Red Dawn. Winter 2011

Hey…quick post. Yeah I know I missed December. It was a busy month and I’ve been on vacation for the past two weeks. So…..It’s December wallpaper time! January will follow soon. Finally got some snow to go out and play around in.

Anyway, the usual formats are available below. Happy New Year!

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1.78 AR

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Daddy Chex

My wife texted me this morning to celebrate solving a household mystery. My youngest son, Blake, is at that age where he knows a lot of words, and knows what he wants, but he can’t fully articulate this sometimes. Of course, we all get frustrated when we are being misunderstood. This has led to some tense breakfasts as he has been asking for Daddy Chex for the past few days. As I am out of the house for work well before they are eating breakfast, this has left my wife and I confused as to just what this mysterious cereal could be.

So this morning, my wife sent me the image above after discovering what Blake deemed Daddy Chex. Blake was happily munching on his breakfast while she sent this my way. My wife and I learned what he meant, remembered how frustrating it is to not be understood, and that I bear a striking resemblance to the cartoon guy on the Rice Chex box. Go figure.

Fall foliage on display at Itasca State Park. Fall 2011

It’s November 2nd and I’m releasing a wallpaper? Just what is going on here? I know, I know, it’s crazy talk. But here it is. This will be the last of the series from my family daycation at Itasca State Park. I promise. ;o)

I thought I’d offer one last glimpse of the gorgeous fall color before it was time to buckle down for the snowy months. It has been a wonderfully mild fall this year and I really hope this trend continues on into winter. My wife took our boys our trick-or-treating and they were able to go in their costumes and no jackets or hats or mittens or anything. I remember growing up we’d be out dressed as Batman in a Starter jacket or the like as we bolted in and out of the car going from house to house to keep warm (and to keep our pails from filling up with snow). Not too shabby.

Well anyway, please enjoy this month’s wallpaper. I’ve got the usual formats available below:

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1.78 AR

1.60 AR

1.33 AR

1.25 AR

Thanks for stopping by!

Last of the light at Ozawindib Lake. Fall 2011

Ok. I’m staying consistent. And I don’t want to be in this case. No pomp. No excuses. I’m late. Period. Here is October’s wallpaper. I’ve actually had this ready since the beginning of the month. I pretty much just forgot. Or I’ve sat down to post it and got pulled away to something else. Terrible. This issue is going to turn into a New Year’s resolution if I’m not careful.

Anyway…this was the cap to a fantastic day with my beautiful wife and wonderful boys. God has richly blessed me with a tremendous family. This shot was at the very end of our last outing to Itasca State Park. We were on the other side of the park and actually changed the boys into their jammies and got them cuddled up in the back of the car. We then cruised over to Ozawindib Lake so I could try my hand at some lovely fall foliage reflections, while the family relaxed relatively comfortably.

God also blessed me with still water, gorgeous leaves, and a clear sky. It would have been difficult to walk away with a bad image at this point. (Not that I couldn’t accomplish that feat. I’ve done that before.) I sat at the end of the dock next to my tripod with my camera in live view mode. The dock wasn’t wide enough to accommodate me behind the camera and I prefer to do low-light photography with manual focus in live view anyway. So this worked out nicely.

I suppose I could’ve waded in the lake to the end of the dock and operated the camera that way, but seeing as I’ve already used ‘jammies’ and ‘cuddled’ in this post, it should be fairly obvious that I shot from the dock. I kept shooting until I was hovering about a half-inch off the dock thanks to the bird-sized Minnesota mosquitoes trying to carry me off into the woods for a banquet. I took that as my cue to wrap-up.

I grabbed my gear and hurried to the car,  partly because of the mosquitoes, partly because of the rustling in the bushes nearby, and partly because of the surprisingly large intermittent splashing that was coming from my 4 o’clock. I managed to make it back to the car unscathed and we headed home. OK. I’m possibly being a bit melodramatic, but I digress.

All of the usual formats are up-for-grabs. As always, let me know if you have any issues with the files. Thanks for sticking around! Until next time…

mobile

iPad

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1.25 AR

1.33 AR

1.60 AR

1.78 AR

instructions:

Click on the file you would like then right click (or long-press or tap and hold) on the image in the pop-up window and save the file to your device. Set it as a wallpaper from there.

Boat coming to dock on Ozawindib Lake. Summer 2011

So…I tried to post this last night. I had been writing/re-writing, saving drafts, proofreading, etc, when I hit something crazy – like the space bar – and all of my text in the post disappeared and WordPress autosaved the blanked draft. Not cool. Did not know about the self-destruct button. I will try much harder to notpressthespacebuttonfromnowon. Moving on, here is September’s wallpaper, finally.

Regarding the image itself, after spending a wonderful daycation with my fantastic family at Itasca State Park – which is quickly becoming a favorite destination of ours – I hurried them into the car, as I noticed the light was fading fast. Not only was the light fading fast, but the wind was dying down as well. That is a perfect recipe for reflection imagery. I knew I didn’t have much time to make it to Ozawindib Lake on the exact opposite side of the park, but we were gonna give it a shot…photo pun there, heh…sorry.  This is my favorite spot to shoot at the park; absolutely idyllic. Quiet lake with low traffic? Check. Lone dock perfect for shooting from? Fantastic variety of trees lining the opposing shores? Check. Check.

Well, the sun had set well below the trees by the time we arrived, but there was still this lovely indigo afterglow to try to capture. Perfect conditions for a tripod. Thankfully, my tripod was in my…other car. Over 2 hours away. So, I rushed out to the end of the dock, laid on my stomach and propped myself up on my elbows to steady myself as best as I could. Shutterhea took over at that point as I was trying to grab as many frames as possible before the light faded completely. As I was shooting, this boat came into view, threatening to ruin the glassy smooth reflection I was enjoying. This turned out great though, as it added a subtle human element to the beauty of God’s creation before me. And, my family was waiting for dad to hurry up and finish so we could all get on the road home. Perfect timing to call it quits for the day.

All-in-all, I had a spectacular day with the family God has richly blessed me with. Not only did I come home with beautiful memories and some lovely shots of my family (we are in desperate need of update images on our walls), but to cap it all off, God gave me a thrilling opportunity to chase the light and score some art with the raw materials He made.

As usual, I’ve got the standard file formats available. Please, let me know if you run into any issues with the files. Thanks for sticking around through all those words. Cya soon!

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Aerial applicator positions for another pass. Summer 2011

Welcome back! I’d like to offer up August’s wallpaper for you…what!? It’s September, you say?

Shoot.  Yeah, I know.  It’s September.  I missed August altogether. I’m sorry. The summer really slipped away. My excuse explanation is I hadn’t done a whole lot of personal shooting in June/July and I wasn’t terribly excited about a lot of my archived images

And then August came.  And I shot. A lot. I got some great images, but I’ve mostly only done the basic sorting so far and a few select edits on some of the choice picks. I’ve got such an abundance of images to work on now, that I have issued a bit of a personal moratorium on shooting any more until I’ve processed August’s images.

The image above was set to be the August wallpaper, but actually writing the blog post got later and later and other commitments took my up my time until…too late.  One of my goals once I started offering wallpapers was to put one out on time every month. I have been really late on my offerings as of late and here we are.

Now, this really isn’t a big deal to anyone but me. Still, I don’t like missing goals and I’m going to better from here on out.

As far as this image is concerned, I heard this plane buzz my house on a Saturday morning. I live on a 10-acre farmstead out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by cropland. As such, I have a great home base for launching out on plane-chasing expeditions. When this guy buzzed overhead, I grabbed my boys, and we headed out for a short adventure. God blessed us with a fun morning (and He has blessed me with two tremendous little boys and, of course, an unceasingly loving and gracious wife who encourages these little adventures…but, I digress).

It was a blast shooting this pilot (I know, I know, photo-speak, you know what I mean).  I have yet to confirm, but I’m 99.9% this was Toby McPherson from Tall Towers Aviation.  (It was his plane with his name on the side, so I’m assuming he is, most likely, flying it). To say the least, he’s a tremendous pilot. He seemed to be doing a bit of positioning, when he had the chance, so I could snag some exciting “hero” shots. I got quite a few keepers in this series; images #6, #9 & #11 in my Aviation portfolio are a few of them.

Well, I’m getting long-winded now.  In closing, I missed my goal and I am sorry.  I’m going to do better from now on. I’ve got the September wallpaper files ready to go and my next post will offer them up for you.

Thanks for hanging around!

Aerial applicator makes a pass. Summer 2011.

If I was par for the course last month, I’m shooting at least a birdie this time around.  This wallpaper is late.  LATE.  I’m sorry for that.  August will be better.  This time for real!

This has a been great summer for shooting planes.  On any fairly nice day we’ve had, one would be hard-pressed not to find an aerial applicator out working.  That just may be due to the fact that it has been so wet this year.   Read: it’s been so easy to find folks out spraying on the nice days because there hasn’t been a great deal of nice days.  On the way into work yesterday, I saw three planes spraying within five minutes (two were right across from each other on opposite sides of the interstate, which was kinda neat).  I would have been late for work if I stopped to shoot so…I pressed on.

My heart sinks a bit when I miss a chance to shoot, but I know there will be more opportunities this summer.  Patience is a virtue, after all…right?  Shooting these pilots/planes is such a thrill. And it probably wouldn’t be as exciting if there wasn’t the chance you’d miss the opportunity altogether.  There are no wins without losses.  So we need to be thankful for the defeats and missed opportunities as they are not only a lesson for the future, but they make the victories all the sweeter.

With that, on to this month’s offering.  Same formats, as usual.  Let me know if you have any problems with the files.  Thanks, as always, for stopping by!

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Aerial applicator at work. Summer 2010

Hey, folks!  So, I’m par for the course right now.  I’m sorry this wallpaper is so late.  July is gonna be different!  Seriously!

Anyway…welcome back to another wallpaper edition of The No-Time Photographer blog.  I’m really getting the itch to photograph some aerial applicators, but I haven’t been out shooting very much lately.  Also, it has been a wet, wet spring which means late planting, which means late spraying.  I’ve only seen two planes out this year and one of them was spraying this morning.  Oh well…patience is a virtue and all that…

As such of that, I’ve reworked an image from the archives for you this month.  The usual formats are available below:

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Enjoy!

Trailing African Daisy. Summer 2010

Yes, it is May 12th.  Yes, this is the May wallpaper.  Yes, I am sorry that this is so late.  Yikes.  Thanks, as always, for bearing with me.  I haven’t been out shooting very much as of late, so I went digging through the archives.  And speaking of archives, it has officially been a year since I started offering wallpapers.

As for this wallpaper, I’m not much of a gardener/landscaper, but I certainly appreciate the seemingly simple beauty of a flower such as this.  This was one of the many, many flowers waiting to be purchased in my mother-in-law’s greenhouse at the start of the season last year.  I was strolling through the aisles and this Trailing African Daisy caught my eye.  I had never seen a flower like it.  So intricate, so lovely. So fleeting.  Especially in North Dakota.  We get to enjoy the beauty of summer for a few months, then it fades away.  This got me thinking about Isaiah 40:8 – The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. What a great promise from God’s word about…God’s word.  While time marches on, God’s word – His promise of salvation through Jesus Christ, the assurance of eternity with Him, the conviction that we are eternally lost without Him – stands firm, never changing, never fading, never failing.   Please trust in that today, friend.

As always, I have multiple wallpaper formats available.  Please let me know if you have any troubles with the files.

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iPad (or other tablets)

iPhone (or other mobiles)

computer (aspect ratios)

1.78

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1.25

A Cross/The Sky

Tuesday Newsday is back! As we approach Easter, I figured the the most appropriate news to share with you all is the Good News – the Gospel. Please take 5 minutes and watch the video of the G.O.S.P.E.L. by Propaganda below. This is one of the most creative, concise, and beautiful presentations of the Gospel that I have had the pleasure of witnessing. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But that is where the Gospel comes in…God Our Sins Paying Everyone Life.