Be sure to check out the current issue of South Dakota Magazine; not only is it filled as usual with great stories and tidbits about our state, but it sports another Latza cover photo.
That’s two in a row, if you’re keeping track.
Thanks to Bernie and Katie Hunhoff for doing such a great job yet again. You can see the online version here, and the printed version is excellent and worthy of a subscription if you don’t already have one.
One of the strongest holiday traditions in my wife’s family is to head for Fort Pierre for the Fourth of July each year.
I think it’s a great custom, and have always loved doing it. We stay at her late grandparents’ house and take in a number of activities, including the annual parade, rodeo and excellent fireworks display bursting high above the Missouri River. And when we got a boat back in 2005, we added an entirely new dimension to the trip.
Every year offers a new twist, and this year it was Anna learning how to water ski. She and two of her friends all learned together, and I’m sure it’ll be a special moment for them to reflect on for many, many years. The water was calm, the weather gorgeous and the sun was just beginning to set as she got up on skis for the first time, and rode a couple hundred yards past the sandbar that we use as a home base each afternoon.
We caught plenty of walleye, shot off a lot of fireworks (and no fingers), and played as long and hard as time allowed. And when we packed for home on Sunday, we were sad to be leaving…that’s always the best sign that we had another great Fourth.
At top, Jack and the walleye he caught. Anna gets dolled up prior to the parade, and Luke makes designs with sparklers.
Not to toot my own horn, but I have a photo on the front page of USA Today this morning. It’s nothing spectacular (the story is about high gas prices hurting small town folks in the midwest), but always fun to get a byline in that particular location. The online story is here.
We’re off to Fort Pierre this afternoon for some holiday fun; hopefully all of us will still have 10 fingers left when we return. We will be spending every possible moment on the water!
I just returned from a four-day church canoe trip. I and five other adults (loose term) chaperoned about 25 middle school and high school kids. I survived with most of my skin intact (I look like a snake shedding his skin at the moment), and many great memories.
We were up by Nimrod, MN (of course) and floated down the Crow Wing river for two days. The water was fast and clear, and offered many great sights like the one above, shot right before we headed home.
The best part? My daughter Anna was along, and we canoed together on the last day, and she couldn’t stop saying how much fun it was to be with her dad on the river. I hope I never forget how I felt that afternoon, and how special she made me feel by sharing her day with me.
So I said to Jodi before I left on a stock shooting trip to the Badlands and Black Hills, “What I need is good light when I get there in the early evening, then a thunderstorm needs to roll in, and then I need some lightning to shoot on the back end.” To my surprise, it happened. And a rainbow to boot. I never get this lucky.
Western South Dakota was beautiful, with plenty of rain this spring and everything as green as I’ve ever seen it. I worked through the Cave Hills in Harding County enroute to an ethanol plant shoot in Richardton, ND, and then back down through Faith, Fort Pierre and then home again. It was a great trip.
Will I get that lucky again anytime soon? Not likely.
For most people, it’s just a picture of a tree.
They might look at it among the hundreds of other photos on this website, and not think anything of it. A nice morning, a country road passing beneath it, end of story.
But it’s more than that to me. It’s hanging on our bedroom wall, and every now and then I look at it and think of home.
Just the other night I was staring off into space while watching the news, and there was the tree, hanging right above the TV. I wandered into the cool morning air in the photo, heard the crunch of gravel under my feet and felt the spring dew on the grass in the ditch.
This tree stood for decades astride one of the two main routes we drove to and from our farm near Letcher. It was always a nice shady spot on a hot summer day, and its bare branches stood starkly against the white sky during cold winters.
As a youngster, I knew the tree was a signal that we were fast approaching the farm. As a teenager, I anticipated the humming echo that the tractor made as I passed beneath it, going to and from a quarter of land that we farmed for the Hewer family. In fact, as I looked at the photo I realized that it has been 25 years since I first began driving a cultivator-laden tractor under those branches, in the spring of my 12th year. It was a proud time for me, having been given the chance to prove my worth to my parents and take part in the honorable endeavor of farming.
I often yearn for the farm this time of year, when the corn begins to emerge from the soil and the alfalfa fields start rising above my knees. It’s a time of newness; a time of rebirth and hope. Everything is green and holds promise. The farm is always beautiful this time of year.
With Jodi and Anna gone to a soccer tournament, I took the boys there on Saturday, and it was great. Luke and Jack and I all took turns riding with my dad as he planted soybeans, enjoyed a lunchtime grillout and then fished at the Stekl stock dam with my nephew Todd. And to top it off, my sister Sherri baked three of my grandmother’s amazing strawberry-rhubarb pies, and sent one home with us. It tasted just as I remembered it, full of sugar and love from grandma.
A day full of great memories to be sure. But as we headed home that evening, I felt sad as we drove past a pile of chainsaw-scarred wood in the fenceline. It’s all that’s left of our tree now, and I miss it every time I drive beneath its invisible branches.
I can still see it, and still hear it. It’ll always be there in my mind, and I’m thankful that one morning I took the time to stop and photograph it as I’d always want to remember it.
We got back from Disney World last week. What a great trip.
I shot over 2,000 frames. A geek? Yes I am, and proud of it. I especially enjoyed shooting while actually riding the rides, which resulted in some fun stuff like this shot of Anna and my neice Carolyn screaming their way down the big drop on Splash Mountain. I got the edit down to a final 472, and have also posted some here.
It took us about three days to fully recover from the 7-day vacation, which effectively took us out of commission for a total of 10 days (I good at math).
We are hoping to return every three years, if we can afford it. By then Jack will surely be over 40 inches tall and can ride most of the rides.
I’ve known Lee McManus for nearly 11 years now. Just after I left the Argus Leader, I sent a portfolio to EROS Data Center, where he worked as a graphic designer. He hired me for some photography there, and we soon discovered that we had a lot in common.
We both liked to hunt. We both liked the Green Bay Packers. We both appreciated good art and good photography.
But there was more than just those coincidences. Lee struck me as a pretty interesting guy, and the type of person who would probably make a very faithful friend.
That’s just what ended up happening. We became fast friends, and enjoyed shooting emails back and forth on slow days, sharing anti-Vikings jokes and lobbing stones at people who thought they were too elite for lowly artists like us. My numerous shoots for EROS over the years were punctuated with lighthearted lunches and plenty of laughs as we giggled like schoolchildren in the cafeteria.
My biggest discovery about Lee was that he was a world-class painter. Yes, tucked away in the attic level of his central Sioux Falls home was a studio where he created some of the most incredible pieces of art I’d ever seen; most of them elegant nude studies with the utmost taste and dignity. He had painted some acquaintances and some fellow co-workers at EROS, and usually gave them an original painting for their trouble.
We struck up a deal when he needed high-quality photo copies of some of his paintings: I would photograph his art and also some dance studio scenes for him (he was dabbling with this subject at that time), if he painted our three kids. Each child would be painted as they appeared at about 8 years old, and their props would be something that they were interested in at that age. He took study photos of Anna with her violin (photo above) and began to paint her about a year ago. 
In more recent years, Lee began to spread his graphic design wings and started freelancing more heavily. We had many lunches and evening beers together to talk about the freelance world, and I urged him to follow his instincts, to leave his day job and enter the world of freelance design. He would get very excited during our discussions, and would email me for days afterward about how eager he was to head out on his own. I was thrilled for him, and whether it was bound to happen soon, or whether it would wait a couple of years until his “retirement” at age 62, I was looking forward to spending more time with him.
I answered the phone on Valentine’s Day morning, and felt a powerful kick to my stomach as Lee’s son Erin explained how Lee had collapsed with a brain hemmorage and was now brain dead. His only remaining link with life was his upcoming role as an organ donor.
How could that be? We still had a lot to do, Lee and I. It wasn’t until I went to his funeral that I realized that there would be no more emails, no more deep discussions about life, art, hunting and football. I’ve been through the pain of losing my grandparents, but until now had been spared the loss of a true and dear friend. The feeling was absolutely terrible.
But did I lose him completely? I don’t think so. I found him lurking in the form of his son, Erin. I had never known Erin other than meeting him once or twice, and when I came to Lee’s house a few days later to pick up Anna’s unfinished portrait, I sat down in Lee’s studio to visit with Erin and his sister Maurine, and Lee’s wife Marilyn. It was a wonderful visit, sitting and talking and laughing about Lee in his cherished private space, and I got to know all of them a lot better. But what struck me most was how Erin looked and acted very much like his father. 
We began to email back and forth, and it was true! Here was Lee all over again, with the same dreams and aspirations, the same bluntness, the same willingness to be a friend. And according to Erin, it’s been very therapeutic to learn more about his dad through a friend’s eyes.
What a great discovery.
On Friday, Lee’s unfinished last piece (ironically titled Last Peace by Erin…it’s a painting of a 60’s hippie with a peace sign hidden among the unfinished details; photo of Erin and the painting at left), was auctioned at the Washington Pavilion’s Arts Night, a fundraiser for the Pavilion’s Visual Arts Center (Lee’s previous two Arts Night pieces were selected for Peoples’ Choice awards). Last Peace was on his easel when he died, and we made a high quality reproduction for the auction. It brought $1,000 and many smiles and tears from our table, where Jodi and I sat with Lee’s family.
It was a bittersweet moment; a chapter on Lee’s life was closing, but we rejoiced in the fact that his art and character would live on in all of us.
For me, I was happy to know that my friendship with him would live on too…in the form of his son.
The We Dig Doug event went exceptionally well on Saturday night; I think about $40,000 was raised for Doug and Jan Lee, and Doug was healthy enough to attend the entire event. Great music and great friends were everywhere, and it was really electric.
I didn’t win the Harley. I’m a little bummed. However, the fellow who did win it, David Watts, gave the keys back to Doug and Jan…now THAT is a gesture of giving if I’ve ever seen one (It’s a $10,000 bike). If I’d won, I’m not sure the keys could have been wrestled from me…I would have needed at least a few spins around the block first.
Jeff Zueger edited an incredible tribute video for Doug, and it included well-wishers like Governor Rounds, Senator Thune, Mayor Munson and literally dozens of local celebrities and dear friends of Doug. I hope Jeff posts it somewhere; I’ll provide a link to it if he does.
But the best moment of the evening came at the very end; Kory and the Fireflies were winding down their set, and their last song morphed into Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds where the chorus goes: “Don’t you worry - about a thing - every little thing - is gonna be alright,” over and over. As they sang, Kory had Doug come to the front of the stage, and everyone surrounded him, held him and prayed for him through several sing-throughs of the chorus. It was absolutely magical. Not a dry eye in the house. That’s the scene in the photo above; Jan is at lower left.
I can only hope that if my family is ever faced with the same degree of danger that Doug’s cancer poses to him, we can have the same grace, strength and courage that he and Jan are showing to all of us. What an amazing family.
(Photo gallery of the event is here)
It was hard to believe it could actually happen. Again.
14 inches of snow in the Mitchell/Letcher area on Friday, right around the home farm and at my parents’ house. My mother emailed several pictures that looked like it was January, not late April. One showed my father scooping snow in front of the garage, a snowdrift up to his thigh. My sister said there was a four-foot snowdrift on the roof. People were already starting to plant corn this week, too.
Our spring has been taken hostage. Typically in South Dakota, spring and fall last about four days apiece. The rest of the time, it’s summer or winter. Or road construction.
I’ll probably be complaining about 90 degree days in about a week.
On a side note, I had a shoot in Norfolk, Nebraska this week. I shot over 4,000 frames in three days at Northeast Community College. I think the camera actually started smoking. We covered virtually every program the college offered, and lit nearly all of the 40+ setups. And I shot intramural dodgeball, a first.
Tip of the day: Do not sit at the end of a dodgeball court when photographing dodgeball. Sit along the sides of a dodgeball court. Do not stand up while photographing dodgeball, at least not without protection befitting an NFL lineman.