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

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.

-----------------------------------------------

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.

------------------------------------------------

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 State of the Artist: 2012

Now that 2012 has begun, I thought it would be a good time to talk a little bit about my photographic pursuits and what I have planned for the near future. I now find myself nearing the completion of my bachelor's degree and, with it, the completion of another chapter of my life. What follows are a few plans and insights about my place in this crazy world, camera in hand..

This May marks five years since I first set out to photograph Nebraska for what would become ninety-three. I've developed three goals for the series, one of which I achieved with my first exhibition at Hot Shops in 2010. Next is the publication of all 93 photographs as a photo book. I received the first copy of the book this week and will be finalizing all the little details in the next month or so.

Photo books have been a big influence for me as a photographer. I started with Robert Frank's The Americans and moved from there, finding tremendous amounts of inspiration from image after image displayed in this very intimate artform. Paging through my first attempt, I felt an immense pride in the work, a feeling that I had in many ways lost after sifting through the photographs for so many years. I'm very excited for others to get a chance to see the whole series in this format.

My South Omaha photographs will be titled The Magic City, a nickname that the city earned in the 19th century due to its remarkable rise in population almost overnight. While I'm not sure the project is too near completion at this point, I will be showing many of the images at the Hot Shops Art Center in a small two person show with my friend and photographer William Hess. Our photographs will be on display throughout May with an opening at the Hot Shops' Spring Open House on May 5th and 6th.

The Magic City is similar in a lot of ways to my prior work, a collection of details and random color photographs taken throughout South Omaha. I do feel, however, that the work is different in other ways from what I've done before, building on that foundation and expanding further. This growth is what keeps me growing and coming back to the camera again and again.

The future is still very much in the air. I'm researching a few large projects and hope to have something settled on in the coming months. As I've found before, the best laid plans often are the least productive while the results of happenstance are far more successful. I look forward to stumbling into another subject that consumes me as much as ninety-three has.

For the time being, I'll keep taking other photographs that will be published on my Flickr page, so check back often.

Thank you for your support. 

Frontier County (and more)

Moorefield, Nebraska

 North Platte, Nebraska

near Stockville, Nebraska

I'll spare everyone from more of my ramblings about how fantastic the weather was today. (It was absolutely, completely, spectacularly gorgeous.)

Instead, I've just posted a few photographs from today's proceedings. I visited every town in Frontier County (Curtis, Eustis, Maywood, Moorefield and Stockville) after starting the day in downtown North Platte. This part of the state is rugged and hilly with steep drops to the mostly dry creek beds that meander through the rough terrain. I can only imagine how rough it must get when a bad blizzard blows through this isolated, nearly tree-less place.

Details on ordering ninety-three to follow. Thank you again for stopping by.

Hello, January?

It's not often that Nebraska experiences a January quite like this one. My birthday usually finds itself smack in the middle of the coldest weeks of the year. This winter, in quite unusual fashion, has been anything but cold. Outside of a little snow in early December and two or three days with single degree lows, the weather has been just fantastic. Tomorrow promises a high above fifty degrees.

I've decided to take advantage of mother nature's generosity and head west for a quick overnight trip in honor of the beginning of my thirty-third (!) year. While putting together the ninety-three photo book, I realized that there was one county that I just wasn't 100% satisfied with. I'll be revisiting that county again tomorrow and hope to have the book available for purchase in the next few months before the Hot Shops show in May.

Pictured above are the sandhills just north of Brady, Nebraska. I am forever finding myself drawn to the sandhills' space and isolation.

Also visited: Lexington, Darr, Cozad, Willow Island, Gothenberg, Maxwell and North Platte.

ninety-three

Matej Vavak came to Nebraska in 1868 with his wife and five children, settling on a homestead in the hills of Saunders County near what would become the Czech village of Prague. The family first built a log cabin, then a house, and farmed the land for many years. Upon his death, Matej was buried with his wife in a small cemetery in the fields of the property, marked with a large stone carved in his native Bohemian language.

I didn’t come to Nebraska until 1995, the summer before my junior year of high school. My father grew up in Prague and my mother in east-central Iowa, but I was born in Indiana after they were married. By the time I became interested in art and photography, I had lived in Nebraska for roughly half of my life, much longer than my family had stayed in any one place while I was growing up. I realized that I only knew a very small portion of the state I called home and decided to embark on a photo project designed to change that.

On a warm June day in 2007, I began my exploration at the grave of Matej Vavak, still standing in the midst of a field of newly planted soy beans. It seemed like a fitting place to begin the journey. That first day, I crossed the Platte River at North Bend and drove US Highway 30 west to Grand Island.

ninety-three developed over the course of a few road trips to every corner of the state. At first, I didn't really know exactly what it was I was looking for. This was the best possible way I could have approached something like this. Without a concrete plan, I was able to let Nebraska dictate how the project would look and influence the way my photography was developing. I found out a lot about myself in the landscape, from the isolation of a single lane of asphalt through the sandhills to the tremendous sound of a short grass prairie moving in the wind. Even though the project is now finished, I find myself with a strong need to revisit these places, to continue exploring Nebraska.

In the end, the series consists of one photograph for every one of the state’s 93 counties. It’s an unusual portrait of the state I call home, a visual document recording all the details that I encountered along the way. I hope that people enjoy the photographs and find themselves inspired to get to know Nebraska a little better.

Selections from ninety-three were exhibited at Hot Shops Art Center in Omaha during May of 2010. I hope to show the entire series at some point and publish a book of the photographs.

A map of everywhere I visited during the making of ninety-three.

This end is only a beginning...

I am happy to announce that I am calling ninety-three finished as of this past weekend. There are more than a few friends that will most likely roll their eyes at this, but I really do mean it this time. The photograph above, from Homestead National Monument near Beatrice, is the final piece of the project.

Hopefully there will be an opportunity at some point in the near future to show the entire series. The ultimate goal will be to publish a book of the photographs. I do plan on putting together an electronic book in the coming months, a more affordable way to share a high quality version of the project for everyone to see.

Again, thank you to everyone for their support. It's much appreciated. I've got something new in the works that I hope to be able to share soon. Stay tuned.

Homestead National Monument

I set out today to finally put ninety-three to bed, and eventually ended up at Homestead National Monument near Beatrice. The monument resides on what once was Daniel Freeman's homestead, the first established under the Homestead Act of 1862.



Homestead is what I would consider a quiet attraction, the kind of place that rewards spending some time contemplating your surroundings. There isn't any overly spectacular scenery or attention-grabbing structures, just a very nice visitor center and a native prairie to walk through and clear your head. Today was a near-perfect day for the walk. It was just what I needed after a long week of doubts.



The best news is that I am ready to call ninety-three finished in the next few days. I've got some new ideas that I hope to be able to share soon. It's an exciting time (when I manage to look past all of the present uncertainty).

Also visited: Ellis, Odell, Clatonia, Adams, Louisville and Bellevue.

Stromsburg, Nebraska

Today I revisited Stromsburg, the Swede Capital of Nebraska and one of my favorite small towns in the whole state. The town has a near-idyllic downtown square full of locally-owned shops and friendly people. It's a bit like going back in time.



Above is a barn that I photographed in early 2008 and was going to rephotograph today. Sadly, it appears that some sort of calamity has destroyed the structure since my last visit. The abandoned farmhouse and small silos are still there, however, quietly standing at the intersection of two gravel roads about two miles west of Stromsburg.

Also visited: Clarks and Silver Creek.

Gage County

I spent this afternoon revisiting Gage County, attempting to find a photograph worthy of being the final addition to ninety-three. It certainly was a gorgeous day for it, a reprieve from the almost daily thunderstorms we've been dealing with of late. I'm not sure I'm ready to call the day a success for myself, but we'll see.

The building in the photograph is the Elijah Filley Stone Barn, located a mile or so south of the town of Filley. The unusual barn was built in the 1870's and now finds itself on the National Register of Historic Places.

Also visited: Cortland, Pickrell, Rockford, Holmesville, Blue Springs and Wymore.

The (almost) final map

It's been awhile since I updated the ninety-three map, but here it is for your viewing pleasure. There is one red dot for every location I stopped to attempt to take a photograph. I was going to try to count them all, but I kept losing track before I even got halfway through the map.

All told, I spent nearly 40 days photographing Nebraska and shot over 4000 exposures along the way.

And I'd love to do it all over again.

Wynot Stop Here?

Three years ago today, I began what would eventually become ninety-three. I didn't have any idea that the series would turn into this big of a production, an obsession that has stuck with me ever since that day. The good news is that I'm just about to wrap up the project for good. After my travels today, I feel as if there is only one county's photograph that I need to improve upon.

It was a very moody gray day when I woke up in O'Neill this morning. The sun came out as I went north towards South Dakota and the clouds didn't return until I came through Wisner on the way home. My main focus today was Cedar County and I visited almost every town in the county that I had not stopped in to this point. I'm much happier with what I was able to come up with this time around.

The above photograph is of the now defunct drive-in movie theatre in O'Neill. It's definitely seen better days. The only operating drive-in theatre left in Nebraska that I know of is in the town of Neligh. That theatre had Toy Story 3 listed on the marquee when I drove by yesterday.

Edited to add... A reader points out that there is a drive-in theatre still operating in Alliance. So that makes two.


And another photograph, from my trek through southern South Dakota that went over both the Fort Randall and Gavins Point dams. The old worn out Pepsi logo was on the side of a building next to a car wash in downtown Wagner.

Also visited: Pickstown, Marty, Tyndall and Tabor, South Dakota. Spencer, Butte, Menominee, Fordyce, Constance, Bow Valley, Wynot, St. Helena and Obert, Nebraska.

A failed return to Rose

The photograph above pretty much sums up my travels to Rock County today. The Elkhorn River has been flooding all the way from its beginning to its end near Omaha. After a detour near West Point on the way up here, my plans to revisit the area around the near non-existent town of Rose were foiled by the water over the road shown above. While I have a lot of confidence in my Subaru, I do feel it's best suited for dry land.


Despite the flooding doing its best to get in the way, today was a beautiful day once the clouds cleared in the morning. Best of all, due to the highway to Rose being under water, I had time to take a short drive on Nebraska Highway 7 north of Bassett to the Niobrara River. I always forget just how impressive the elevation changes coming into the Niobrara valley can be, and this may be the best place I've found to cross the river. The photograph above just doesn't do the scenery out there justice.

It's another drive to add to my list of the best ones in the state. I'll have to put together a list for this blog one of these days. If you're heading out to see the Sandhills, it's well worth the drive up here to see the Niobrara on the way up to Valentine.

Also visited: Wisner, Neligh, Long Pine and Newport.

Pawnee City, Nebraska

Pawnee County, along the Kansas border in eastern Nebraska, has been another county that just doesn't seem to cooperate with me. After two visits, I still felt like I could do better with the photograph of the county for ninety-three. I am happy to report that I was able to find something that I am satisfied with on the third try. This leaves me with only a trip up to the northeastern part of the state to call the project completely finished.

Above is detail from a shop window on the downtown square in Pawnee City. The appropriately named Memory Magic deals in scrap booking supplies.

It has been just about three years since my last trip to Pawnee City. The last time through, I photographed a rundown building downtown that someone had written SOLD in one window and NEEDS ROOF BAD in another. Sure enough, despite all the time that has passed, there was the same building with the same writing scrawled in the windows.


July 2007 above, today below. Not much changes in a small town, other than the paint slowly peeling away from a window.

Out and about

Today I revisited a few places from my ninety-three travels along with some new ones. The day started out miserably enough in Grand Island. The sky dark gray and sad, cold rain steadily falling for hours. Around 4 o'clock in the afternoon, the sun began to make hurried appearances before the clouds finally gave way.

I keep telling myself that I'll let the project be, but I can't seem to let go and call it finished. Every time I am ready to close it out, I decide to go back and improve an image or two (or three). As much as I may want to move on to something else, this state always finds a way to reel me back in. There's a freedom to Nebraska, the vast openness and peaceful solitude of the countryside, that I can never get enough of.

The above photograph is from the village of Alda, a small bump in the road just west of Grand Island on U.S. Highway 30. The rain was practically a downpour at this point.

Also visited: Wood River, Cairo, Howard City, Rockville, Loup City, Sherman Reservoir, Ansley, Mason City, Litchfield, Hazard and Ravenna.

Just about finished

I'm just about ready to call ninety-three finished for good. Today was spent in two counties that have given me nothing but trouble despite multiple visits: Merrick and Nance. I was a bit more successful this time around and feel like I really improved the photographs for both counties. The weather, in true Nebraska fashion, ranged from bright sunshine to pouring rain and back again several times.

Central City's State Theater is alive and well, currently showcasing Robin Hood and the latest Shrek film.

Also visited: Marquette, Archer, Palmer, Fullerton, Belgrade, Cedar Rapids, Primrose, Albion, Petersburg, Boone and St. Edward.

Hello.

I spent my Sunday afternoon walking around what remains of the State Fair Park in Lincoln. For those not from Nebraska, the State Fair is moving to Grand Island in 2010, leaving its home in Lincoln since 1901 behind. Some of the buildings are already gone, leaving nothing but a concrete foundation and tiled floors behind. Others remain but are slowly falling into disrepair. It's a sad sight for anyone who has childhood memories of the Fair.

The photograph is of what appears to be a fairly friendly electric box somewhere near the livestock building.

The time is now.

Hello May!

The show has been hung and I can't wait for everyone to get a chance to see it. I'm excited for how it turned out. It was a stressful few days getting prepared but everything is ready to go. The open house at the Hot Shops runs 12-7 on Saturday and 12-5 on Sunday. I look forward to seeing some familiar faces.

I have to thank a few key people who helped make this a reality. Kelly Adams from the Hot Shops for her patience, very supportive nature and helpful advice. William Hess for printing and mounting the images for the show. Logan Epps for crafting the shelves that make the whole thing work. And Steven Schmiedeskamp for lending a hand to hang the show on very short notice.

There are many more people who have inspired and accompanied me along the way that I am just as thankful for. I am very lucky to have a life with so many great friends and family around me.

Enjoy the show.

Ten days!

Just a little over a week remains until the Hot Shops' Spring Open House weekend and the debut of ninety-three that goes along with it. There's a lot going on both Saturday and Sunday, May 1st and 2nd, including many other exhibitions, demonstrations and more. For details, visit the Spring Open House page.

RSVP for the event on Facebook, and don't forget to become a fan while you're at it.

I recently changed up the look of the front page of the website to make everything a little more clear. There will also be an online store to purchase prints and more that will be opening in the next few weeks. The Spring Print Sale prices are still good through April 30th.

Along with the redesign, more of something I've begun working on called An Instance is available for your viewing pleasure. This is just the very beginning of a series that I'm really excited about and one that is a bit of fresh air after working on mostly documentary photographs for the last few years.