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ninety-three: the photobook and t-shirts

ninety-three

Photo book featuring all 93 photographs from the final

series, many of which have not been seen before.

Deluxe Version (11x13")

Regular Version

Coupon codes (thru 12/16):
 BLURBGIFT-1  (20% off any purchase)
BLURBGIFT-2  (25% off $150+)


Electronic version

Standard ePub format.
Viewable in iBooks on Apple devices.

ninety-three: t-shirts and stickers

A series of ninety-three logos based on current and

historic highway signs from the state of Nebraska

that can be purchased on t-shirts and as stickers.

t-shirts available here

Please note that the shirts can be ordered in a variety

of colors and in children's sizes as well.

stickers available here

Buy six stickers or more and they are half price.

Current RedBubble coupon code: HITHERE10

10% off through 12/31/13

Oglala National Grassland

Untitled (2013)

I spent a few days last week exploring the far northwest corner of Nebraska's panhandle, an area known as the Oglala National Grassland. The Grassland occupies near 100,000 acres of native short grass prairie and unique rock formations that many do not associate with the landscape of Nebraska. To me, it symbolizes the beginnings of the west, where the great plains begin to dissolve into the mountains and landscape of Wyoming and the Rockies.

My first visit to Oglala came during the initial travels for ninety-three during the summer of 2007. It's such a foreign place to someone who has grown up surrounded by the expanses of green farm fields and rolling hills. Nebraska's grasslands appear to stretch on forever, almost completely void of trees, and are filled with little more than the sound of millions of short grasses moving in the wind. It's an unmistakable sound that has stuck with me ever since. There is also a sense of isolation that is both invigorating and a bit unsettling. I cannot even imagine how it felt to explore and live in this area before there were roads or towns of any kind on the prairie. It's no wonder that this land was sacred to Native American tribes like the Oglala Lakota of Chief Crazy Horse, who was killed at Fort Robinson in 1877.

Sioux County, Nebraska (2007)

It took a few years, but I did finally make it back. I've started a small project called Oglala that will document the area in and around the Grassland, including Crawford and Fort Robinson State Park. My experience last week was fantastic and I can't wait to share more of it with everyone.  

A July update

near Burchard, Nebraska 

Site of Old Plymouth, Nebraska 

Rosalie, Nebraska (Detail)

Despite my extensive travels throughout the state of Nebraska, there are still a few places I have yet to visit. I've spent a few days this month working on remedying that fact, at least the towns that are close enough for a day trip. The photographs above are from these treks.

It appears that July has lessened its grip on us all a little earlier this year than usual after only two weeks or so of unrelenting heat. I'm looking forward to picking back up on the Platte River project soon with a few new ideas as to how to approach it. Hopefully I'll have some positive results to show in the coming weeks along with more from Fontenelle.

Summer at Fontenelle

My time spent walking through Fontenelle Forest has reached its fourth and final season. The woods are entirely different in the summer, full of buzzing life and weedy greenery. It's a shame that the humidity around here is enough to kill a person off after just a mile or two of the hilly terrain that defines much of Fontenelle. Despite my many visits to the forest, there are still a few trail sections that I have yet to see. I find myself revisiting many of the same places repeatedly, my favorites.

The project is coming along nicely. While I'm not sure when and how it will be exhibited, I look forward to showing the images off at some point. It's been a great change of pace for me.

Along the border and all the way home

Antler, North Dakota

Above is a photograph of the very small town of Antler, North Dakota. The town is less than two miles from the Canadian border and once was home to a customs house. These days, there is less than thirty people living here, leaving what amounts to a ghost town huddled around the abandoned customs house in a circle. It's a bit eerie.

I've been home a few days, but I wanted to leave a quick blog entry that's as much for my own memory as for anyone following along. I left Minot on Sunday headed north, then made my way along the border, through the Green Mountains, and then south through Devils Lake to Fargo. On Monday, I took a short trip into far western Minnesota on U.S. Highway 75 before battling high winds all the way home down Interstate 29.

Also visited:  Minot, Ruthville, Antler, Westhope, Roth, Souris, Carbury, Strawberry Lake, Dunseith, Belcourt, Rolla, Rocklake, Clyde, Munich, Starkweather, Garske, Webster, Devils Lake, Hamar, McHenry, Glenfield, Courtenay, Wimbledon, Leal and Rogers, North Dakota. Moorhead, Comstock, Wolverton, Kent, Breckenridge, Doran, Wheaton, Dumont, Graceville, Barry, Beardsley and Browns Valley, Minnesota. Sisseton, South Dakota.

Boom or bust

New Town, North Dakota

Some thoughts on a day where I drove far further west in North Dakota than I originally intended to...

- North Dakota is going through what has been described as an oil boom. It's hard to comprehend the magnitude of this boom without witnessing it first hand. Highways in the middle of nowhere are chock full of semi-truck after semi-truck, all covered in red-brown dust. In fact, everything is covered in red-brown dust. There are oil and natural gas rigs all over the landscape being watched by men wearing hard hats that drive large pick-up trucks with license plates from all over the country. In New Town (aptly named after everyone was forced to move when Lake Sakakawea filled with water in the 1950's), the two-lane highways are so congested with traffic that a semi waiting to turn left at a temporary stop light can back traffic up from one side of the town to the other.

- Bugs. Bugs. And bugs. At times, it sounded as if I was driving through a steady rain. It was actually the thud of thousands of little flying insects slamming into the windshield. After a while, using windshield wiper fluid does little more than just smear them. You know it's bad when you can visually see black clouds of insects heading towards you on the highway.

- If you like wide open skies, then North Dakota will not disappoint. I did not make it far enough west to see  much of the badlands that cover the state, but the small bit I did see was quite great. I look forward to making it back again to see Theodore Roosevelt National Park someday.


Also visited: Bismarck, Harmon, Center, Stanton, Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site, Hazen, Beulah, Zap, Golden Valley, Dodge, Halliday, Dunn Center, Killdeer, Mandaree, Keene, Crow Flies High Butte Historic Site, Parshall, Plaza and Ryder, North Dakota.

Sitting Bull and Sakakawea

Sakakawea Monument near Mobridge, South Dakota

The monuments for Sakakawea and Sitting Bull stand on a bluff overlooking the upper reaches of Lake Oahe and the town of Mobridge across the water. As I arrived, a storm hovered overhead and threatened rain, the swirling sky providing the perfect background for this place. This land was once the home of many tribes of Native Americans, including Sitting Bull's Lakota Sioux. Now it is fenced off with barbed wire that divides the land into large ranches and warns against trespassing.

I find the so-called reservations, in this case the home of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, to be among the most depressing places to visit in this country. No matter how majestic the land, no matter how proud the history of the people, the reservation reduces it to a sad narrative of how badly they were mistreated and how little can be done to resurrect this greatness. The poorest towns I have ever seen have been in reservations, towns full of junk cars and broken windows, towns that somehow seem temporary even after decades of existence.

It just makes me want to cry.


Also visited: Aberdeen, Richmond, Ipswich, Roscoe, Bowdle, Java, Selby, Glenham, Wakpala and Kenel, South Dakota. Fort Yates, Cannon Ball and Mandan, North Dakota.

Omaha to Aberdeen

Redfield, South Dakota

There's a short break before summer classes start up, so I've decided to hit the road for a few days. It wasn't until just yesterday that I finally made the decision to head towards North Dakota for the first time since stopping in Fargo back in 2008. I am looking forward to just wandering with very little specific planning into my travels. The goal is to see a bit of the Great Plains of both South and North Dakota, and to visit places that no one ever really thinks to go.

Day one was a direct (for me) drive to Aberdeen in north-central South Dakota. The weather was just as windy as it was a year ago. And the while the clouds were spectacular for most of the day, the sun chose to hide behind them nearly the entire time. Some days the light cooperates.. other days it does not.

The photograph above shows the remains of a small drive-in theater along U.S. Highway 281 just north of Redfield, South Dakota.


Also visited: Dell Rapids, Trent, Egan, Colman, Wentworth, Madison, Sinai, Arlington, Lake Preston, De Smet, Iroquois, Cavour, Huron, Wolsey, Bonilla, Hitchcock and Tulare, South Dakota.

The sasquatch no longer has any pizza

Butler County (Rising City) (2007)

Rising City (2013)

It is with sadness that I bid adieu to the subject of one of my favorite photographs from ninety-three, the infamous Sasquatch Pizza sign that adorned a convenience store along Nebraska Highway 92 in Rising City.

The first photograph was taken in July of 2007 as I passed through on my way home on one of the first few treks I made to discover Nebraska. At the ninety-three show at Hot Shops, this was the image that got the most comments and smiles. I must have told at least a dozen people where it was located.

Unfortunately, since I last passed through Rising City in 2010, the little store had a change of ownership and became "Fergy's Cafe" which has now gone out of business. Poor ol' Sasquatch Pizza was defaced horribly at some point and now is just barely visible. The edges of his face are still there under the ugly black spray paint, sort of haunting and sad, with that goofy smile somehow still there in spirit.

I'm reminded of the work of one of my favorite photographers, William Christenberry, and his ambition to photograph some of Alabama's vernacular architecture over the course of many decades. If his photographs are any indication, this building will still somehow have several more lives over the next twenty or thirty years.

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A word of advice from someone who should know better. If you buy a new (or used) camera, run it through its paces before you rely on it for anything that is time consuming or that will be difficult (or impossible) to shoot again.

I picked up a refurbished Nikon D600 as a backup body and this little trek I made Friday was my first time out with the camera. Unfortunately, it has a problem stopping down lenses and consistently overexposed images by a stop or two (or three) and left me with much less depth of field than I expected. So it goes back.

Live and learn, folks. Even expensive cameras can be lemons.

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Also visited on Friday: Hooper, Scribner, Snyder, Dodge, Olean, Howells, Clarkson, Leigh, Creston, St. Bernard, Cornlea, Humphrey, Platte Center, Columbus, Shelby, Garrison, David City, Brainard and Weston, Nebraska.

May is finally here...

May started out with sub-freezing temperatures and a heavy, wet snowfall. At least it appears to have finally straightened out. I've been working through it, continuing to photograph the Loess Hills region of Iowa and Fontenelle Forest, and reworking my South Omaha series.

Here are three images from the past few weeks...

from Fontenelle

from The Magic City

Council Bluffs, Iowa

The train touched down in Sioux City, Iowa

Sioux City, Iowa

My exploration of the Loess Hills region of Western Iowa continued Saturday as I explored its northern-most reaches. Much of my time was spent in Sioux City, a place I called home for four years growing up. It's always a bit strange to return to childhood haunts. Sioux City hasn't changed. A building or two is gone (most notably the Catholic grade school I attended with the hideous giant, orange doors) but the past twenty years have not done much to change the place. It's still a little run down and largely depressing to me, like running into a friend from years ago who hasn't changed a bit and appears to languish in a state of perpetual sameness.

That said, Sioux City makes for some pretty damn good photographs.


Also visited: Sloan, Hornick, Holly Springs, Climbing Hill, Bronson, Five Ridge Prairie, Westfield, Akron, Salix, Snyder Bend and Lewis and Clark State Park.