Storm season in Minnesota is always interesting. I headed towards downtown Minneapolis to catch the sunset on the skyline with storm clouds in the background, but got there to late (sun had disappeared behind some clouds). As I got home the sirens were sounding. Drove up to the hill and caught a bunch of snapshots of clouds rolling and churning.

Update:

Stumbled across this shot taken by a another Twin Cities Pblogger, Northmetro.blogspot.com. Same storm. That has just got to be the same reptile looking cloud extension, except from the other side. Don’t you think?

This shot was taken in the midst of winter, down near the Black Dog power plant, with a 75-300mm kit lens. Not much color to start out with, so might as well turn it into a black and white photo. Darn it was cold!

This picture was taken over three decades ago with 35mm Pentax, my main camera at the time. I almost exclusively shot B&W. A group of us was traveling to Mexico as part of a Christian youth program. It was quite the experience, four weeks in Mexico in various Cities ranging from Zihuatenejo to Mexico City.

Don’t know who the girl was. If you know her leave a comment.

On overtime in the middle of winter. When we do these overtime stints I normally do most of it on the weekends. Just can’t handle sitting in the same chair for 11+hrs to try to get it in during weekdays. So to make it feel not quite like a weekday I do little photo shoots on the way home. This one is a self portrait taken in a parking area under a bridge. Took about 20 shots. Reviewing them at home none of them looked interesting except for this one, staring at an empty bottle laying on ground. One of my colleagues said ‘looks like an album cover’. Hehe, guess I should write a song.

Taken in Cairo a few years back during a business trip using a Canon G3. A clear day in Cairo sort of looks like this at the end of day. There’s just so much dust in the air the sun appears to be behind clouds once it gets lower in the sky. Makes for some interesting shots.

I learned quite a bit about dust on this project (as did others that plagiarized my work). Did you know that if you were behind a tank in the desert creating a huge dust cloud you can’t even see your hand in front of your face (let alone breathe) that the actual amount of real dust in the air is only a few grams per cubic meter? Visual appearance would make you think there’s buckets of it, but there aren’t. Did you know that in a sandstorm the actual sand extends no higher 10 - 30 feet above the ground, and anything above that is just dust? And that sand moves via saltation, a process whereby sand particles only move a few feet in the air, land and bounce the next one up into the air, which in turn lands after a few feet and kick starts the next one? Thats the process by which dunes move. Did you know that dust from Sahara sand storms can reach the American continent? OK, enough of the lecture.