It seems to me nothing man has done or built on this land is an improvement over what was here before

July 03, 2017

Yesterday was a much better day, photographically-speaking. I headed home from Goodland, Kansas along US Highway 24 on a very (very) warm Sunday. It was one of those days where most everything seems to go right and there are photographs everywhere you look.

We'll see where these images go from here. I'm kicking around the title Sunflower Blues for a series of images that would likely need a few more visits to western Kansas.

Post title: Kent Haruf writing in West of Last Chance, a photobook by Peter Brown

Out here even the prairie doubts the horizon

July 01, 2017

Day two of meandering in Kansas, across US Highway 50 to Colorado. It was a frustrating day, photographically speaking. But it's still good to be out on the road.

Some thoughts...

You know it's hot outside when you go to wash your windshield and the water evaporates before you get a chance to squeegee.

Western Kansas, more than anywhere else I've traveled, is dominated by grain elevators. Some towns have three or four, and places that haven't been towns in 100 years have one as well. Grain elevators define this landscape as much as wheat fields and empty highways.

Speaking of wheat fields, there's something fascinating and hypnotic about watching a large field of wheat dance and swish in the wind.

Post title: Magnolia Electric Co. - O! Grace

But when these little towns lie sleeping, it's like it must have been before mankind

June 30, 2017

Today was day one of a quick three day tour of Central / Western Kansas. I'm hoping that the photographs develop into a project that I've had on on my mind. We'll see how it goes!

Post title: Robbie Fulks - Never Come Home

This day could someday be an anniversary, part two

June 23, 2017

As promised, here is the second set of 10th anniversary images taken earlier this week. The top photograph in each pair is from 2007, and the bottom is from 2017. I added another pair, so there are thirteen in all.

I did receive one question about technical differences between now and then. In 2007, I was working with both medium format film and digital. I had just purchased the first "affordable" full frame digital camera, the original Canon 5d, and had just begun to really trust it for serious work when I started photographing Nebraska. 2017 finds me with a Nikon D800. The biggest difference? 12 megapixels then, 36 megapixels now, along with a host of improvements in usability and other aspects of image quality.

A person can only guess what will be available in another ten years. My guess is that it won't be all that much different than now, as technological progress in photography has slowed considerably.