Blue in Green

Photographs of Nebraska’s Sandhill region, many made on one-lane blacktop roads listening to jazz and thinking of what’s to come.

This may or may not be the start of something new.

I experimented with a telephoto lens to take landscape photographs for the first time in many years in an attempt to isolate some of the details of the landscape. The Sandhills are a fascinating place, full of subtle variations in color and shape, but I have always struggled to capture them in a way that does all of this justice. Time will tell if I find success or not.

Enjoy!

Post Title: Miles Davis - Blue in Green

I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found

Back in June, I spent a few days in North Dakota visiting many new places and some I had been inspired by on a previous trip during the spring of 2013, places like Antler, only a few miles from a very quiet Canadian Border, and Devil’s Lake, a natural phenomenon that has grown exponentially over the last few decades due to changing climate. The weather spent almost the entire time I was on the road threatening to due something but politely holding back when I needed it, for the most part.

All of these images are part of a yet-untiled Great Plains project that is taking shape in my mind with photographs from the past decade of wanderings. I think I’m nearing the point that I will call the making photographs portion of it done, and then I’ll focus on making something out of it for a book and unveiling at a group show at Gallery 1516 here in Omaha next year.

It’s just about time for something new. What that is and how that works - I am not entirely sure. That’s the (mostly) fun part of all of this and why I’ve kept at it for a good 15 years so far.

Post title: John Steinbeck - Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Everything is flat and empty here

I’ve been back in Omaha for a few days and have begun the task of going through all of the images I created during my road trip last week. After every trip like this, I go through cycles of both satisfaction and unhappiness with what I managed to capture. At the moment, I’m mostly on board with the bulk of what I see in the images.

Texas was the last part of the American portion of the Great Plains that I had yet to explore. These photographs will ultimately be part of a larger project that I have been working on for a number of years now, something that is either almost finished or needs more thought.

I’ll figure out, eventually.

Post title: The Last Picture Show (1971)

West of the Pecos

Two more days spent photographing West Texas - Amarillo south to Odessa, west to Sierra Blanca, then southeast to Alpine. It’s hard to grasp just how big this state is until you begin to explore in the not-so-straight lines that I enjoy and places that seem close together on a map are much farther apart than they appear.

A fun and perhaps surprising fact - Texas is actually taller than it is wide. It measures 801 miles from the top of the panhandle to the Rio Grande River in Big Bend National Park. It is a mere 773 miles from the eastern edge to El Paso.