The Launch

This week, I am officially launching prairieartproject.com, (the site, as opposed to the blog). The website will focus more closely on prairie, on writing, than does the blog, and it allows you to view the photos and poetry in a whole new (and, I think, fabulous) way. There is also additional content--links to scientific and theoretical work, reading lists, etc.--that will be of interest to fans of the prairie.

I hope you enjoy it. I'm excited to hear what you think.

Tracy

Platte River Prairies - October 6th, 2011

After months of being cooped up in my fluorescent and climate-controlled (but not by me) office, I finally had the chance to escape to the prairie. The occasion was the visit of Guy Fitzhardinge and Mandy Martin.


Guy (environmentalist and rancher and witty guy) and Mandy (brilliant artist, teacher, and editor) live on and manage several Queensland cattle ranches and have collaborated on a book. While visiting the University of Nebraska, we were able to take them to The Nature Conservancy's Platte River Prairies, a series of retired croplands which have been recently restored to prairie and managed with fire and patch grazing.
Chris Helzer, the program director at the Platte River Prairies, has a fantastic blog that I've followed for some time. He features stunning photography and keeps me current on prairie research, as well as helping with some of my more notable insect identification gaffes.

Joining us on the hike were Dr. Tom Lynch, who teaches Environmental Lit at UNL, one of his undergraduate students, Benjamin Vogt, a writer and native prairie gardener, and my trusty co-conspirator, Aubrey Streit-Krug, an instructor and ecocritic, also from UNL.



In spite of rainy and subdued skies on the trip out to Wood River, we enjoyed a lively discussion of American agriculture. Guy and Mandy were somewhat surprised to learn that most of the crops they saw growing and being harvested along the I-80 corridor--corn and soybeans, mainly--were not, in fact, going toward human consumption, but rather to feed animals or produce fuel. The fecundity of our Great Plains soil is quite different from the old soil of Australia, Guy says, and it does beg the question of priorities, when we use it to fuel our car culture.



By the time we arrived at The House (which serves as offices for the Platte River Prairies staff), the skies had cleared, a terrific wind was blowing, and we set off across the prairie.

How about this one??? After a year of tromping around 9 Mile in hopes of spotting an orchid, all it took was a two hour car ride and a prairie restoration (instead of a relict prairie) for me to see one :D

Chris showing us some Rough Rattlesnake Root -- I love this picture.

The Nature Conservancy is also working on a project adjacent to the prairies, restoring a stream that became a lake due to gravel mining. In only a few years, the birds are back, the fish are back, RIVER OTTERS are back! This is a gorgeous site, even still under construction. I can't wait to go back and see it when it's finished.

The Long Hot Summer

After feeling certain that death was imminent at any moment in the past month due to my recently realized allergy to 100° + temperatures, finally we have a break in the weather. And it's about damn time. When it's over 100°, my daily routine is to get up, walk outside with the dogs, become nauseated by the humidity, and beat a hasty retreat into the house. Being forced outside -- especially if the trip involves great physical exertion like opening the mailbox, bending to pull a weed, or pushing the shutter release on the camera -- requires a full change of clothes and a 2 hour afternoon nap. Needless to say, my creativity and ambition have shriveled alongside my less hardy flowers and herbs.

In the middle of the night recently, though, I was awakened by brilliant flashes of far-off lightning, noiseless and remote. I stood in the yard in my underwear -- good evening, Mr. Daubendieck!!! -- and took long exposure shots of the lightning that was tearing up something two counties away, sweating and being needled by unseen mosquitoes. The results were interesting; this summer has been devoted to using manual lenses and manual settings and forgiving myself for technical imperfections in exchange for atmosphere. I proudly give you the resultant photos:

2nd Annual Fairbury, Nebraska Bull Bash, Photos Part 2

I'm just a teensy-weensy bit disappointed that I heard neither Garth Brooks's nor Chris LeDoux's rodeo songs, but other than that, so far Bull Bash was the highlight of my summer, at least photographically. The vibrant colors of the chaps and shirts, the flying sand, the smell of the horses... I've been away from that a long time. It was nice getting back.

One not so nice thing is the crazy slow uploads of these photos :) The editing has been done for a while; I just put off posting because it is time-consuming and irritating to wait for the uploads.

FotoMoto and My Love/Hate of Beta Testing

You may have noticed... I hope you noticed, maybe, or maybe I hope you didn't notice because it's fixed now, but the FotoMoto links for Buy Download Share on photos is not working this morning. I hope you noticed because you use them religiously... I hope you didn't notice because I'm g*ddamned sick of that not working!

Don't get me wrong, I am kind of in love with FotoMoto and its slick operation. I just put a tiny bit of code into my blog posts and—like magic—the links show up under my photos. Like magic, you can click on a link to share it on Facebook or buy a print or download. Like magic, I get an email and you get your print. Like magic. And just like h*cking magic, I can't figure out (and neither can they) why sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And because this is a free service they offer, I feel just a little bit like a jerk for complaining that my free service doesn't work about 5%-10% of the time.

If you've needed to order something and couldn't, please contact me via email and I will find a way to make something happen. And if you didn't but just noticed the links were not there (or you wondered what I was babbling about, all this Buy Share eCard crap that's nowhere on the posts), feel free to drop me a line so I can report problems. If you do that, you know the drill—browser, OS, date/time. Thanks for being patient with my janky beta-test support services.

RurEx and the Art of Creative Trespass

UrbEx, or urban exploration, is the hottest of hot photography trends at the moment, it seems, if one can judge by what art directors are selecting as upper-tier stock or by popularity on crowd-sourced sites. I have to admit, I love them myself. Personally, I love an old empty building, love sifting through the debris left behind, love to watch the succession of nature over architecture. My biggest gripe was that you can't do UrbEx if you're not urban.

RurEx, as a term, is much less popular, less well-understood, and that may be due in large part to a long existence under other names. Sometimes known as "barn-hunting," "old-housing," or, as I've heard somewhat derogatorily, "junking," RurEx is the exploration of small towns and rural areas, houses, barns, and business districts, often abandaned.

Lest ye think that I'm jumping aboard this train at the height of its popularity, I feel I must mention that I've been an old-houser almost since birth. On my father's farm still stood several old homestead sites, complete with limestone and framed houses, cellars, outbuildings, even one with a wine cellar. This last, I considered so enchanting, the house so lovely, and the setting so idyllic that I dubbed it with the highest of all honors, calling it "The House at Pooh Corner." Give me a break, I was three.

Anyway... back then no one really cared if you were poking around in their old houses, and hell, we lived so far in the middle of nowhere that who was gonna catch us anyway? Now, I worry about it just a bit more. Police and landowners alike watch for trespassers because of the rural meth explosion; liability and litigiousness scare farmers perhaps even more. However, it's just not all that practical to go poking around for landowners when you see that beautiful old barn or the burnt-out house.

I'm not going to try to defend my propensity toward trespassing; I know it's naughty and fully expect, every time I partake, to get a warning, a ticket, or handcuffed. That's a risk I'll take. One, because I can run fast enough if I have to, and two, because I've found that a confident bearing keeps people from questioning if you really belong in there.

So, without further ado, here are a few of my RurEx shots. Remember that you can buy prints or send free eCards of these, and be sure to check out my Etsy store. I sell groupings of shots there (some from the blog, some not), so if you want a group of 9 or 16 prints to put on your wall, it's more economical to do it that way.

2nd Annual Fairbury, Nebraska Bull Bash

How excited was I to find out that the Bull Bash was coming back to Fairbury? Very!! I missed it last year and was anxious to test out a new lens on some rodeo action. (The Tamron 300mm did not disappoint.) Thank you to the organizers, the fans who came out, but most of all to the riders who put on a great show. I had bulls right up in my lens. Contestant photos (of the bulls and the kids' mutton bustin') will be up in a day or two and available for print or download.