Greensburg, Kansas
Even in the morning when the air is sometimes fairly still, you can see the effect of the prevailing wind.
Greensburg, Kansas
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Fields and Trees
Even in the morning when the air is sometimes fairly still, you can see the effect of the prevailing wind.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Roads, Fields, Skies, and Storms
Dodge City, Kansas
Back on May 27, I left Wilson, KS, and stopped to try for some pictures
in several small towns on the way to Dodge City, where I wanted to
photograph The South drive-in theater. The highway pullout at the edge of town—"Dodge City, Queen of the Cowtowns"—was situated on a bluff overlooking an enormous
feedlot. The city's main industry is meatpacking. After working at the theater, I
looked around Dodge expecting that such a famous piece of "The Old West"
should offer all sorts of off-topic shooting opportunities. What I
found instead was a dreary commercial strip with the same chain
restaurants and stores you see everywhere else.
Greensburg, Kansas
There were some billboards that I photographed and posted here, but the only remnant of historic Dodge City I could see was a small, paid-admission theme park. I gave it a pass. The next theater on my list would be in Medicine Lodge, KS. Not only was that quite a distance away, but unlikely to have much in the way of nearby accommodations. Using my road atlas and the Points Of Interest data in my GPS, I decided to head for Medicine Lodge but stop for the night at a Best Western listed in Greensburg, KS. (The POI feature was extremely useful, but far from infallible. A small but significant percentage of hotels, not to mention theaters, turned out not to be where the GPS expected them, or not to exist at all, or to have changed from one chain to another.)
Greensburg, Kansas
I found the hotel, which appeared to be brand new. The surrounding area was solid farmland, with big (at least to my Eastern eyes) spreads that appeared to be well established. Only the state highway was paved, the roads serving the farms were all unpaved, though carefully graded and tended. The farms had quite a mix of row crops, wheat and corn fields, and pasture for beef cattle. But I couldn't seem to find "the town." There were no older buildings from the same era as the farmhouses and barns, but, not far from the hotel there was a brand new, not yet finished group of developments. Houses not yet occupied, stores not yet opened, offices not yet tenanted. Some signs indicated that the whole place was an experiment in "Green"—as in environmentally sound, renewable-energy-based construction. This was all also green, cluster-style development of mixed residential and commercial construction. This all seemed just a bit out of character, too progressive. Are we still in Kansas?
Greensburg, Kansas
Back in my room I got online and found the answer: mother nature's urban renewal. On May 4, 2007, 95% of the town was taken out by an F5 tornado. It was evidently a direct hit on the town itself, which happens to be the county seat. The long-established surrounding farms were relatively little damaged. The new Greensburg that is emerging will be one of the most ecologically/environmentally sophisticated municipalities in the U.S.—right there in the middle of Kansas.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Road, Field, Sky
Bucklin, Kansas
More views where the color of the clouds looked so different from what I'm used to back east.
Bucklin, Kansas
Saturday, July 28, 2012
20
Kinsley, Kansas
Speed limits on the Interstates and two-lane highways were much higher out west than I'm used to seeing on the east coast. But speed limits in the towns were very low. Just about everyone obeyed the postings so enforcement must be strict. Something not different from the east was that even a town that seemed to be doing OK, like this one, still had plenty of closed businesses and vacant commercial buildings.
Friday, July 27, 2012
MIDWAY USA
Kinsley, Kansas
If you take a look at a map of the continental United States, the claim on the water tower is pretty much right.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Pasture and Wheat
Claflin, Kansas
The way the fencing is arranged indicates they rotate the fields between crops and pasture for grazing.
Wind Power, Old Style
Claflin, Kansas
People have been using the wind here for a long time. A century and more ago, renewable green energy was seen as just common sense.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Purple Top
Wilson, Kansas
More of those strange looking sky and cloud colors. This is quite faithful to what the colors looked like in person. Sampling picture areas in ACR, the white paint on the water tower is slightly yellow, the white window panels are slightly blue, but the deeper "gray" areas of the clouds are really quite blue.
Czech Capital of Kansas
Wilson, Kansas
The painted sign says, "WILSON, Czech Capital Of Kansas." The black cutout figures seem to represent costumed folk dancers. Seems strange that the chalked "Happy Halloween" message was still there in May. But then, maybe it isn't even from the previous year.
Wilson, Kansas
Monday, July 23, 2012
Sunflower Coal
Wilson, Kansas
Remember that notation, "cloudless sky, but it looks dark and leaden, as much gray as blue." Right.
Early Sunday Morning
Wilson, Kansas
Early Sunday morning not only were almost no people out and about in the town of Wilson, but for the first time the incessant Kansas wind had let up a little. The heat wave was still in effect though, with the temperature not dropping below 70° overnight, and this was just May 27. The next theater on my list was in Dodge City, and the one after that in Medicine Lodge, too far for one day without rushing. So instead I decided to slow down and do as much "off topic" shooting as I could, ending up at Dodge City to do the drive-in and maybe other subjects there as well.
Wilson, Kansas
After the wind, the second thing I noticed in Kansas was that the color—of everything—seemed "off" to me. It was easy to see that the color of the native dirt was much more red than I'm used to, but other things like concrete pavement or bare metal or white painted surfaces all seemed to have a weird tint to them. Then I realized the sky itself looked "wrong."
Wilson, Kansas
This made me think that the color of the light might in fact be different. Whether there were clouds or not, the sky always looked veiled or hazy even if middle distances looked bright and crisp. Clouds didn't really look white, but a strange sort of blue/red tint. There may be an established cause for this difference in the light that I'm just not aware of, but something that occurs to me is that it could be connected to that constant battering wind. Maybe there's more particulate matter in the atmosphere, churned up by the constant gale. With dramatically lower humidity than I'm used to back home it didn't seem as though the hazy look to the sky would be from water vapor. I was keeping notes to identify the locations where pictures were made, so I began to add notations about my perception of the colors and what the sky looked like. Things like, "cloudless sky, but it looks dark and leaden, as much gray as blue." I figured this might be helpful later when I'd be working up the files for posting or printing.
Wilson, Kansas
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Small Town Woes
Ellsworth, Kansas
Several people I spoke with in Kanopolis told me the neighboring town of Ellsworth was noted primarily for its deceptive (though technically legal) speed traps and general corruption. When I stopped to photograph these places, both at the same intersection, I couldn't help wondering if whoever went broke at the food mart might not be better off, if it meant they got out of town. But then, corruption is pretty widespread. Just recently the FBI raided the town hall of the little Connecticut village where Tina grew up, removing a van-full of paperwork. Now, if they could just get around to Wall Street...
Ellsworth, Kansas
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Friday, July 20, 2012
In Honor
Wilson, Kansas
detail
It says, "IN HONOR OF OUR SOLDIERS SAILORS AND MARINES IN THE WORLD WAR."
Note that the fence posts are drill bits planted upright in the ground.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Heading South
Black Wolf, Kansas
It was early evening and I was driving from my hotel back to the Kanopolis, Kansas, drive-in theater to photograph evening activities.
Blowing in the Wind
Black Wolf, Kansas
It's hard to show wind in a photograph, but the relentless Kansas gale was blowing full force. It's not very apparent in a file sized for web viewing, but in a print at 10x14 or 15x20 inches the wind would reveal itself in the tall grass. Especially at the right side of the picture, the grass is motion-blurred even though the shot was made at 1/500 second.
Trash Can for the Wind
Junction City, Kansas
It took a moment to figure out why this trash can at an Interstate highway rest area was hanging between two posts. A gust of the intense wind that had been buffeting my car all morning came through and the trash can began to pivot and swing. It's an alternative to bolting the can to the concrete to keep it in place.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
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