Day 92. The geese are back.

Twice a year we get the excitement and beauty of thousands upon thousands of geese traveling through the area.  The skies fill with flocks of geese, some large groups, some small groups, all squawking noisily during their attempt to travel north in the spring or south in the winter.

It is fun to watch partially because it seems like they send out small, tester geese, whose job it is to try out the route north early each year trying to figure out (I presume) if indeed the waters where the geese will head are open.  I like to watch these early groups who are often flying sideways or backwards, like they know they really do not want to head north quite yet.   

But a few weeks after the small groups start flying through we start seeing the HUGE flocks darkening the sky just bit.  And it is awesome.

I was able to catch a bit of this awesomeness during a drive out near Willow Lake, SD today, Easter Sunday.

What I have captured here was about 1/3 of the birds in the scene.  (I liked this top photo best, with birds filling the scene.)  But even the widest shot I took I failed to get all of the birds in the photo. Isn't it glorious?  Looks a bit like some sort of insect invasion from afar.  But they are just geese,  harmlessly hanging out in a field overnight, moving on towards their summer homes come morning.

See on,
Julee

Day 91. Dark.

Ah holiday weekends. Travel and family togetherness and fun fill the days. Plus I used our Saturday visit to do some shopping in Sioux Falls, so I didn't focus on finding a photo opportunity.

I suppose that is not entirely true since I did get some great shots of nieces and nephews, but I don't post photos of the little guys. Cute as they are, I leave those photos with mom and dad.

But finally, on the drive home, the fog was thick and there was my daily photo. (I was the passenger, not the driver, so I just shot while the car was moving.)

Interesting that the fog did not show up at all, but from the picture it is clear how dark and isolated we are on the drive.

See on.
Julee

Day 90. Dairy show.

Another crazy week away from home. I performed an audit on Tuesday and then have been at the Central Plains Dairy Show for two days.

It has been a great two days, with all the free ice cream, cheese, and popcorn I could handle. 

There was not a lot of time for thinking about photography, but I did get a few shots of a big cow I liked.

See on.
Julee

Day 89. Signs in Brick.

I just can't help myself, I love buildings.  A few weeks back I noticed a neat '1910' engraved in brick.  Then Sunday as I was walking around I noticed several other buildings that had interesting inscriptions in the brick of the building.

None of the buildings today has anything left that relates to its original purpose, but how great, the sign is there as long as the building stands.

Wolf.  I suppose it was someone's name.  But I'm a big fan of northern Minnesota where they have wolves, so I thought the sign was great.

I was drawn to this sign because of Stephen King's book "11/22/63", the book about the JFK assassination.  When the main character first goes back in time I believe he goes back to a fruit company.  And Watertown had a fruit company.  Cool.  The book allowed me to create a picture in my mind of what this building might have been like in its heyday.

After finding the other two buildings I kind of lost interest in this sign.  But since it was the original inspiration for finding the other buildings, I figured it deserved to be posted.

See on,
Julee

Day 88. Old Paint.

I need to start carrying around a notebook where I keep notes on photo ideas.  It is obvious that I have a preference for the outdoors, things like landscapes and buildings, yet I know there is so much else to photograph.  I look at other photography sites and see more pictures of people and food and just more variety of everyday items than what I photograph.

Part of my reluctance to venture into other categories probably stems from the few times I have tried and really failed quite spectacularly.  My attempt to photograph glitter in oil stands out as quite possibly my worst photo ever. 

I think I struggle primarily with lighting and backgrounds, plus I have not splurged on a fancy macro lense yet.  I guess I did have one success photography my cats on some fabric, so it's not hopeless.  But I suspect as springs arrives I will be drawn even more to the outdoors as flowers and bugs and birds return.

So here is my question - how do I entice myself to occasionally venture outside of my comfort zone and photograph things that my brain doesn't think of as immediately inspirational photography? 

Today was not outside my comfort zone.  But I found some wonderfully colorful, fabulously textured, outdoor objects.

Old fashioned fire hydrant. 

Old fashioned lamp post.

Wall.

I'm loving them!

See on.
Julee

Day 87. Twenty One Day Free Trial - for Church?

Went out exploring more of uptown Watertown and found this humorous setup in front of a church. 

The church is actually available for rent, if you can read the smaller red sign in the second photo.  The buildling must have been sold at some point to a private individual, and it appears that some savy photographer has his or her studio in one of the old church offices.  But the 21 day trial, that has me stumped.  (The church, or ex-church, I'm not sure what you call a church building that is no longer a church but still is so much visually a church, is really beautiful.)

See on,
Julee

Day 86. More ice.

It has been a rough winter here in northern South Dakota.  We have a lot of snow.  Just 90 miles south the snow is all gone, and even 45 miles south there is a mere couple of inches of snow left.  But in Watertown, we apparently are just lucky, we have been cold enough to keep nearly all the snow that has fallen in frozen form. 

Oh lucky, lucky us.

But the snow and ice do offer up some fun photo opportunities.  And I know the snow will be good for the farmers, so after a year of drought I really am grateful we had snow.

Here is a picture of a branch in our yard.  We have actually had a few moments of beginning melting during which I tried to capture a picture of falling drops.  I shot and shot and shot and  shot, but the mid-air droplet eluded me.

Below is the fence in a school yard about a block from my house. I thought the pattern and color was interesting, and that the ice added a special something.

Surely any day now the melting will start in full force.  Then colorful spring flowers, sun, and bugs will awaken and be awaiting my camera.

See on.
Julee

Day 85. Old Building.

I get the feeling I'm fairly typical in my love of old buildings and neat architecture.  When I visited Germany I came back with all these pictures of buidings that were I thought were totally cool.  (I am sure the Germans are equally fascinated with some of our buildings?)  But when I look hard enough, I find there are a number of buildings right near me that are interesting too.

Today's pictures come from a buiding in uptown Watertown.  It looks like maybe there are some apartments above a shop, but I am not certain.  Either way it is a lovely building.

See on.
Julee

Day 84. Fix in the bathroom.

Our upstairs bathroom sink started dripping about two weeks ago. So it was the perfect opportunity to replace the cracked sink at the same time as the faucet.

(My husband bought this 102 year old house seven years ago, a year before we met. The house came with the cracked sink but my husband had visions of remodeling the whole bathroom and so never saw value in just replacing the vanity top.)

But since the vanity top was not even glued down, I figured it was a simple matter of lifting out the old sink and faucet and setting in a new one.

I should have known from replacing a faucet on my own several years ago, that it wouldn't go smoothly, especially with old plumbing.

One of the water shutoff valves leaked so we needed to replace those as well.  But the copper pipe was not in round and for the life of us we could not get the new compression fittings to fit on the pipe.

By this time it is 6:30 pm, the roast I made for dinner is more than ready, and we have no water to the house. Fabulous.

Third trip to Menard's.  But a knowledgeable Menards employee showed my husband something called an easy fit compression fitting.  It has got wiggle room for fitting imperfect pipes yet still seals completely. And they totally worked. Thirty minutes later the whole project was done. Thanks Menards.

Cheers to my husband who did all the work. 

So there was no time for fancy photos on Saturday, but I shot the bathroom project in progress and at completion.

It was truly a wonderful sight to see our bathroom sink uncracked and shiny new.

See on.
Julee

Day 83. Earned my hard hat.

So I completed my first day as lead auditor on Thursday. Wahoo. I loved it. When auditing you get to interact with people, something there isn't a lot of as a scientist.  While the day was long, and it was mentally very hard work, it really did not feel like work at all.

Here is my hard hat that I have now earned the right to wear proudly.

See on.
Julee

Day 82. Corn Palace. Odd statue.

A visit to Mitchell is not complete without a stop at the Corn Palace.  The auditor with me had never been so we stopped to take a look. And I took a picture to share.

We were too late to go inside, so had to be satisfied with the interesting exterior. Yep, all corn.

Plus there was an odd rock statue across the street so I shot him as well.  Not corn, rock. :)

See on.
Julee

Day 81. Big Sioux River. Frozen.

I get the excitement of auditing this week, which means I am working away from the office. I am getting to visit such places as Chancellor and Hudson South Dakota.  But my main base is Sioux Falls, and the auditor training then shadowing me chose The Country Inn and Suites right on the river as the hotel. Excellent!

It was just before dusk by the time I was able to try and grab some pictures. But there are some good views and some cool statues, so I think I did well even with my phone's camera.  (I did use makeshift tripods to help minimize blurriness.)

Day 80. My backyard after the storm.

Some crazy heavy snow, after the ice storm, left our backyard a mess of white.  I thought these were fun and interesting photos, I was not expecting our backyard to appear so full of landscaping.  You might think from these photos that we live on the edge of a forest.  (We don't.) 

But the photos made it look cool back there.

How do we even walk back there?

And the sun did finally come out for a short couple of hours.  I think this is the first bokeh picture I have successfully taken. (At least I think it counts?)

See on.
Julee

Day 79. Ice Storm.

I got an android smartphone about three months back and it's pretty great.  Except perhaps for the storm alert feature.  At some point in the first week or so of owning the phone, I remember something popping up asking me if I'd like to get severe weather alerts.  "YES, yes, I definitely want to be alerted to severe weather" was my response.

I live in South Dakota, home of severe weather winters and I have a 50 mile commute to work.  We also get the occasional tornado in the summer.  Knowing about severe weather seems important, and since we had not yet purchased one of the devices with a siren that goes off when a weather alert is issues, I figured the feature on my phone would be great.

What the app did not specify was the time the alert would go off - apparently 4 a.m. There have been three or four occurances of said alert going off on my phone, and each time it goes off in the middle of the freakin night. And no, it does not appear to be related to when either the severe weather starts or when the government issues the alert.

Last night our ice storm started about 9 pm. We knew it was coming at noon. The ice storm was well underway at 4 am when my phone felt the need to wake me up. (I think it's fairly normal that I panic a bit that middle of the night calls or texts are family emergencies, although so far it's always been a wrong number or a storm alert.  Maybe this feature is not so important to have on?  I did actually turn my phone on silent at night for a while, but what if an emergency does happen??)

I was hopeful the ice storm would provide great photos, and it did not disappoint.   We did get far more rain than we got ice, but since the roads were then not nearly as deadly as they would have been had we really had a full on freezing ice only storm, I won't complain.

 

 

Now we are enjoying several inches of thick snow, so I predict more fun pictures tomorrow.

See on,
Julee

Day 78. Old and new.

So today is my third day of not being able to make the 45 mile drive home because of ice and wind. I know it is actually a choice, and my husband has been working until midnight, and the cats don't really care, and tons of cars in the ditch suggests the smart move is to stay put, but ANNOYING.

Plus it is super cold. Colder than March should be.  Darn global warming. Um. Maybe not.  (Although as a scientist I totally accept humans might be affecting the climate, it is just difficult to believe about the warming part after three weeks in a row of blizzardy miserableness.)

But I have worked late enough and decided to venture out for some pictures since I have kind of been slacking.  I need to change my challenge to a 3/4 of the year 365 day challenge.

Anyway, the old courthouse in Brookings got replaced a year ago. The old building was beautiful and interesting.  The new building not so much.  But you be the judge.  (I suppose the new building is more energy efficient and bigger, but the old building imparted such a feeling of history and elegance and honor.

Because I am posting from my phone, I have no control over the order of the photos.  So three pictures are of the old courthouse and one picture is our new facility for county business.  Until I can get to a computer, you will have to guess. 

See on.
Julee

Day 77. Post Office.

With the post office in the news, and soon to be decreasing our services even more, I thought maybe taking some cool shots of our old post office building might give me happy feelings towards this entity. 

(Our local post office is only open until 5 pm weekdays, and on Saturday only from 9:30 - 11:30.  Since I work out of town, the 5 pm thing doesn't work, and those meager service hours on Saturday are pretty frustrating.  I'm not sure how they'll be able to decrease hours even more, but I suppose they'll try.)

As is typical of government buildings, especially older buildings, they are beautiful and ornate.  Even here in small town USA, the original post office building really had some character.  (The newer building, seems to have maybe 60's architecture, just one story, with primarily a reddish brick and some brown wood.  I tried to find something I could creatively photograph in the new building, but just didn't find inspiration.)

The old building however, was wonderfully interesting.

 

 



See on.
Julee

Day 76. Watertown Church.

It was a pleasant March Saturday in South Dakota today.  Although the brief respite from despair inducing weather will end tomorrow as our 4th or 5th blizzard of the year starts up.  But probably a storm could lead to neat photos, so I'll try to look on the bright side.

Today was a great photo day.  I was driving by a local church, a church I've driven by every morning on my way to work, some days on the drive home, and a variety of other times since it is right off one of one of the main roads, when a gloriously tall bell caught my eye.

After I got out of my car to begin photographing I noticed a fabulous steeple (I think that is what it is called?) and beautiful stained glass. 

What a day!  The sun and clouds aligned perfectly during one of my steeple shots.  It was as if the heavens themselves opened up.  I may not actually be a great photographer yet, but I thought the shot below was a great catch.  I suppose had I been able to get an angle where the cross was more clearly visible would have made it even better.  I moved around and captured a variety of angles, but the sun did not show up as nicely in any of the other shots.

I was a bit disappointed with my stained glass shots.  I think I got flustered by the pastor who came out and chatted a bit.  (He invited me inside, but I was shooting photos in my gym shorts having come right from working out, so it just seemed wrong to wander around a church in shorts in the winter.)  So I suppose I rushed through the last of my shots.  I'll have to try again when I'm dressed more appropriately.  Maybe the inside of the church is even more incredible.

Color and beauty and sun.  I couldn't help but smile as I took the photographs.  Surely the sign of a successful day. 

See on.
Julee