That new landscape

ISO 100, 16mm, 1/500 sec. f/9

Out and about today exploring the area and came across this scene.  I hear there’s one of these in Nebraska but not next to the body of water I’m standing in front of to make this image.  Wind Point lighthouse is on the shore of Lake Michigan just north of Racine, Wisconsin, placed there to guide shipping down the coast to the port of Racine.  I was fortunate to get some very cooperative clouds and sunlight for this.  A little perspective adjustment in Photoshop and I’ve got a Great Lakes postcard.

And no, I didn’t copy the photo on the Wikipedia site – it’s just a very popular perspective to make this image….

A theme runs through it

Not all of my travel involves photography so I do try and schedule some time on each trip to see the area and learn about it’s photographic potential.  When in cities I enjoy looking at the architecture to see how it fits the city’s reputation or if there is a consistent motif representative of the city’s culture.  Even where there is a mix of old and new buildings if you look closely you can sometimes see how the designers and builders carry forward some iconic aspect of the city.

Salt Lake City is a young urban place, at least by comparison with cities east of the Mississippi.  It is a place that was intended to exist, planned for and designed to be a religious center and home to a wandering people.  Isolated as it was (and still is to some extent) from the influences of other American cities, it developed it’s own flavor and character.  Wandering around the city there remain signs of this if you take the time to look.

Looking south from Ensign Peak

The historical center of the city is Temple Square where the community gathered to practice their religion and from where the commercial aspects of the town grew outward from as the population expanded.  Today it is an oasis in the middle of an urban scene, full of cool grass, colorful flowers and many visitors, all surrounding the iconic buildings on its grounds.

The people who built this city from a settlement were industrious and hard working.  They adopted as their symbol the beehive in acknowledgement of how bees work together to build a community.  The beehive motif is found in many places around the city, including the crown of an office building on the Square.

Other symbols of industrial effort grace various buildings as well, decorations aimed at making a solid statement about the values of the people who grew the city from a desert outpost to a thriving metropolitan community.

But not all decorations were as severe and practical – these are people who appreciate the artistic aspects of their lives as well and proudly display those motifs.

There are even signs of whimsy, scenes contrasting the modern with the playful.

As well as the linear perspective of more modern perspectives.

The most dominant theme, however, is found in the iconic Temple.  Its influence is noticeable throughout the city in both large buildings and intimate details.  It is the theme that runs through the city’s architecture, the one all designers and builders seem to realize has influence on their work.

It’s a fun place to spend some time just walking around and admiring the results of so many people’s efforts.  In America we express our architecture like our personalities – individual, non-conforming, free to explore different aspects – and our cities manifest that expression.  Take some time to look around your home town and see what themes run through it.

Relics in our back yard

Omaha is really just a normal place, so normal it’s easy to miss the unique things around town.  Sure, it’s the home of Warren Buffett, Mutual of Omaha (remember Wild Kingdom?), a great zoo, a fantastic symphony, Union Pacific RR and other neat things but sitting in the heart of fly-over country all its features are readily overlooked by people on the way from Chicago to Denver.  Even folks who’ve lived here for a while (I’m starting to fall into that demographic) tend to be lulled by the normal nature of the place to the point they forget what’s here.

As an example, flying out of the airport and over the river there’s a view of a swing bridge over the Missouri.  A swing bridge is one that rotates around an axis to allow traffic on the water to pass by.  Bridges are everywhere on the Missouri to the point you only pay attention to them when you need to cross the river and there’s not a bridge on the road you’re using at the moment!  Anyway, after a few passes over this bridge I pretty much stopped noticing it as it appeared to be permanently open and not being used.

One day I was driving on the Iowa side and noticed interstate 29 passes pretty close to that bridge.  The Iowa side span is indeed permanently open (the bridge was taken out of service in 1980) and glancing over I saw a couple of interesting compositions, as well as a trail running along the river.  “Can I walk to the bridge,” I wondered?  Usually structures like this are surrounded by fences, guard shacks and warnings to stay away pending dramatic legal actions.  Was it possible this one was more accessible?

I love bridges.  They are physical statements of man’s ability to overcome a force of nature – the river.  Given the duty they are called to perform, steel bridges always look spindly and undernourished to me, yet they hold up all that weight and allow us to get from one side of the water to the other.  It’s engineering magic and that thrill doesn’t go away for me just because it’s an old bridge or not in service.

The compositions I thought I saw were indeed there when I made it over to the shore.  I even got a chance to play around with “obvious” HDR, which I think really brings some drama to structures.  You can see some images below.  Take a look at those gears and rollers needed to turn such a massive piece of metal.

I met a guy fishing near the bridge and he told me a little of its history as he’d grown up in the area.  He knew it had been in service when he was a boy but didn’t have an idea of how old it was.  Both of us wondered why it had been left standing – scrap steel is very useful and cost efficient to use these days.

Still, I thought it was just another bridge abandoned as the railroad consolidated to newer and fewer routes.  When I got home I thought I’d see if there was anything on the Internet about it to but in my image metadata, but not really expecting much.  It’s just an old rusty bridge in Omaha, right?

Was I surprised.  It’s called the Illinois Central Swing Bridge and in the early 20th century it was the longest swing bridge in the world; even in 1975 it was the third longest.  The Iowa side was built in 1893 of wrought iron and the Nebraska side in 1908 of steel.  Although it’s not used anymore (oddly enough the bridge is owned by the Canadian National RR) it remains standing just in case a problem arises with the Union Pacific Missouri River bridge farther downstream.  Not a bad idea given the amount of rail freight that passes through Omaha every day and the nasty nature of the Missouri to go wild at times.

And I’m not the only person finding this bridge interesting.

There you have it, yet another not-normal thing found in the Omaha area.  I really need to pay more attention to what’s around…

Click on an image below to see a larger version.

ISO 100, 16mm, 1/320 sec., f/7.1

ISO 100, 14mm, 1/125 sec., f/10

ISO 100, 15mm, f/7.1, five image HDR

ISO 100, 20mm, f/7.1, five image HDR

ISO 100, 14mm, 1/250 sec., f/7.1

ISO 100, 31mm, 1/320 sec., f/7.1

ISO 100, 14mm, 1/250 sec., f/7.1

Take what you can get

Every once in a while photographs are simply the result of serendipity, some crashing together of incidents that were never intended to coincide but manage to do so.  For example:

This is famous Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD, the only known one in the world.  Every year the town decorates the exterior of the building in corn to portray that year’s theme of the corn festival.  All the corn is grown in the area and all the work done by townspeople.  As Mitchell is right off Interstate 90 between Sioux Falls and Wall Drug (or Rapid City, or Sturgis – pick your reason for being on I-90) the Corn Palace sees quite a bit of tourist traffic even when the festival is over.  This year was touch and go – the drought seriously impacted the quantity of corn in the area, especially the unique colored corn used for the designs.  But they managed to finish it up and everyone is enjoying this year’s tribute to youth activities.

I was in Mitchell for a couple of days on business and decided to make some images as the tourist crowds were small during the week.  Some were made before sunset and some afterwards as they light up the Palace.  The building is downtown so the opportunities for different compositions are pretty limited but it wasn’t until I started looking at my files today that I realized I had two images taken at different times that were almost the same perspective.  And that’s how the above picture came about.

Here’s the daytime image:

And here’s the night version:

I dropped them both into Photoshop as Layers (images stacked on top of each other) and reduced the Opacity of the daytime version until I got the view of the lights I wanted.  Here’s my Photoshop Layers palette:

You see the Opacity of the top layer is down to 26%, which means only that much of the image’s luminosity is showing through.

After that it was just a matter of tweaking the night image a bit in order to line up the lights with the structure (it’s not a perfect job but not bad for 5 minutes of work).  And I get a final image that looks like I waited until after sunset.

Never believe what you see in a photograph……

Utilitarian

Walk around your house with a photographer’s eye, not a home owner’s.  Look for specific, individual elements.  Most are uniform, repeating themes of wood, brick, stone and concrete, put together to form a solid structure.  Each piece contributes to the overall whole, melding together to form the visual expectation of a house.

So why do we put up with these interruptions?

It’s almost as if these arrive at our houses unchanged from the 19th century, remnants of the steam age or when electrical wires filled the skies.  Some sort of mechanical viruses that attach themselves to our residences.  We paint them for camouflage and then disregard them afterwards.  Yet our 21th century lifestyle is enabled by these very devices, deliverers of energy, information, light and connectivity.

What do they do?  No instructions come with them, no pamphlet or URL to use as a way to understand their function.  They just work.  And when they don’t, their own dedicated priesthood descends on them to mutter incantations and perform secret rituals in order to return them to operation.

And in reality, how different are these from the emerging cloud network devices we’re all expected to partake in?  How many people can explain how they works, what they are composed of, how to run or repair them effectively?  We simply to take the idea for granted, that it will always be there, delivering some form of service we’ve been promised will gloriously increase our living standard.

It’s the future, as it has always been.  Devices delivered to our existence that fade from recognition.  And why just these mechanical attachments?  Why shouldn’t a house be sold with full connectivity, including the devices needed.  A tablet for every room, a smartphone for every occupant, an internet TV for each person – all simply passed from owner to owner as functional elements of the house.  No different than windows, doors, floors, heaters and plumbing.

It’ll certainly expand the For Sale listings…..

Rebellous

Fort Worth Water Gardens

Lines moving everywhere.  Solid lines of concrete.  Dancing lines of water.  Flowing lines of air.  Lines defining space, guiding visual exploration, enticing speculation inside and outside the image.  What to do with all the lines?

Master photographers teach it is my job to make order out of the chaos of a visual world, to construct a composition that simplifies for the viewer what the scene contains in content and story.  But do all scenes require that?  Is it respectful of a scene that revels in chaos to boil its essence down to a few defining gestures?  Shouldn’t some scenes reject simplicity in order to scream at the viewer, “here’s a dynamic reality you must take as it is?”

It’s the feeling I get every time I visit this place.  The Water Garden was designed to promote a sense of other worldliness, a liquid oasis in the middle a city’s heat sink.  A flowing, moving, dynamic environment to contrast the stolid, grounded structures of steel, concrete and glass that surround it.  There is a movement throughout the park that is at odds with the hustle/bustle of the enveloping city, a movement defined by water, not human, traffic.

Stepping in this place you’re initially confused as the urban clock we’ve attuned ourselves to suddenly becomes confronted by the more primeval rhythm of water responding the the prompting of gravity, to seek the lowest point of ground and the highest point of entropy.  The water sprays around you, flows beside you, swirls beneath you – each action generating a sound we distantly recall but initially can’t place.  It’s the puzzled feeling you get when first standing on the seashore – you recognize the wave sounds on the beach but you don’t know how they fit into your current existence.

Taking more time to pay attention and the confusion fades.  The sound of water moving is a natural one for our species and our brain will latch onto it as an expected stimulus.  Much like some phrases of a symphony that just feel right, the seemingly chaotic sound of the water suddenly clicks as we accept this is the real nature of reality, not the contrived one we’ve built just beyond the boundaries of this place.

Why should a photograph deny this?  What value to the viewer is there to simplify this reality, to deny the visual manifestation of the expected aural experience?  No, this composition demands less simplicity – it requires the multi-directional distraction of lines intersecting in many angles.  It must show the contrast of dynamic flow against solid foundation.  It is the nature of this place.

Follow some rules, break some rules.  That’s the nature of photography.

Sentinels

Obviously we’re going to run out of oil one day.  Sure, matter nor energy can be created or destroyed, but we’re converting oil into energy, carbon dioxide, water and who knows what else at an increasing rate so one day we’re sure to run out.  Don’t have a clue when that will be but I imagine at present we face a world of continually increasing petroleum costs as supply decreases so alternatives would be a good idea from both an economic as well as an environmental perspective.

Unfortunately we’re addicted to our current cost structure.

Wyoming wind ranch

I read an article a week or so ago talking about the different forms of alternative energy being considered in the US – wind, solar, geothermal – and the consensus of the writers’ evaluation of current data is we’ll never find these cost effective when compared to petroleum.  Never.  Their estimate is oil prices could triple and these alternative versions remain in the negative ROI zone.  That’s encouraging.

They all seem plausible right now because of the significant public subsidies they receive, either through direct handing over of taxes or the special fees paid by users.  Subsidies are essentially a tax on any and all alternatives, aimed at achieving policy, not economic, ends so in such an artificial economic world how do we learn whether this is the right direction to be taking to offset declining petroleum supplies?  Essentially the public sector (whoever that is) claims it will be worth it to all of us one day if we pay more than it’s worth today.  Imagine buying cars that way….

I don’t know what to think.  I do know the wind turbines look pretty impressive sitting on the prairie, slowing spinning in the breeze.  I’m not opposed to the hand-of-man being present in some compositions, especially then the objects are as graceful as these.  There’s a surreal aspect to their presence, standing along in seemingly pristine surroundings, almost like alien structures that grew there or were deposited by some race long departed.  Any child can see what they do – they turn with the wind – but other than that their function is not apparent.  Standing there in their individual solitude they give no clue about their meaning, connection to surroundings or even age.  It’s like we could come back in a 1000 years and not be surprised to see them standing there still.

Think of the monolith in Kubrik’s 2001:  A Space Odyssey.

And their numbers seem to increase magically.  I see turbine blades and the occasional rotor housing being transported on the interstate all the time but I’ve never, NEVER, seen a wind turbine being assembled in the wild.  Do they spring up from the ground after construction in some underground crypt, like Venus appearing fully grown from the sea?  Perhaps they are replicating themselves, splitting like yeast cells resulting in perfect twins over and over again.  Maybe what I’m seeing on the roads is actually the harvest off of them, blades being taken to other locations to seed new growth.

Who knows.  Maybe they are planted by another race to teach us to be more careful with our planet.

Beat swords into plowshares

Look at a map of military bases in the US and realize how pervasive this part of society has become over the years.  And that’s just current locations.  Find a map that shows ALL installations over the history of the country and it starts looking like an atlas of towns and cities.  As a people we have sunk almost countless value into the soil of our country in support of military operations.

Many of the 20th century facilities were created in response to actual declarations of war, installations designed and built to support a rapid change in society from peace to warfare.   And many of these were used briefly to serve a specific purpose and then vacated, turned over to others for different purposes, or simply abandoned.

As with most real estate deals, location played a very important role in where these installations were grounded.  During the last declared war, with expected enemies off both coasts capable of launching attacks on US soil, decisions were made to build important support facilities in the middle of the country.  Based on one part logistics, one part fear, and probably one part economic stimulus for a few people with connections, results of decisions on placement mean the remains of facilities still dot the countryside in various parts of the Great Plains.

Driving east from Hastings, NE along US 6, the Grand Army of the Republic highway, you suddenly notice a regular series of low humps running in regular order in the pastures parallel to the road.  The more adventurous who wander off the highway onto county roads discover these continue southward for several miles, clusters of mounds marching across the fields.  These, and several long, brick buildings connected by abandoned railroad rights of way are all that remain of the Naval Ammunition Depot, the largest World War II naval munitions manufacturing and distributing facility in the US.

Explosives Storage Bunkers

Non-explosive Materials Storage

Non-explosive Materials Transfer Station

The mysterious mounds are simply bunkers built to store explosives, primers and assembled shells, torpedos and mines, concrete structures built so well they will probably be standing in a hundred years.  Their format is simple – a half-cylinder lying on the ground covered in soil, with a double door and blast wall.  Grouped in clusters depending on the material being stored and spaced to prevent sympathetic detonations in case of accidents. the bunkers poise in ranks as if waiting for another round of active duty.

Munitions Storage Bunkers

Assembled Munitions Storage Bunkers

With the factory gradually phased out in the 1950’s much of the land was turned over to the US Department of Agriculture for the location of their Meat Animal Research Center.  Now in an ironic re-tasking, the bunkers provide high ground for herds of cattle who graze across the prairie, unaware of the nature of the hillocks they climb to get a broader view of their surroundings.

Just in from back East

My travel isn’t all in search of great compositions.  I consult on non-photographic projects as well and the nature of those assignments means I’ll pass through my share of cities.  Instead of hauling around bulky camera equipment I probably won’t have time to use, I take my little Canon point-and-shoot.  It’s the first digital camera we bought, back when we were just dipping our toe into the technology.  It’s pocket sized but with 6 megapixels and a 3x optical zoom lens (f/2.8-4.9) with a big 3″ screen on the back. Just enough to record places I visit.

I’m always interested in how a place came to be, and how it turned into the place it is.  Westward from the Mississippi River many of those stories revolve around the railroad.

While waiting to fly out of Boise, ID recently I took some time to drive around town and get a sense of the place.  Originally founded on a river, then moved to a site protecting the westward Oregon Trail (the interstate highway of the day), Boise eventually found itself on a rail line.  As with most western towns the railroad presented new opportunities to ship goods to markets and receive merchandise more luxurious than the local businesses could provide.  Commerce grew and curious people started wondering, “what’s it like out there?” enough to develop a passenger service.  Not satisfied with a plank and beam wooden cargo station, Boise built a real train depot, one that would impress visitors and new citizen alike.

The station is placed on the Bench, an ancient river shoreline overlooking the valley where Boise gradually developed.  Stepping off a train, passing through the depot and walking out on the front plaza the traveler is greeted with the sight of a growing town, back-dropped by mountains.

The depot commands quite a view of the valley and is visible from much of downtown.   The street stretching away in the picture leads right to the state capitol building, bisecting the city.  The depot’s Spanish architecture is distinctive for the region, uncommon to such a northern area and more befitting a location in the southern deserts, Los Angeles or such.  Bells in the tower still sound at times, a call I’m sure you can hear all over the community.

Steam locomotives no longer bring wide-eyed visitors to this Idaho valley.  Passenger service itself ended in 1997 and the line adjacent to the depot, although with signs of use, probably just sees freight trains passing through without stopping.  Both praised and vilified in its day, rail did open up the west and transport the adventurous to new opportunities, leaving legacies for us to appreciate.  Airline terminals I’ve visited have yet to match the splendor of rail depots, architecture that proclaimed a great age for the frontier.

Let’s honor something truly useful

[Ed. note - I've been informed this delightful place is spelled Le Mars, not La Mars.  Now your GPS can direct you properly to the source of midwestern dessert delight.]

There’s been a fad around the country for what seems like about 10 years or so where cities select some object they believe best represents their heritage or current status and then have artists decorate statues of that object in various ways.  I’ve seen cows in Chicago, pigs in Cincinnati, buffalo in Great Falls, big O’s in Omaha – all very interesting but after a while seeing yet another city’s art doesn’t make an impression.

Until I visited La Mars, Iowa.

At first glance it’s just another town on the plains, legacy of the railroad’s interest to have shipping stations where farmers could bring their crops to send back east and pick up necessities for the next season.  Downtown, though, you soon realize there’s something different about La Mars.

Located in this small Iowa town is the place where more ice cream is made than anywhere else on the planet – Wells’ Blue Bunny.  Since 1913 they have been making people happy over much of the United States.

Finally, city art to excite the kid in all of us – and in a place where you can do something about being excited RIGHT NOW.  For example, this sundae statue is located right outside the Blue Bunny ice cream store on Main street.  Like what you see?  Come on in and have one.

Let’s see the cows, pigs, and buffalo in all those other places turn desire into satisfaction that fast!

Charles Kuralt once said, “The interstate highway system is a marvelous way to get from one point to the other in this country but you won’t see much of the country while on it.”  La Mars, as you might expect, doesn’t lie on an interstate.   You have to seek it out, back on the roads in Iowa.