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I was out visiting my eccentric 92 year old grandmother for a long weekend out in the country in Stafford Kansas, a four hour drive southwest of Kansas City. Maybe another post with more photos later on. All the shots in this post were with the pairing of my Canon 5D Mark II with my Canon 16-35 L II wide angle lens.
Over the Easter weekend I took some extra time off and went out to my grandma’s place in central Kansas. This shot was taken Sunday at dusk north of Stafford Kansas halfway to Ellinwood in a cluster of trees around a dirt road that I could see from the paved two-lane highway. The deer were hopping around a lot that night and I had to be careful to not total my car in the process of making it back to Stafford in the dark, as there were several deer witnessed on the side of the road. I just paid off the car too so I’m a little extra suspicious of deer right now when venturing into the country.
Don’t forget – Photo show and sale tomorrow night at The Hook at 45th and State Line in KCMO – see the Facebook page for further information.
Under a Cemetery Bush
Back from a Christmas-time trip to central Kansas. This was under a bush at the Stafford Kansas cemetery the morning after Christmas. Some of my family members continue on the craziness spiral and some of the towns keep disintegrating in slow, steady ways.
9:45 AM, Sunday Dec. 26, 2010.
Hearn Farms
Monday, Aug. 23 at nightfall on my aunt and uncle’s farm out in southern Kansas, Stafford County to be precise. This is in the feedlot area with the moon coming up on the horizon. Back in April, hours before BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig famously blew up in the Gulf of Mexico, I took this photo standing just a few dozen yards away with a view of this John Deere implement in action.
I heard later on there was a bobcat prowling the area earlier that night, which I guess would have been fun to come across while getting photos. I don’t know if bobcats would find tripods all that intimidating.
Pastures outside Preston, Kansas
Photo taken this past Sunday evening. I see here in August the moon rises at just the right time for a certain dramatic effect. I was in Preston, Kansas, a tiny, and regrettably foundering town of which I have some ties to. I stop there every once in a while when I’m visiting my grandmother who now lives in Stafford, roughly twenty miles to the north.
This photo is different than my normal in a few ways. I deactivated the telephoto lens’s auto-focus and manually trained it on the moon, allowing everything else to blur, including the foliage. I took several varied exposures for HDR to display the very subtle differences to be seen in color and contrast across parts of the photo. Actually I do that kind of thing frequently, but manually focusing on blissful, pastoral country settings take a bit of getting accustomed to for me. Normally I leave the serene nature photography to people who have more practice at it. I imagine those photographers are of a more serene and content personal nature in general as well. It makes one wonder.
Stafford Train Depot
The old unused train station/depot in Stafford Kansas, this past Saturday evening, 08/21/10. Maybe old unused depots are cliche subject matter, but whatever. This one has the red glow of the exit sign inside showing through the windows. I was out there in southern Kansas for a long weekend.