Detours make for good photographs

Fairfax, Missouri

A closed interstate detour is a bit of a peek at what life would be like if those two lane highways I like so much were all that we had to get from one place to another. In a word: crowded. Long waits at stop signs in little towns, people driving 20 miles an hour over the speed limit and making suicide passes around two or three cars at once.. It's safe that I'm glad that most of the highways I love so much are (usually) under-appreciated.

In my attempt to create my own detour, I stumbled across a few photogenic little towns in both Missouri and Iowa. The weather was also much more cooperative than yesterday. I had a much more productive day and now feel like I accomplished enough to make the trip worthwhile. This whole photography thing can be awfully frustrating sometimes.

One town that I passed through, Craig, had a sign proudly proclaiming that the town survived the 1993 floods. Unfortunately, it appears as if the town is on its way to needing to survive yet another one.

Craig, Missouri

Fremont County, Iowa

Also visited: Tarkio, Missouri. Riverton, Farragut and Sidney, Iowa.

Wanderin'

I set out today with out much of an aim and ended up in St. Joseph, Missouri. With all the flooding along the Missouri River, it's not exactly easy to get from Omaha to here. In fact, there isn't an open bridge across the river between Omaha and St. Joseph at the moment. Unfortunately, as I type this from a hotel room, there's a huge storm making its way through Omaha and southeast Nebraska into Iowa and Missouri. Rain is the last thing that the area needs at the moment.

It's only fitting that the weather didn't cooperate much at all today in a photographic sense. At first, everything was a uniform gray, but as the afternoon went on, the sun would appear and then disappear frequently. Without the sun illuminating the ground, the sky was much too bright to work with. And every time I tried to wait it out, the sun wouldn't peek through until I was back in the car and ready to move on.

The first photograph was taken just to the south of College Springs, Iowa. The second, of an old steel bridge over the swollen West Nishnabotna River, was taken between Malvern and Randolph, Iowa.

Also visited: Treynor, Silver City, Imogene, Shenandoah, Coin, Blanchard, Shambaugh and Braddyville, Iowa. Burlington Junction, Maryville, Bolckow, Rosendale, Rea, Whitesville, King City, Union Star, Helena, Rochester and Savannah, Missouri.

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