Post 120. Another dinosaur.

I am at the Chicago airport waiting to fly to Shanghai. I am getting really excited. (Although I suspect excitement will wane a bit during the 14.5 hour flight.)

Nevertheless, as my last post for a week I wanted to post something... (I won't have my phone or laptop.)

Here is what I got from the airport. A nice glass art display and a giant dinosaur.

I will miss you all, and i hope to see you again on Sunday June 2nd.

See on.
Julee

Post 119. Meet Pete the Dinosaur.

I have been in Iowa all week auditing, and as I drove through Coon Rapids this morning I passed a glorious assortment of sculptures.  Sculptures are my bliss.

The first one I passed was this enormous set of three cages with geometric shapes in them.  Then I came upon a park where I fell in love with Pete the dinosaur.

I had to come back at the end of the day to photograph everything.  Too bad it was a gray and gloomy day, but the photos still turned out.

Say Hi to Pete.

Here is the neat sculpture that first caught my eye.

Here is a cool praying mantis and a golf club windmill.  Awesomeness.  Total awesomeness.

See on.
Julee

Post 118. Swarm.

You've probably heard of the monster mosquitoes from Minnesota.  Well, apparently they have migrated to South Dakota.  As my husband and I were out driving out on Sunday we came upon this neat, isolated lake.  We pulled up right to the edge and we could see the car was just surrounded by giant mosquitoes.  I debated for a few minutes, but finally decided I would get out and see if I could get a few shots of ducks.

No.

What I heard when I stepped out of the car was terrifying.  Bzzzzz, bzzzzz, bzzzzz, bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.  It was so loud.  I lasted about 3 seconds outside before ducking back into the car.  I truly could not believe how uncomfortable the sound was.  Had I been camping I surely would have gone crazy from not being able to escape.

So I totally had to get a picture.

From the safety of the car.

 
YUCK!

Oddly, several other small lakes had no mosquitoes.  And I'm happy to report that I had no bites!

See on,
Julee

Post 117. The pelicans are back.

I was excited to see that the pelicans are finally back.  These huge, prehistoric birds are some of my favorite wildlife.  Today I was lucky enough to catch them and a crane in the same shots.

See on,
Julee

Post 116. City Dump.

We are lucky enough to have a city that gives us a couple of weekends of free drop off at the city dump.  The caveat is that the load must be covered in order for drop off to be free.  Our first year we diligently tied up some construction waste in a borrowed trailer and drove the dump.  As we went to check out my husband was told he had to pay.  Not only pay, but pay twice the normal drop of price  because the load was not covered with a tarp.   All the ad in the paper said was free drop off, the ad did not state loads had to be covered to quality for free drop off.  (As an engineer, my husband made sure the load was tied very securely, but it was explained that tied up and covered are not the same thing.)

Not awesome.  Thanks city.

But we learned our lesson.  This year's trek to the dump was free.  And since it was kind of our highlight for the day, I'm posting the few shots I got.  (I wasn't totally sure they would approve of me taking pictures, so I kind of took them covertly, hence they're not very good.)

First up the giant garbage pushers.  No, I don't know their technical name, but there were two of them and they were monstrous.

My husband finally discarded a number of old computer bodies, monitors, and keyboards he had been holding onto for years with the thought that one day he would put them all together to make one super computer.  But he realized that even all put together they wouldn't be as big as today's computers, so maybe his computer would not be that super after all.  (Plus 10 keyboards, really?  We had 10 old keyboards.  That is just weird.)  Here is the dumpster and the computers.  And in my husband's defense, he is very pro-recycling and for items that can be recycled or contain hazardous components that shouldn't be in landfills, like computers, he wants to ensure recyclables and hazardous items of his are properly discarded and he did not know until this year that our city indeed had a separate e-waste disposal process. 

Here is a blurry example of the sign that told us where to go.  The few times I've been to the dump, I'm always kind of impressed that it is so neat and tidy.  Each type of waste has it's own tidy pile.

See on,
Julee

Post 115. A large drop of sun.

“A large drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going. And dusk crept over the sky from the eastern horizon, and darkness crept over the land from the east.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath    

 

 

See on,
Julee

Post 114. The majesty of spring in South Dakota.

I think I've got a winner for you today .

It was a gorgeous May day.  My husband and I headed out to the lake to walk at 7:30 pm.  Between the calm of the lake, and the chatter of birds and frogs, I was just in heaven.  Our path was along the lake through a camping ground, along a bike trail passing part of the airport, then the bike trail veered back towards the lake.  The far end of our walk was the bird sanctuary where I've walked before. 

There is a grass, circular walking path around this wild area with a couple of ponds.  (One day I'm going to put on some waders and go in knee deep until I find some good frog shots.)  But for today we walked and chatted and I watched for photo ops.

As we turned the final curve the view was absolutely perfect.  The water was mirror calm with this awesome semi-circle tree formation with the trees mirrored in the pond and the lake behind it all.

I'll have to see how this one looks printed on photo paper, maybe it won't give me the same WOW it did on my camera screen, but I'm really happy with what I captured.  (Do you see the wooden birdhouse on the leftmost tree trunk?)

See on,
Julee

Post 113. Community gardens in May.

One of my walking routes during the spring and summer months passes by a community garden.  This is one of my favorite places to take pictures since lots of people plant flowers along with their vegetables. 

I've heard it's a neat photographic study to take a photo from as same spot the seasons changes, and I thought in addition to photographing lots of flowers and bugs, it might be fun to track changes in the community garden as the summer passes.

So first is my 'artsy' shot of one of the watering hoses.

And here is the community garden on May 14th.  My goal is to have photos from this same spot from now until mid-September. 

I am looking forward to the coming plants and flowers.

See on,
Julee

Post 112. The Pheasant (restaurant).

I had supper with colleagues at The Pheasant restaurant in Brookings tonight. Once we got over the disappointment of not being able to try pheasant because they were out, we had a great meal.

I had blackened walleye, my first order of walleye as a meal and it was delicious.  Then we all split some candied bacon ice cream for dessert. Yep. For real. No autocorrect issues here.  Bacon ice cream.  It was okay. The ice cream flavor was caramel, and that was good. I did not think the candied bacon added much. But hey, I tried it and my heart can thank me for not going bacon crazy.

On the way out I spotted this old player piano with some wild colored keys. We all drove in one car and I did not want to make everyone wait, so I just shot a quick photo with my phone.

But even though it may not be a gold star picture, I thought the back story was a good one.

And I did not even mention the two or three tables of loud and wild women drinking and laughing and apparently huge fans of the men playing live jazz.

It was a happening place for a Monday night in Brookings.

See on.
Julee

Post 111. Too late for pumpkin leaf bags?

So I thought it was totally cute to find a pumpkin leaf bag peeking out from the snow in December.  I am not as certain that I was amused by finding pumpkin leaf bags during a walk today.  (And this was just one of the two groups of pumpkin leaf bags I observed.)

But the spooky tree was too perfect - had we been in October - and had the bags been a bit fresher, this scene would have been awesome.

See on,
Julee

Post 110. Proof of spring.

I broke down and purchased Vello extension tubes for my Nikon D5100.  One of my favorite photography sites, DP Challenge, finally had a macro challenge and one of the photographers talked about using these extension tubes and being happy with them.  Plus the reviews at B&H Photo were good.

My favorite types of photos to take are telephoto and macro.  I've been waffling for a while between getting a bigger telephoto lense (right now my biggest is 70 - 300 mm) but is a 400 mm telephoto a big enough step to keep me satisfied?  The 500 mm telephoto is just too expensive right now, maybe too expensive for a long time. 

But I've also been looking at the Lensbaby products.  Those could be fun, and I could probably take more unique photos with that system.  But with Lensbaby I'm not gaining anything in telephoto ability, and Lensbaby relies on the ability to manual focus and on more extensive manual camera use than I am comfortable with yet.  So would I be successful or would I be frustrated?

I finally decided I was not going to make an expensive decision anytime soon, so $80 to get additional macro capabilities would not be a waste of money.

They arrived today and already I like them.  They are going to make me start learning how to use manual focus, and while the photos are not perfect, I liked what I got even on day 1.  (The extension tubes still work with auto focus, but since the focus area is so small I found it necessary to use manual focus to figure out how far from the focal point I could be, then I could shoot some with manual focus and some with autofocus.  I'm not sure which, if any of the photos below, were manual focus.

Now for the pictures I captured today... 

(Remember I'm a South Dakotan who loves summer, and I was just in a blizzard last week so this budding vegetation was very exciting for me.) 

This first picture is from a flowering tree, one of those trees that turns all pink for a couple of days until the wind blows then it's just brown the rest of the year.

These are buds from our lilac bush.  We really need to prune the bushes, they are over six feet tall.  But the bushes are right on the property line so we're not sure if they are our bushes or our neighbor's, although they touch our dining room windows almost so I'm kind of thinking they probably belong to us.  But I liked that you can see a hint of lilac.

The neighbor on the other side has this old, tiny, falling down shed.  When I came home yesterday there were hundreds and hundreds of these boxelder bugs coming up from beneath the shed.  The huge clumps of bugs had scattered by today when I was playing with my new lenses, thank goodness, it was kind of a horrific site, but I still kind of liked this shot.

Happy Mother's Day!
See on,
Julee

Post 109. Do you see the frog? How about the turtle?

So my fabulous husband comes through again.  He rides his bike to and from work, and during his ride he gets to pass some local parks.  Today upon arriving home he asks if I want to photograph a big snapping turtle?  Hot dog!  (That is an emphatic 'Yes'.)

So while I was a bit skeptical that turtle would still be around, we drove back.  (Last fall I had an encounter with an amazingly quick moving turtle,  so I have kind of revised my expectations of being able to capture a good photo of a turtle.)

But it turned out that this turtle was in a 'pond' that was created by some spring flood waters, so he wasn't going anywhere.  Plus the frogs were croaking so loud you could hardly hear yourself think, so all the sudden I was envisioning awesome photos of frogs too.  Boy was I was getting excited.

Well, it turned out that the big giant turtle was really shy.  He kept his head in the water about 90% of the time we were there, and it took 5 minutes before I believed he was more than just a rock.  Then when he did bring his head out it was all covered in swamp goo.  I could still hardly tell he was a turtle.  Can you see it?

 

Then it turns out that these frogs are tiny frogs.  My husband and I searched for at least twenty minutes.  The pond was tiny, all of 30 feet by 10 feet - and there had to be 10 or 20 frogs at least.  Finally my husband spotted one little one breathing in and out.  Do you see the yellow bubble?  That's the frog.

I also got a neat shot of some ducks, and as we left I got lucky and captured a photo of the turtle looking more like a turtle.

See on,
Julee

Day 108. Spring Sunset.

Another photo from one of the finger lakes around Watertown.  This time I captured a rather stunning sunset that my husband talked me into staying to photograph. 

(It was maybe 10 or 15 minutes before sunset when we were heading home and he was just sure a beautiful sunset was coming.  I apparently do not have the skills to predict when the sky will light up with color, but I agreed to sit for a while longer.) 

I'm glad I stayed.  He was very right. 

See on,
Julee

Day 107. Goose running for his life.

Tonight I wandered out near the lake to see how the melting was progressing.  (Finally some open water, still some ice.) Then I walked around a small area that is kind of a bird sanctuary just to see what wildlife I might be able to catch in action.

I was really hoping to find some frogs or toads, and I could hear them croaking away but they all went silent everytime I would move.  Plus, I had on work shoes rather than 'tromping through sludge' shoes, so I couldn't get all that close to where they were most likely to be.

But there were birds.  And down a slight hill, from the brush about five feet from where I stood, out popped a goose running awkardly as fast as he could.  Luckily I had my camera in speed mode knowing that the local birds freak out at the slightest hint of a person, so I got this neat photo:

Plus another black bird that was delightfully uninterested in me as I approached.

Here is Lake Kampeska today.  The ice is finally starting to melt.

 

The weekend is here.  Wishing you pleasant weather and views that brighten you days.

 

See on,

Julee

Day 106. Hazmat.

New experiences for me this week.

Yesterday morning I started out climbing too many flights of stairs to the top of grain bins to measure the empty air in the bins in the rain and sleet and wind and cold. But I had never been in a grain plant and it was neat seeing how a grain mill operated.

Today I got to get dolled up in Tyvex and a full face respirator to clean up a chemical spill.  Well, not so much a spill as a mystery reaction between highly hazardous chemicals that were being stored improperly. A reaction that grew fine, white crystals that covered one bottle and had migrated to nearby plastic bags.

Unknown crystalline substance. Fabulous. Not really.  But it was a new experience to clean up something hazardous.  Frankly I kind of loved it.

I am offering autographs of me in the outfit to my co-workers. Surely after saving the lab from certain disaster I will be famous...

Too bad cell phones weren't allowed in the grain plant. That view from 200 feet up on the grain bins was cool. But you're stuck with me in my hazmat getup.