry cold…

For 2022, I went back to another angle which I referred to earlier from a previous year. It’s among the options I chose for 2022. I love the wisp from the boiler exhaust, too.

This was a cold shot, but worth getting. This statue wasn’t always lit, so it was difficult to include in photos of this type. With these lights installed, that presented a new opportunity.

When I was a teenager, I sometimes broke open chem-lights and painted the eyes on this statue so they would glow for a little while. Don’t tell anyone.

For 2023, we played peek-a-boo. There are still angles of the capitol which remain unexplored.

This was a fun angle to get. I walked out onto the crusted snow – and the cracking sound it made was so incredible, I believe I have a video I shot of it around here somewhere – and got a photo which I hope conveys how absolutely crisp it was outside. Note the clear sky and stars in the background…those are not typical conditions for Bismarck-Mandan on New Year’s Day.

I had a dry spell from mid-November 2023 until mid-January 2024. By this time, we were well into a rough patch. No photos of any Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year’s celebrations.

For 2025, I chose a new angle of the pioneer statue with the capitol tower in the background. I think it worked pretty well. I plan to try this again, making the statue a little smaller by perspective. I attempted that when I shot this last year, but I am not happy with the alignment. So, I’ll try again.

That brings us to today: January 1st, 2026. I was really tired, but as part of my new-found motivation I was determined to head out with my camera for the first time in nearly four months and get the shot. My goal was simple: approximate the very first photo in this post – the very first photo in this website’s very existence – and in that I have succeeded. This part of the capitol doesn’t look the same as it did back then; the sidewalks, the landscaping, the trees…they were all changed about halfway between that first photo and this one. But I stood pretty close to where I must have set up my tripod that fateful winter night two decades ago, and I’ve brought things full-circle. Thank you for sticking with me for twenty years.

Like I said, I hope this year will be really, really cool. I have high expectations, and I’m well on my way to making them reality. I’m brimming with realistic optimism, and I hope to have plenty of photos to share here along the way.

Meanwhile, I did actually take some photos in 2025, even if I lacked the motivation to edit and post them. Hopefully I’ll be able to trickle those out in the near future, too.

Here’s to 2026!