i'll be there on time and i'll pay the cost.

sometimes i forget to post photos.

baby, all i need is a shot in the arm.

during manweekend 2011, i fed tyler a lot of shit.
since it was manweekend, there is a chance i wasn't entirely sober when this happened. all things considered, tyler probably wasn't either, so he didn't take my joking too seriously. but i am glad to report he did ask jillian to marry him, and she said yes.
who wants to go to boston next fall?

it wasn't me. i wasn't there.

fried turkey and beer.

are your hands getting filled?

every once in a while, i think black and white work better than color. agreed? agreed.

you don't learn that in school.

"... and that's what christmas is all about, charlie brown."

these things get louder.

see? i'm far from being the only strange one in my family.

words can never make up for what you do.

new thanksgiving centerpiece.

you're just a riddle in the sky.

variations on a theme.

follow her down to a bridge by a fountain.

who doesn't love juicy lucy cheeseburgers? i think even vegetarians crave them.

(second photo by cousin maddie)

it takes me away to that special place.

i'll have a can of your finest haitian lager, please.

and he's oh-so good. and he's oh-so fine.

it's ok, little guy. sometimes i take my shirt off when i eat, too!

it's so cold in alaska.

cheese curds and root beer!

and that's why you don't use one-armed persons to teach lessons!

my friend q turned his handicap into a halloween costume. hey brother!

the next generation will hear me.

geez, and people call me a piranha*

*they don't.

he's a dedicated follower of fashion.

i placed all my trust at the foot of this hill.

i slept here, but didn't take part in an occupy sunset crater national monument. please ignore the stories you may have heard.

that's not something i'm gonna get used to.

two posts in one day?
what?
enough people have heard about these snaps and haven't seen them. and it's lame to just talk about pictures. it's better to look at them, don't you think?

i had one grand canyon wish- to be at the rim at sundown. toby and i (see last post) went for a little hike. as the trail changed to a path that wound along the rim, we figured we ditched a lot of the other tourists. we thought we found a good spot that just had a handful of other people around. and then the tourist buses showed up and things got ugly. we nearly left, but i made toby stay.

i'm glad we did. this native american had climbed down on a precipice. after admiring the view, he started playing the flute. he also kept moving to keep the setting sunlight on his face. it was pretty cool and made for some nice pictures, i think. i realize they aren't exactly meant to be viewed on a small computer screen, but you will get the idea.

your european son is gone.

ignore what you hear, smoking is cool, people.

coach called me, "the tiger."

what was most awkward about my trip to the grand canyon was that this guy and i were wearing the same outfit.
it was terribly embarrassing.

on the second day i brought her a flower.

let's go through some arizona pics, shall we?

you took a ten-minute dream in the passenger seat.

this bartender was tuckered out in the middle of the afternoon. i want his job. granted, i was at a bar in the afternoon, so i got that going for me, which is nice.

my small love burnt in the sun.

you know what is one of life's great pleasures? traveling with few plans and no computer. however, the seven people who look at this blog will be glad to hear i took a camera down to arizona, texas and minneapolis.

and for those dog lovers that want a closer look:

along the coach roads i did ride.

a couple street scenes from ogallala, where our crew stopped for high school football on our way to college football in wyoming. i can't figure out this sign at the motel, is manchester united coming? wayne rooney and vidic? not likely.

also, i guess "planking" is passé. "owling" is where it's at.

i was caught in the middle of a railroad track.

i get why the omaha royals changed their name. i mean, why would a person buy an omaha royals hat when they can get a kc royals one? but i don't get why they decided to use this "typography" on their numbers.

everything is everything.

as expected, it seems stories from 9/11 are just pouring out of every media outlet, and most of it is just washing over me. (although some of it, like time's amazing project, is worth spending some time with. even though i haven't read, listened to, or watched that much, i can't help but reflect a little.

i was woken up by a phone call from my girlfriend, and she tried to explain what was happening. my initial concern was, "am i still going to be going up to the northwoods of minnesota to photograph police honor guard training for a few days?" i turned on the radio to npr (didn't have a tv or internet then) and tried to understand what was going on. after calling into the paper, i found out i would no be going anywhere. i tried calling my sister, who lived in nyc and sometimes jogged around the trade center, but didn't get an answer, which wasn't surprising.

the planes hitting the towers and the towers collapsing just played on a loop on the tvs in the newsroom. to keep busy, i think i drove around most of the day... i think the paper's editors wanted me to go to the legion hall to photograph vets. to me that seemed like an epic waste of time... i wanted to find something that would resonate with me and with the people in our community. it didn't seem like a shot of old men watching tv in a bar captured the emotion of the day. (plus, i figured i could go there after dark and get the same shot... years later, i recognize patterns in my work that were evident on that day.) as the sun set, i saw this boy giving a silent tribute of his own on a highway overpass.

(my old photo editor sent me this photo, which i thought was flipped, so my memory of ten years ago may not be crystal at times.)
this photo is nothing in comparison to the images we have all seen from new york that day, but i think it was important, nonetheless.

as i was walking to my apartment building that evening, my sister called to say she was ok. she said she volunteered with the red cross throughout the day in midtown manhattan.

 two weeks later, i was in nyc for the first time to hang out for a few days before a photo workshop. it was unbelievable to see new york for the first time, looking out over the city from the empire state building at dusk. watching the lights of manhattan turn on while drinking beer on a rooftop in brooklyn. a yankees game. people upon people and amazing tall buildings. but it my memory there is a strange confluence of excitement with fear and sadness. walls with photos and names taped to them of the missing. flowers laid on the ground. people everywhere downtown hugging. crying. standing teary-eyed and staring. i remember police seemed to be on every corner downtown. and then the grey ash. there were stores that were far enough away that didn't get the windows blown out, but when you looked inside, everything was monotone grey. there is a eugene richards photo which matches the feelings of my memory. it's a snow globe of new york, but the globe is covered in ash.

i didn't take many photos during my time in new york. i think i was a bit scared of carrying my camera around the big city. and i don't think i could have photographed a lot of what i had seen, anyway. i've gone many times since and taken lots of images, but that first trip and that period of my life helped change me quite a bit. i grew up in a reasonably small town in south dakota in the pre-internet days and the size of the world seemed beyond my comprehension, but those few months in 2001 helped me grasp how events, places and people are connected.

most of the time, big changes happen and you don't notice until later. this is one of those times when i think most people changed.

every new love is just a shadow.

so a few things:

1) spent the weekend in st. louis with a good friend to see some favorite bands at loufest.
2) it was hot.
3) i couldn't bring my camera to the shows, so my lousy cellphone camera was all i had to work with.
4) this sight needed to be documented. honestly i think the photo doesn't show the scope, nor does it show the contrast of the dress vs. the sweaty thong. (and you don't get to see the lower, round sweat marks.)

i feel like there may be a lesson in here somewhere.

you showed up with a black eye.

sometimes you bite the bar...
caught the edge of some big storms recently, and i went out to go for some pretty pictures. when the cell move past and the moon come out, i thought i might get something good.
wrong.
oh well.

miles from nowhere.

these clouds built quickly and left quickly. good for cars, but bad for photos.
still, i'll take a western nebraska sky over an omaha sky most days of the week.

i can see the pines are dancing.

we've had a pretty epic heatwave (well, more of a humidity wave) here in the great plains. it's strange to have drought/dry conditions and a historic flood at the same time.

with the exception of the constant search for shade and air-conditioning, it has sucked most of the energy and ambition out of me.

the forecasters now say the worst is past, and the humidity should subside next week. hopefully, i'll stick around in the blogosphere (and get outside for some sticks before winter gets here).

this structure fell about our feet.

if use a long enough lens to isolate a small part of the building, and the light is just right, the arena in omaha kinda looks a little like the guggenheim in bilbao, don't you think?

(it may help to spend about 12 hours in the summer heat before making a snap decision.)

now i just act like i don't remember.

over the potomac...

i confess that i killed the cat.

the cat was STRIPED and fat.
what's strange is that i don't really care for cats, but i like photographing them. i think it's because they are usually aloof and also sit in the sun.

ol' hickory said we could take them by surprise...

there was a whole lot of red, white and blue at the us mens soccer game in kansas city a couple weeks ago. even a "georgina" washington sighting.

she left to marry some top cat, ain't it the cold truth.

somebody needs to clean their windows!

let's get together before we get much older.

at other papers i worked for, our staffs would cover dozens of graduations. it was challenging (that's a positive spin on the experience).
sometimes, you could get a really nice image, but not often enough to keep from groaning when you see your name on the assignment list. my cousin daniel graduated high school a few weeks ago, and i realized i had not been to a graduation in a long time.

it was more fun than working them... but some of that is because of daniel and the trannies.*

*at least i think they were. i was raised south dakota, where the men are men, the women are women, and the sheep run scared.

i know they buried her body with others.

first real day off in a while. i don't know if it has been in the news much, but we are underwater here in the great plains/midwest. omaha feels like it is an island on the missouri lake (river).

oh, and the college world series is going on. had a nice little thirteen inning gem last night to close out a doubleheader. could be worse, though. could be a deer.

i knew that you had a flame in your heart.

went out to the rfd monument last week. it was pretty cool and quite a lot different than the other presidential monoliths in dc.
also, we saw who we think is my cousin daniel's lost twin. this kid was standing there before anyone was looking and then stood there for quite a while.