If one could feel a sense of pity for an inanimate object, it would likely happen during a sight like this. With an ample harvest approaching in the verdant field ahead, this poor broken down piece of equipment is reduced to spectator status. Its glory days have passed and it has been relegated to being an ornament, a placeholder on a hill. It will now be forced to watch as newer, larger machines - machines with closed, air conditioned cabs and GPS receivers - perform the duties it once enjoyed. See? Kinda sad, isn't it?
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( 3.5 / 59 )
This sight during the Mandan parade on July 4th made me laugh. It immediately reminded me of a certain Saturday Night Live skit featuring Christopher Walken. I haven't actually watched Saturday Night Live in many, many years (is Dana Carvey still on the cast?) but someone told me about this particular skit. It was hilarious. It is one of the few things on SNL that isn't vulgar, so I invite you to watch:
After seeing this, I put googly eyes on the cactus in our office, since it was literally poking up a ceiling tile above it. At least now I know where I stand with it. After all, cacti have pricklers...
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( 3.3 / 65 )
A lot of the old familiar abandoned farmsteads I've photographed since picking up my photography hobby are now lying in shambles. After all, a building leaning at a 45 degree angle can only do it for so long, right? So it's time to search out some new ones.
This one is my new favorite, I think...an ornate home, large for its time, which was at one time lined with brick outside. This front window overlooks a particularly scenic little valley. I noticed the remnants of an old chair parked by the front picture window. The drab and delapidated interior is an amazing contrast to the colorful glory of the valley outside and the summer sky.
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( 3.3 / 47 )
I spotted this "leetmobile" in a parking lot a while back and had to nab a quick cell phone shot of it. I couldn't actually tell you if the binary code thereon means anything, since I haven't remembered how to read binary code since the 1980s. While I've blurred out the license plate, I can tell you that it's a ham radio operator plate. That means the owner of this car is likely quite tech-savvy, even beyond spraying ones and zeros across the hood of his little Ford.
Here's a little more information about binary code. It's basically a way of breaking down letters and numbers to the simplest form, combinations of ones and zeros. "10" means 2, which is why I made the joke in the title.
I actually spent way more of my time as an old Apple II geek using hexadecimal numbers and can still convert it to regular numbers in my head (although not quite as quickly as I could back during the Reagan era). It's commonly used to program website colors, which is why I like the joke "Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base, are belong to you." That's also only funny if you get the corny 80s video game reference.
Okay, now I've illustrated my geekdom. No, it's not my car. :)
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( 3.1 / 77 )
One of the primary reasons I got into photography was astrophotography, or photographing the night sky. I've always been a big stargazer and have quite the equipment for doing so (even down to an iTunes playlist, which I will share soon). I got my first camera to take pictures of Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) in particular, and even got a few shots before the sunspots responsible for them fizzled. Since then we've been in a solar minimum, one with an in explicable lack of sunspots. I have been blaming myself and my camera purchase, of course.
Then I got my new camera and have had a very hard time finding some night skies. Usually when they were clear, the moon would pollute the scene with unwanted light. That or I just wasn't able to break away at night to try for some cool shots. This weekend I did get a chance to hang out with the new camera and some other gear. One of the reasons I wanted to upgrade my camera was for the new one's better performance in low light, and I was not disappointed.
This is one of my new favorite stargazing nooks, and as I grow accustomed to the features of the new camera I'm sure you'll see more of this lone tree or the hidden rural road featured in the first photo above. I was only out for a short time, but my friend and I saw LOTS of shooting stars and satellites. The Milky Way was quite visible until the moon started to rise on the east horizon. It was also getting cold and late, so we called it quits for the time being. Hopefully I will have plenty of stargazing photos to add to these over the rest of the summer!
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( 3.1 / 90 )
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