South Dakota – Page 2 – A Photo A Day (Squarespace)

03-23-16 Our Morning Visitor

A wild animal? He thinks so.

By Scott Shephard

He comes for the cracked corn, not because my camera beckons. In fact, once he was aware my presence a few feet on the other side of the patio door that separated us, he flew off. He did return but was much more furtive and therefore much less photogenic.

The ring necked pheasant is South Dakota’s state bird, incidentally. But it’s also the bird that people from all over the world come to shoot. That seems paradoxical to me. But I only hunt with my camera . . . .

Canon 5DIII 1/90s f/2.8 ISO400 200mm

04-19-14 Out In the Middle of Somewhere

When you stand in the vast, open landscapes of western South Dakota, you are never in the “middle of nowhere. . . . “

By Scott Shephard

I live in South Dakota and now that I am mostly retired and my wife is soon to be mostly retired, people often ask if we plan to move away. To me, the question is really, “Now that you aren’t forced to live in South Dakota, why aren’t you moving somewhere better?”

I’m not puzzled by the question given that many times this winter, facing more cold and snow than I like, I wondered, too, about why we live here.

Today, the answer lies in the landscape you see here, which is somewhere well west of the Missouri River and somewhere slightly west of the Cheyenne River. It was a blustery, gray day when I stopped my truck along the side of the road to take this photo.

I am a long way from a city of any size. I am down a gravel road that curves ocassionally but then goes straight as an arrow for miles. I have not seen another human for close to two hours. There is no sound of traffic, or of farm machinery or even of cattle. I hear only the sound of my breathing, the soft click of my camera shutter and the rush of the wind along the grassy hills.

And I am not in the middle of nowhere.

Canon 5DII 1/800s f/10.0 ISO400 70mm

03-25-14 Weathered (HDR)

Another weathered and somewhat broken down oak tree waits for the resurrection that comes every spring. . . .

by Scott Shephard

I’m on a “trees in snow” theme. As I’ve said, as tired as I am of cold and snow in my home state, it’s hard not to be enthralled with the beauty of trees in snow. In fact, when I went out driving in the snow storm on this particular morning, I was explicitly looking for bare trees with snow sticking to them. And I found a few . . . .

Canon 5DIII 1/5000s f/2.8 ISO400 175mm

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03-24-14 Waiting for the Sun

Two bare oak trees at Lakota Lake in the Black Hills of South Dakota endure a March snow storm and wait patiently for spring.

by Scott Shephard

Children of the 70s may recognize my title’s allusion to the Doors’ song “Waiting for the Sun.” In the first stanza, Jim Morrison sings

“At first flash of Eden, we race down to the sea.
Standing there on Freedom’s Shore.
Waiting for the Sun Waiting for the Sun Waiting for the Sun
Can you feel it now that spring has come.
And it’s time to live in the scattered sun.”

— “Waiting for the Sun” The Doors

I’ve never really understood this song. In fact, there are a lot of Doors songs I don’t get. “Esoteric” might be a good word to describe them. Perhaps I need some kind of reality altering substance to truly appreciate the Doors? (I remember reading that the group’s name comes from a concept known as the “doors of perception,” which has something to do with LSD.)

Speaking of altering reality, no drugs are needed to understand this scene, though I have altered your reality a bit for you. I turned the scene to black and white (though it was pretty much gray as I originally photographed it). And I’ve cleaned up a few unnecessary distractions from the scene. So I hope you don’t mind that I cropped, flattened, adjusted and colored your view of reality today.

And, yes, I think these trees are “waiting for the sun.”

Canon 5DIII 1/3200s f/2.8 ISO400 170mm

Join Me In the Black Hills

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03-19-14 Prairie Skyscraper (HDR)

The stark, white Farmer’s Elevator Company grain elevator in Miranda, SD, can be for miles in every direction.

Sometimes I struggle with the titles of my posts in “A Photo A Day” as I did with this one. “Sky scraper” seems so quaint and archaic, just as the phrase “Super Highway” does. Both come from the 20th century when high buildings and four-lane roads were marvelous things.

Well, the Miranda elevator has always been and still is marvelous to me. Painted in pure white, it stands out against the sky. It can be seen for miles and in a landscape that some might say is flat and plain, it breaks the redundancy.*

I did a quick search for the Farmers Elevator Company of Miranda and found that it was mentioned in a 1915 publication called The American Cooperative Journal – Volume 11. I’d like to know more about Miranda and it’s grain elevator.

Is there any chance that someone reading this might be able to help?

Canon 5DIII f/2.8 ISO160 70mm

*Speaking of redundancy, some may have already noticed the compositional similarities between today’s post and yesterday’s. Intentional? Accidental? Or both? I won’t say.

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03-18-14 The Great Wide Open (HDR)

There is something about blue skies, puffy clouds and a cluster of distant trees that makes me pull over and get my camera and tripod out.

Yesterday’s post set a record for the number of words in one of my 2014 entries. So today I will let the photo speak for itself. This was taken a few miles west of Faulkton, SD.

Canon 5DIII 1/400s f/14.0 ISO160 21mm

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03-17-14 Relic

Scattered throughout parts of western South Dakota nuclear missiles waited quietly for their launch instructions.

I apologize for the history lesson today (but I am a former history teacher.)

South Dakota’s Cold War With the USSR

At the height of the Cold War, South Dakota was one of the ten most dangerous places to live in the event of a nuclear war. This wasn’t because South Dakotans were particularly threatening to the Soviet Union. Instead, it was because western South Dakota and Ellsworth Air Force Base were home to a branch of the Strategic Air Command. The B52 and the B1B* bombers that were operated by SAC were capable of carrying nuclear bombs to virtually any target in the world.

Western South Dakota was also home to around 200 Minuteman Missile silos. Each one of these missiles had a range of around 6000 miles and carried a 1.2 megaton bomb – that’s a weapon that was 60 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The targets would have had 30 minutes from launch to strike to prepare.

A Lightning Rod Can Be A Dangerous Thing

The missiles were housed in underground silos that were scattered in “missile fields” over large tracts of sparsely populated farm and ranch land. The missile silos were easy to miss but there were road signs. But the signs were in a sort of code and they were intended for the missile flight maintenance crews, not citizens like me. Of course, the Russians knew where the missiles were located and each one might have been a likely target for a missile strike from the USSR. Some experts have referred to the silos as “lightning rods.” The paradox of the lighting rod is that in order to protect a building from lightning, you make it more attractive to a strike. (If missiles had fallen on western South Dakota, the people, cattle and crops would have been deemed “acceptable losses.”)

Most of the road side markers for missile silos have disappeared over the years. They were taken, I’m guessing, by souvenir hunters. So it was with surprise that I discovered the relic pictured in today’s post.

What the Sign Means

I’ll translate the sign post: Turn left and you will find two missile silos somewhere down that road; turn right (which I did) and you will find two more. These four missiles would have been capable of wreaking havoc on Russian cities the size of Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago and New York.

With one exception, the missiles were removed and decommissioned in the 1990s. The missile silos were imploded and handed back to the farmers and ranchers. In some cases the fencing has disappeared, but in the case of H6, even the corresponding signage still exists.

The Person in the Brown Uniform Will Show You A Nuclear Missile

The one nuclear missile silo and maintenance facility* that has been preserved in South Dakota is called Delta-09 (D9) and it is now maintained by the National Park Service. I’ve never been there but it’s on my list of South Dakota landmarks to visit.

So ends the history lesson. . . .

Canon 5DIII 1/8000s f/2.8 ISO200 200mm

*The B1B bombers are still at Ellsworth. I can’t tell you if there would carry nuclear bombs. Maybe a read could?

**Not all of the 200 silos had a maintenance facility like D9. The missiles were grouped in 16 clusters, each with a remote launch facility like D9.

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03-16-14 Bucolic

Tiny cattle inhabit a bucolic western South Dakota river valley.

So 15 minutes after capturing “Knee Deep,” and roughly 30 minutes after “Beyond Wasta,” I came across this vista, which is looking northeast over the Belle Fourche River valley. The size of the cattle gives a bit of scale to this scene. It was windy and a bit cool when I got out of my truck to set up my tripod (this is an HDR sequence). But when I look at this photo, I feel a sense of silence and peacefulness. And if cattle can feel contentedness, I’d guess they’d feel it here

“Why black and white?” you ask. I didn’t like the quality of the color in the scene and I also felt it distracted from seeing all of the shapes, lines and contours. Finally, I like the way black and white makes the cattle and their shadows stand out from the pasture land that they have chosen to picnic on.

Canon 5DIII 1/60s f/14.0 ISO100 182mm

03-15-14 Knee Deep

Withered sunflowers wait for the winter ice to melt.

2014 03-15 Ankle Deep by Watertown, South Dakota, photographer Scott Shephard

Twelve minutes after I took the photo you saw yesterday, the road dipped through a low spot where sunflowers that hadn’t gotten harvested last fall stood in frozen water. I had almost driven past when I stopped, backed up about 1/4 mile and studied these sunflowers. The dark blue color of the ice, the orange tones of the heads and the way the sunflower stalks were reflected in the ice are what stopped me. I probably took 15 photos but this one ended up being the “keeper.”

You may think it strange of me to anthropomorphize* sunflowers. But to me, they look like crowds of frail, old people standing with drooping heads. And, more than that, I am struck by the juxtaposition** that sunflowers represent: they are one of the most beautiful South Dakota crops in their prime but one of the homeliest just before harvest. Is there some kind of metaphor here about you and me? Who knows. I just hope I never have to stand in frozen water. . . .

*Polysyllabic word #1!
**Polysyllabic word #2!

03-14-14 Beyond Wasta, SD

What do you find when you turn north off of the interstate at Wasta, SD?

By Scott Shephard

Wasta, SD, is a a very small town along I-90 in the western part of our state. Perhaps it is best known for the rest stops that are near the town. And on a busy summer day, I would guess that the population of the interstate rest stops is greater than that of Wasta.

Besides the rest areas, Wasta has caught my attention for two other reasons. The first is the Cheyenne River, which flows under the interstate, near the rest stops and by the city. The Cheyenne was once a great river that carved a fairly broad valley as it made its way to the Missouri River, which divides our state into what we call “West River” and “East River.” These days, the river is often just a brown stream. And the paradox of a relative trickle flowing through and expansive valley fascinates me.

The other thing about Wasta is that if you look north as you pass by interstate exit, there is a road that rises above the town in an intriguing curve and then disappears. Two days ago, I had driven a few miles east of Wasta when I thought, “Why not?” I found a turn-around, exited at Wasta and headed up the hill and a journey that took me places I had never been before.

Today’s photo is the first one I took on my backroads travels. Some might find this scene a little too colorless, but to me, that’s where the beauty lies. I’ll be posting more of my travels this past week over the next few days.

(In case you’re curious, here’s the route I took home from the cabin. The normal, fastest route to the cabin is about 320 miles. This path home covered 470 miles. So I only went out of my way by 150 miles. It was worth it.)