10-22-13 The Good Ship

10-21-13 Sea Grass - Gulf State Park, Alabama

10-11-13 Installation

I had to smile when I turned a corner in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City and saw "Museum Guard" standing in the corner. He is not human but instead is a Duane Hanson installation. And he really is called "Museum Guard."

This is not the first time Duane Hanson has been mentioned in this blog, by the way. Check this out.

And for more about "Museum Guard" click here.

Canon 5DIII 1/40s f/4.5 ISO1000 24mm

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10-05-13 Corey

09-02-13 The Safari Endeavor at the Dawes Glacier

I'm about to be told to turn off my iPad on the plane that will take us on our first leg home today. But I selected this photo as my first Alaskan Un Cruise Adventures photo because it capture both the awesome landscape of SE Alaska and the nature of our amazing 7-day cruise on the Safari Endeavor. I'll have more to say about this place when I'm back online.

Later . . .

For the culminating activity on our Un Cruise, we motored up to within a few miles of the Dawes Glacier. Once there, small groups were motored out to within 1/4 mile of the glacier, which meant that we had to go through the ice field you see here. "Wow!" was generally the only word spoken (repeatedly) as Captain Jon S. took us through the chunks of ice. Jon spoke little during the two hours we were out. But he was constantly grinning. And so were we.

The culmination of the day was being served one of my favorite 12-year-old Scotches cooled by 500-year-old crystal clear glacier ice. Wow!

08-17-13 Lacey and Matt - An Environment Portrait

An "environment portrait" is a photo of a person (or in this case of people) in their favorite place. In this case, I was actually shooting and engagement photo session and I was in one of my favorite places - Lonesome Lake. But given that both Lacey and Matt are avid hunters, it seemed logical that we should shoot the session there.

Of course, hunters don't typically hold hands when they walk the fields. But it was an engagement session, after all. :-)

Canon 5DIII 1/1600s f/3.5 ISO125 115mm

07-06-13 Two Bridges (HDR)

I was back along Iron Creek scouting locations for the upcoming Black Hills Photo Adventure when I saw these two trees forming an interesting sort of "bridge" across the creek. Of course, neither was make for transportation but they were made for the photographer.

07-05-13 Glenyce Times Two

This is the doting great mother and namesake of our new grand daughter, Glenyce Jane. And GJ is worth doting over. :-)

06-25-13 My Little Friend

To call this 3" long lizard a "friend"'is a bit of a stretch since I only saw him once and during our short photo session he acted like he wasn't there - I think he thought he blended in so well with his surroundings that I couldn't see him.

This little guy was one of the many residents at the Estate Linholm, the beautiful B&B Deb and I are staying at while visiting St. John.

We leave for home this afternoon and as much as I like the Islands, I can't wait to be back in South Dakota.

05-09-13 This Is It, Too

On the last day of my 34 years of teaching at WHS, I snapped a photo of my 1st block world history class. It was posted to this blog on May 25, 2011. And today I post the last 2nd year class I will teach at LATI. That's why I'm calling this post "This Is It, Too."

Of course today's photo isn't an exact replica of the first shot. We aren't in a classroom and in hind sight my students should have been holding their cameras. My students from two years ago are holding their laptops up because the "Learning With Laptops" program at WHS caused one of the biggest (and best) changes in the way I taught.

Anyway, it's been a great experience teaching all the things I've taught, ranging from American Literature to AP European History to Advanced Digital Photography. I don't have anything too profound to say here, though I will copy and paste what I said to my facebook friends yesterday. These words accompanied the photo I posted to this blog yesterday:

Wednesday is traditionally known as "hump day" - the day we see as the downhill slide to yet another weekend. But for me, today is my last hump day.

Yes, I am retiring after spending 36 1/2 years of my life as a classroom teacher.

My photo of cows grazing serenely in a glorious sunrise is an appropriate metaphor of how I see my retirement: I think I may relax a little more but every day ahead of me offers another set of amazing opportunities. Surrounded by all of the good people I know and love, how can this not be true?

To all of my former students, who are also my friends here on fb, I offer my gratitude. You will never know how profoundly you have helped shape the person I have become.

I use the word "become" because I truly believe that life is not so much about the person we are as it is about the person we are constantly becoming. . .

I realize that a humans are like the stream that the Greek atomist philosopher Heraclitus talked about: we are in a constant state of change. And, as Martha Stewart, says, "That's a good thing. . . . "

(Picture from left to right, back row first: Teresa B, Elsa M Lindsey J, Dana R, Shelby B; Tiffany P, Katie S, Kelsie E, Alli A, Valerie F; No pictured: Jennifer D, Dakotah D, Megan P., Ashely H)

12-16-12 Country Road

I spend a couple hours driving out in the country looking for something suitable to photograph. It had snowed last weekend and today was foggy so I figured I'd find something interesting involving fog and frost. This photo is one of several I took.Once I had the images, the next challenge was taking what turned out to be very low contrast scenes into something worth sharing. Thanks to Aperture and a couple of software plug-ins, I got was I had imagined I might. I should say, incidentally, that this is an HDR photo - there are two exposures layered here to help me get a good overall exposure.

11-28-12 In the Beginning Was the Word

I'm no Bible expert but I know of at least two books in the Christian Bible that start with "In the beginning. . . " One is Genesis and the other is John, in the New Testament. This photo (yes, I took the picture!) shows the first line from the Koine Greek New Testament, which I still have from my college days.The inspiration for today's photo is a diesel student of mine named Connor, whom I have in a communications class. In short, he said a few days ago that he thought I would make a good diesel mechanic because, as he said it, "You read. And people who can read can do anything."All of that got me thinking of the empowerment of precise language and fluent literacy. It also made me realize that with the right words, we can explain most everything that humans can sense and experience, including the diagnosis and repair of a diesel engine.John was talking about God when he refers to "the word." But the last word in my photo is "logos," which translated means "word." But it is also the basis of our word "logic." So maybe that was one of the manifestations of God: order, instead of chaos and clear explanations instead of confusion?As the voice of Stephen Hawking says at the beginning of the Pink Floyd song "Keep Talking,"

"For millions of years mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happenend which unleashed the power of our imagination: we learned to talk."

And if you made it this far in today's post, you must be fairly literate. :-)