Fargo, North Dakota.
Recently my wife, Lynn, and I discovered a park that’s new to us. In a future Travel Tuesday, I’ll feature a photo story about the park and its beginnings. Over the Memorial Day Weekend, I was busy capturing images of the apple orchard that is the signature feature of the park. In late May, the trees are in bloom and the soft light of a thin overcast allowed me to capture some detail of a pod of apple blossoms. Continue reading
This week, the photo challenge team welcomes a guest challenger, Cee of Cee’s Photo Challenges. I’ve been a follower of photo challenges she posted or others she’s mentioned almost since I started blogging about photography. Her challenge this week features images of a single flower. She writes, “When I was asked to guest host, my first thought was it had to be a flower challenge and as I thought more about it, I came up with the topic one single flower. One of my favorite quotes is ‘If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.’ Buddha.” You can read her entire challenge post here. Continue reading
Yuma, Arizona.
Notice: This post is being written during the COVID-19 pandemic and at this time, the park is closed to visitors. Please stay safe and follow your state or country’s guidelines for travel in your region. More information on the park’s current status can be found here.
Looks like they finally caught up with me. They put me on that train featured in the movie “3:10 to Yuma” and I must serve my time in the Yuma Territorial Prison. My “sentence” would only last a few hours visiting the once-notorious prison that is now a state park. That “mug shot” of me features a mirror that allowed prison officials to take a front and side view mug shot on a single exposure. The mirror is set up for guests to don a quick-change striped jacket, grab one of the prison numbers, and get someone to snap your photo. The Yuma prison is one of the first to use a mirror in creating prison record photographs. Continue reading
Fargo, North Dakota.
Spring flooding has been an issue for many years along the Red River of the North in Fargo. At Lindenwood Park in south Fargo, a pedestrian bridge has linked Lindenwood with Gooseberry Park in Moorhead Minnesota since 1978. During the summer, that bridge joined the two communities but each year during flood season, the City of Fargo would bring large cranes to the site to lift the bridge out of the water to keep the floodwaters from washing the bridge downriver. In 2013, construction was completed on a new lift bridge that features concrete abutments and a lift system that brings the bridge above the 500-year flood level.
About the photo: This image was captured on my Samsung S20U cell phone using automatic metering and exposure at f/1.8, 1/1000 sec, ISO-16. It was edited in Lightroom and Luminar 4. In most browsers, you can click on the image to get a closer look.
John Steiner
The American Southwest.
This week Tina brings us the 100th Lens-Artists Photo Challenge. Each week I look forward to either searching my galleries or grabbing my camera to find appropriate images to share that focus on the challenge topic. Tina writes in part, “This week, share your images and thoughts about the long and winding road. Feel free to be literal or metaphorical in your approach.” You can read her entire challenge post here. Continue reading
This week, a friend in the Blog-o-sphere who writes under the pen name of RulesOfLogic weighs in on photography along with a couple of comments on his favorite topic, automobiles. I discovered his blog several months ago and have enjoyed reading his take on classic automobiles. As an aficionado of classic cars, I usually have a comment or two about his posts (though mine is definitely not an “expert opinion.”) You can read his blog, “Disaffected Musings” here.
Without further ado, I present RulesOfLogic.
No, the post title is not the setup for a punchline like in this commercial, which may be my favorite ever. (“Ah one, ah ta-hoo, ah three. [Crunch] three.”) Even though I am a numbers nerd with OCD, I would not want to be guilty of “Breaking A Butterfly Upon A Wheel” to use Pope’s famous line. Continue reading
Fargo, North Dakota.
It’s mid-May as this is being written, scheduled for publication on 7 June 2020. By now, we would be looking forward to opening the season at a Fargo-Moorhead Redhawks game as they begin their 25th season. Our 13-game flex pack of tickets sits on the shelf above my desk proclaiming the opening game will be May 26 against the Lincoln Saltdogs. At this point, however, it’s not entirely sure that there will even be games this year. The league (American Association) in late April announced that the regular season has been postponed until the beginning of July, but that will depend upon the pandemic and whether or not it will be safe to have games where a large gathering of people will be allowed. Continue reading
This week, Amy asks us to provide an interpretation in images of “Old and New.” In framing the challenge, Amy writes, “It can be the contrast of architecture, fashion, collections, treasures… in one photo or multiple photos.” You can read her entire challenge post here. These challenges are up to the individual as to how to interpret the goal of the challenge and I often try to put a slightly different spin on the topic just for fun. Continue reading
Belize City, Belize.
I never thought I would get to see a real Mayan Ruin, but that was on our itinerary for our visit to Belize on the last cruise we took before the pandemic became a worldwide concern. The site was only discovered by archeologists in the early 1960s, and excavations started in 1964. A pretty thorough description of the site’s history can be found on Wikipedia here. The opening image is a side view of the construction of the Temple of the Sun God. It is also known as the Temple of the Masonry Altars. The height of the temple is 52 feet (16 m) and is the largest construction on the 3 sq mi (8 sq km) site. Continue reading
Buckeye, Arizona.
It was Spring 2020 in the White Tank Mountains. Even on our hikes, we were social distancing, single file, group photos taken in the line we’d formed as we hiked down the trail instead of gathering around a single person to grab a “group selfie.” The cactus flowers were plentiful, the day warm and sunny and I had plenty of opportunity to capture those rarely seen flowering cactus. One family of cacti, the Cholla has several varieties. The two that I’ve found most hard to distinguish are the Staghorn and the Buckhorn. For this post, I ended up looking for a definitive source to describe the difference here. The short synopsis of the difference is that they “are sometimes hard to distinguish.” They have similar blossoms, but the most obvious distinction is in the fruit. Well there you go. I’ve never seen a fruit on either variety. Continue reading
