Have you seen Andy’s brilliant early morning photo in the LATI photo gallery? (read more)
By Scott Shephard
If you live in Watertown, SD, and haven’t had a chance to see the student photo gallery at Lake Area Technical Institute, you should try to do so. There are some great photos there but one of my favorites is a photo of Lakota Lake in the Black HIlls taken by Andy Olson last summer during the Black Hills Photo Adventure I hosted.
I’ve taken many photos of this lake but I’ve never captured it the way Andy did. But I did manage to get a decent photo of Andy taking the photo. That’s got to count for something doesn’t it?
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 . . . .
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.”
