An anniversary

Downtown Omaha, from 16th and Jackson.

The First National Tower under construction.

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the first day I picked up a camera and attempted to make photographs in an artistic sort of way. It was a fairly warm Easter Sunday and I was living in an apartment in downtown Omaha. I remember a homeless man preaching to me about Jesus as I walked down Jackson Street. And it was the day that Joey Ramone passed away.

I had just purchased a Sony digital camera on a whim. To be honest, I don't really remember why I felt I needed to spend $350 on something I really didn't have much use for at the time. It had a 1.3 megapixel sensor and the 64 mb (!) memory stick I purchased to go with the camera cost $130. Most of the photographs from those first few months are taken at awkward angles, something I must have felt gave the images a more authentically artistic bent. Most were taken in the camera's black and white mode, another important aspect of overly artsy photographs.

In those days, I was completely up in the air about where my life was headed. My first serious relationship had ended a year before and I was just about to go back to college in pursuit of a psychology degree. I ran a fairly popular punk music website and had vague dreams of starting a record label or opening a club. But, like most of the people I knew at the time, I just was sort of hanging around, hoping something would catch my eye.

Somehow, photography clicked with me. It was still quite some time before I found myself and really became interested in art, but the foundation was there early on. Ten years later, I feel like I'm still learning and improving, and I've actually gotten to the point where I can refer to myself as an artist with a straight face. I look forward to a lifetime of possibilities.

Below are a few more photographs from those first few months.

Boys Town

Gateway Arch. St. Louis, Missouri.

Downtown. Prague, Nebraska

Boys Town

A lazy Sunday afternoon

near Blencoe

With gas nearing $4 a gallon, my love of road trips is getting to be near as expensive as a drug habit. It's $50 to fill even the tank of my little Subaru. Despite that, I've been feeling restless again of late, and went out for a little bit of Sunday afternoon exploration. I spent some time photographing the north downtown section of Omaha and then took off into the Loess Hills of Iowa.

I fear there's nothing too exciting to report. It's definitely good to see some green growing again.

Blencoe

near Council Bluffs

Also visited: Crescent, Honey Creek, Modale, Mondamin and Onawa, Iowa.

Vertical city views

A few more photographs from my travels earlier this month. Calling these places cities may be a bit of a stretch, especially for Geneseo, Kansas (Pop. 272).

Westcliffe, Colorado

Geneseo, Kansas

Dodge City, Kansas

Homeward bound

Until today, the weather had been near perfect for my travels. The closer I got to Nebraska, the worse the weather got. I woke up to 30 degree temperatures and a dull gray sky in Goodland, Kansas. It didn't take long for a persistent cold mist and fog to develop. By the time I got across the state line to McCook, there was a nasty mix of what appeared to be rain, ice and snow all at once. Maybe Nebraska is trying to tell me something.

Both photographs today come from Goodland before the weather really went south. The small city boasts what they claim to be the world's largest Van Gogh painting. As I stood there, shivering from the cold, I couldn't help but wonder what ol' Vincent would have made of the spectacle. Some little town in middle-of-nowhere western Kansas with an eighty-foot tall easel next to a Pizza Hut displaying a copy of a piece of art made by a long dead Dutch schizophrenic that may have ate a little too much lead paint.

The photograph below is from downtown. I'm not sure what Caldwell's is or was, but there sure is an interesting array of imagery posted in the window.

detail from photograph of Caldwell's