Category: columns-photo

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Racing Through the Black Hills

By Chad Coppess

My job is to promote South Dakota as a travel destination. I do that with photography, but not always through means you’d expect.

My use of photography as a promotional tool has taken some interesting turns over the years, one of which is video gaming. As a relaxing pastime, I play car racing video games and that took a creative turn when I began”painting” race cars for the game”NASCAR Racing 2003″.

Other players of the game can download the cars to use in the game at www.racingrafix.com, a website run by an online friend of mine in Texas.

After painting hundreds of cars, many with South Dakota-related sponsor logos, inspiration struck about making an even bigger splash in the video gaming world. I reached out to a race track builder. Jeff (I don’t even know his full name) in Chicago creates new tracks for those of us who race in the game.

A few email discussions determined that my photographs of South Dakota scenery could make a great backdrop for some fun tracks.”Rushmore Scenic Byway” was born with photos of the Black Hills landscape forming the virtual horizon, including Mount Rushmore, the Needles, Harney Peak and Crazy Horse Memorial. Using Photoshop, I blended several photos into one extra-long panoramic image that encircles the race track, so no matter where a driver turns he sees the Black Hills around him.

We decided to give the track a 1950s feel, so I included buildings and billboards for tourist attractions of that era. Racers negotiate through or past pigtail bridges, tunnels, the 1880 Train, Dinosaur Park and signs for Reptile Gardens, Sitting Bull Caverns, Thunderhead Underground Falls, and more.

“Rushmore Scenic Byway” was a smashing success, with over 1,000 downloads spreading the South Dakota message across the world. We quickly began planning a sequel –“Badlands Byway.” I shot a 360-degree panoramic photo in Badlands National Park for the horizon in this track, which worked well.

With some leftover ideas from”Rushmore Scenic Byway,” we completed a South Dakota track trilogy with”Black Hills Backroads,” this time in black and white. We replaced the completed Mount Rushmore with an under-construction version and removed most of the billboards to drop the timeline of the setting back to the 1940s.

Both”Badlands Byway” and”Black Hills Backroads” have been well-received with hundreds of downloads. The success of these projects has prompted me to approach other video game developers about including South Dakota in more games. We’ll see if anyone bites and how my photos might be utilized in the future.

If you are still a bit confused about all of this, maybe a video featuring all three tracks in action will help.

Chad Coppess is the senior photographer at the South Dakota Department of Tourism. He lives in Pierre with his wife, Lisa. To view more of his work, visit www.dakotagraph.com.

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Butte Country

By Christian Begeman

There is something poetic about a lone butte rising from western South Dakota’s grassy seas of rolling plains. These lonely landforms not only break up the horizon, but are important landmarks and points of reference to local residents. Often a person will tell you where his ranch or land is based on the proximity of the nearest butte.

Buttes also play an interesting role in the history of the area. Bear Butte, near Sturgis, is still considered a sacred religious site for both the Lakota and Cheyenne tribes. Thunder Butte was famously used as a landmark for mountain man Hugh Glass on his crawl across the prairies after being mauled by a grizzly bear on the Grand River. The Slim Buttes bear sad memory of a brutal battle fought a few months after the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876.

Besides the history, I also find the names of the buttes quite interesting. To me they have a touch of romanticism to them. For example, it doesn’t take much to imagine riding herd at Blackhorse Butte or surveying the plains with the keen eye of a majestic Golden Eagle perched on Eagle Butte. Many times, the names of buttes were derived by what the butte looks like. Haystack Butte and Castle Rock Butte along Highway 79 north of Newell are good examples of this. Other buttes have interesting stories and legends that the names come from. In a history of Ziebach County, the Native American name for Thunder Butte is given as “Wakanganhotan.” The meaning is said to be “place of holy thunder.” I’ve heard people say that the Lakota thought that all thunder or thunderstorms originated from Thunder Butte. However I’m pretty sure that this hand-me-down story is more legend and corrupted speculation than the real origin of the name. Regardless, the butte holds a lot of meaning to me as I grew up within sight of it on the western horizon.

One of my favorite older photos is of the sun setting on top of Thunder Butte on a late August day in 1994. It was a high overcast afternoon, and I could tell it was going to be a good sunset. I grabbed my camera and hurriedly got into my dad’s old blue Chevy work pick-up and headed west. As I was driving I got the idea to line up the photo so the sun would appear to set on the butte. In order to do this, I had to cover a lot of ground in a short time as well as veer off the trail. I’m sure my dad would not have approved if he saw me cruising over the open prairie at a speed that caused the toolboxes and fencing gear to bounce quite vigorously. The good news is that he never knew — well that is, until he reads this article. I think the photo was worth it though.

This December, I finally really saw the”bear” in Bear Butte. I was shooting an old barn and sunset just southwest of the butte and in the fading light I began to make out the slumbering bear. It was actually quite a magical moment. Someday I plan to climb that butte. When I do, I’m sure I’ll feel very small in a very large world. I’ve felt it before while on the top of Thunder Butte. To be on a high place looking down on the beauty of creation is a humbling yet wonderful thing. I suppose”sacred” is another very good word for it.

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog.

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Snow Is Coming

By Chad Coppess

So far in 2011-12 South Dakota hasn’t experienced much of a winter. It’s coming though. It just has to be. Those of us with cameras will be out attempting to capture nature’s beauty under a blanket of white soon, I’m sure. So here are some tips for shooting in the snow.

Light meters in cameras tell us what they feel the “proper” exposure should be for whatever situation we point them at. In the case of white snow, the light meter is going to think everything is too bright and want to darken the scene. Sometimes we need to fool that meter so that our pictures will have white snow, not dingy gray snow. Overexpose by one to two stops and I think you’ll like the results better.

If it is snowing while you are shooting or the sky is overcast and white itself, look for subject matter that will stand out from all the whiteness in your scene. A twisted tree trunk, a Custer State Park bison or a bright yellow school bus will make nice contrasty subjects in an otherwise colorless landscape.

Using the rule of thirds — where the picture is divided into thirds horizontally and vertically and the subject placed at one of the intersections of the thirds lines — can make a nice composition.

Look for patterns and textures in snowy scenes. Tree branches, piles of rocks, animal tracks or flocks of geese against the sky all look great with a white background.

On a day when big fluffy flakes are falling experimenting with shutter speeds can be interesting. A high shutter speed will freeze the snowflakes in mid-drop. A slow shutter speed can make long blurry streaks of white against dark evergreen trees or a red barn.

Quite often the best time to shoot a snowy landscape is immediately after a fresh snow. If snow has fallen overnight and the sky clears for sunrise it can be a magical time to be out shooting. As the low angle light sparkles off the flakes that haven’t melted or packed down, truly spectacular photos can be made that won’t be available later in the day. The colder the temperature the better, unfortunately. That way the individual flakes will keep their shape longer before the sun melts them into just a snow pile.

Snow shots at Mount Rushmore can be especially tricky. Even on a cold day if the sun is out at all the snow on top of the heads begins to melt and drip down, leaving dark streaks. I always watch for predicted night time snow and a bright sunny morning, but make sure I get there very early so I don’t see faces with “tears” running down them.

Keeping your camera batteries warm can help them last longer in cold weather. When not shooting, holding your camera or the batteries inside your coat will help. I’ve heard of some photographers attaching chemical heat packets to their cameras in extreme temperatures, but I’ve never felt the need myself.

Don’t forget to keep yourself warm as you are out shooting, but have fun when the snow does fall!

Chad Coppess is the senior photographer at the South Dakota Department of Tourism. He lives in Pierre with his wife, Lisa. To view more of his work, visit www.dakotagraph.com.

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Our Old Barns

By Christan Begeman

Our barn meant many things to me while growing up in rural western South Dakota. We had a small dairy operation so heading out to the barn at least twice a day was not something I particularly looked forward to. With the AM radio blasting, we would chase, feed, wash and milk around thirty Holsteins twice a day, every day. These chores were often accompanied by dodging random kickings, avoiding filthy tail swats and weathering the annoying habits of brothers, which milking time always seemed to magnify.

For as many not-so-fun memories I have of time spent in the old barn, there are good memories as well. Taming new kittens in the hayloft as well as declaring war on mice and barn swallows armed with my Daisy BB gun top the list of fun childhood memories that I keep of that old barn. Now that I’m older I see barns in a whole new light. Literally.

As a photographer, one of my favorite things is capturing the famed South Dakota sunset. The colors in the evening sky can take your breath away. Trying to capture the beauty in a photo is a challenge. One thing that I’ve learned to make better sunset photographs is to find some sort of reference point in the foreground. Silhouettes of familiar objects like windmills or trees give the viewer a sense of how big and colorful the sky is. Lately I’ve tried adding the iconic shapes of the old, weathered barn as my reference point. Adding the”rural” feel of the barn somehow adds even more to the sunset sky and allows the viewer to infuse a wider variety of emotions and memories into the photo.

I like to bracket my photo exposures at sunset because sometimes I want more detail in the final photo than a silhouetted building or structure. Using photo editing software allows me to combine these bracketed images and render the scene more like I saw it while shooting. The camera sensor is not nearly as sensitive as the human eye and can not reproduce the kind of detail we see in real life. Using the bracketing technique can make up for some of this. In the last few years, this technique of high dynamic range or”HDR” photography has become quite popular. There is specific software out there now for this purpose only. What I do is not quite that in-depth and is more akin to having a graduated neutral density filter on my lens while shooting.

Another thing to keep in mind when shooting sunsets is to wait until all the light is gone. I have seen some of the most amazing color in the sky ten to fifteen minutes after the sun sinks behind the far hills. I’ve included three photos of a barn on the northwest edge of Sioux Falls that demonstrates how much the color can change. All three of these images were taken on the same evening in late September and over the course of the ten minutes after the sun had disappeared from the horizon. These are some of my favorite sunset shots that I captured all year. Funny how life brings you full circle. I used to dread chore time and now I can sometimes be found seeking out old barns around chore time in order to capture the beauty of a South Dakota sunset as well as a few good memories of life on the farm.

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog.

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Bright Lights and Live Music

By Chad Coppess

If you enjoy live music performances, making photographs of concerts can be a lot of fun. Bright flashing light shows, lots of motion and spectacular stage presentations seem like they were made for photography.

Whether it’s local bands playing in the city park or big name acts at the huge arenas, concert shooting can be challenging and fun.

Outdoor daytime events generally have much more even lighting, so the creativity in photography comes from choosing angles to shoot and watching for interesting expressions and poses. Not surprisingly, musicians seem to be good at expressions and poses.

Indoor and night time shows are a study in contrasty lighting and being ready for the unexpected. I usually have my camera set to automatic aperture and realize as the stage lights change quickly I am going to end up with a lot of shots that are not exposed properly. Shoot and shoot more! Not worrying about the bad shots and continuing to look for great ones is the way to go.

Some concerts specify that camera flashes are not allowed, so you’ll have to go without. In most cases that’s okay with me because a flash can wash out the dramatic effects of the stage lights anyway.

I realize that I usually have a press pass for better access than the typical concert-goer has, but it’s still possible to shoot good photos from the audience area. Look for angles where you can take photos without people’s heads and hands in the way. If you are able, move to different spots throughout the show to get a variety of shots.

Getting to know bands and artists is easier than ever these days through social media. Contacting the artists you’d like to photograph and letting them know who you are and that you are working to make them look good will go a long ways toward access. Over the years I’ve come to know several musicians as friends just by taking their photo and showing them later.

Some concerts will not allow professional style cameras, however those kinds of restrictions are beginning to disappear as more and more people are taking high-quality photos and video with their cell phones. Many bands encourage fans to post photos to their websites or Facebook pages.

More of my concert photography can be found at my blog Chad’s Concert Pix.

Chad Coppess is the senior photographer at the South Dakota Department of Tourism. He lives in Pierre with his wife, Lisa. To view more of his work, visit www.dakotagraph.com.

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Early Winter Wildlife

By Christian Begeman

Last month I was driving back to Sioux Falls from Bismarck, ND with a friend. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shape moving in the field to the north and quickly blurted out,”That’s a coyote!” in mid-conversation.

My friend looked at me and asked,”What is it with you? How can you see that?”

I didn’t really have an answer for him. We then both agreed it was pretty cool that we lived in an area that still affords the chance to view real and untamed wildlife far away from any zoo.

As far as his original question, I spent some time thinking about it and I started reminiscing about long trips across the Dakotas with my family. This was long before DVD screens and iPods kept the kiddo’s attention. One of our forms of entertainment was to be the first to spot deer and accurately get the right number of the herd before anyone else. My brother and I became very skilled at this talent as it passed the time better than fighting over which radio station to listen to (even though that still inevitably happened.)

Another family tradition of ours is either hiking or driving through, around and over the Moreau River Breaks after the family Christmas dinner. First it was with my cousins but as I got older it evolved to going out with my uncle and/or dad. Recently it has been with my brother and nephews. However it ends up, we almost always see good numbers of deer, and at the very least, tracks and signs of other interesting Dakota wildlife.

This year was a banner year for me for seeing and photographing wildlife over the holiday break. I’m not exactly sure what made this year better than others but I do have a few tips I’ve learned for you to increase your chances of spotting some of South Dakota’s abundant wildlife from your car.

Location. To see wildlife, you have to be where they are. Your best bet is in parks or wildlife production areas. Badlands National Park, Wind Cave National Park and Custer State Park all have top-notch opportunities to see wildlife all from the maintained park roads. Other areas to check out are river breaks and valleys. Wildlife need to drink so can usually be found near sources of water.

Timing. Your best bet to see animals out and about is the hours around dawn and dusk. I’m not a morning person at all, but this year alone I’ve been able to hear the coyotes serenade morning’s first light on three different occasions and it thrilled me every time.

Equipment. I realize not everybody can afford the best long lens or camera body to get close-up wildlife shots, but I highly recommend that you take time to review your own camera and make sure you understand the best setting to shoot in low light situations as well as the best shutter and aperture settings to shoot at maximum zoom. Take the time to dig out that manual or do a search on the internet to see what other users are doing. It may make the difference in turning an average shot into an amazing photo of some of South Dakota’s great wild creatures.

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog.

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Backyard Wildlife

By Chad Coppess

This time of year my thoughts go not only to holidays and family, but to photographing the wildlife in my own backyard.

I live in town, not out in the wilderness where you might expect a lot of critters roaming, but I’ve found with a few bird and squirrel feeders it’s easy to attract animals right to your camera.

With a little research you can learn what kind of feeders and food will bring what kinds of birds and animals. Squirrels tend to like corn, nuts and sunflower seeds. Different varieties of birds like various seeds.

Photographing the wildlife can be done through the windows where it’s easier to hide and not scare them away. Wearing dark colors and keeping the lights off inside the house will help as well. If you’ve got a window that opens toward the feeders your images will be clearer and sharper, but even shooting through the window glass can provide decent photos.

I realize everyone isn’t going to spend the money on the equipment to do it, but I’ve had fairly good luck setting up a remote-controlled camera on a tripod outdoors and then sitting inside to watch and fire the camera with the push of a button.

One of the tricky things is that these smaller animals tend to move quickly and not sit in one spot for too long. This makes photographing them good practice for shooting other action activities like kids’ sports or rodeo. Choosing higher shutter speeds to freeze motion and working on your reaction to interesting poses helps capture fun moments.

Birds in flight almost always make great photos, but tracking them, keeping them in focus and catching just the right position of the wings can be tricky. Practice, practice, practice! Digital photography makes it easy to shoot many photos and simply delete the bad ones. So don’t be afraid to keep trying until it all comes together in that one spectacular shot.

Another fun tip is to make sure your bird feeder is next to a bush or tree with handy branches for perching on. After you’ve watched a while you can begin to guess where the birds tend to land before approaching the feeder. Pre-focusing on that spot will give you a head start on getting a good photo. I have a small branch attached to one of my feeders for that purpose.

Have a great holiday season and if you aren’t traveling far from home for photo opportunities, take a look in the backyard!

Chad Coppess is the senior photographer at the South Dakota Department of Tourism. He lives in Pierre with his wife, Lisa. To view more of his work, visit www.dakotagraph.com.

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Frost and Flurries

By Christian Begeman

A year or two ago I was explaining to a co-worker about how I was trying to shoot really good photos of hoar frost and she quickly stopped me mid-sentence. She told me to quit making up offensive words. Apparently”hoar frost” was a new phrase to her and the way I used it did not jive with how it sounded. Pulling up the term on Wikipedia, I quickly proved to her that the phrase was real and not a cause for concern in the workplace. In fact, I think it now makes for a good topic for my latest photo column.

So far, December in South Dakota hasn’t seen much snow, at least here in the southeastern part of the state. I’m not complaining, mind you, but if you are on a quest to find holiday and/or festive outdoor photos, it can be difficult to capture the”Christmas Spirit” without the white stuff around. Here is where hoar frost can be your friend. I know most of us don’t think frost is very photogenic, particularly as we scrape a quarter-inch-thick layer from our windshields in the morning, but trust me, frost is a beautiful thing.

I find it especially nice after (or even during) one of those early winter, thick foggy days we often get here in this part of the world. The water in the air that causes the fog begins to gather on the windward side of any protruding object and soon beautiful, wonderful hoar frost appears. Recently I discovered that in some places you don’t even need fog. I happened to be below Lake Vermillion in eastern McCook County the other morning and noticed the banks of the river below the spillway were shimmering with frost in the early morning light. The running water from the spillway was moving too fast to freeze, but its vapor formed frost along the colder banks. Since the early morning sun was out, it allows me to take my macro lens out for some super close-up shots of the frost detail.

Still don’t like frost? That’s OK. Try snow flurries. Just over a year ago, my wonderful mother was able to capture a really nice shot of grouse perched in one of the evergreens in her yard in the middle of a heavy snow flurry. Ever since I saw that, I wanted to get something similar. A couple weeks ago there were some heavy snow flurries moving across the state as I traveled and as usual, my camera was at the ready and by my side. Southeast of Ft. Pierre, I drove up on a half dozen deer who wonderfully stood their ground and watched me watch them as the snow came down. All this watching allowed me to shoot a couple frames. The result was interesting. The heavy snowfall between my lens and the hilly background makes the shot look like it could have been painted by an impressionist painter of the 19th century. Well, sort of. The point is, don’t let the lack of snow or accumulated snow stop you from wandering out and looking for wonderful early winter images.You might be surprised what you find.

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog.

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Seeing Horizontally

By Chad Coppess

I think of South Dakota as a horizontal place. We don’t have many towering skyscrapers, our mountains are called”hills” and even our gigantic monuments are basically horizontally-oriented.

This means that when photographing South Dakota you can typically hold your camera in its natural position instead of”uppey-downey.” There are also a lot of places where you can take the horizontalness to the extreme and shoot very wide panoramic photos.

While it is possible to crop just about any horizontal photo into a panoramic shape, better results can be obtained by shooting several photos and”stitching” them together with computer software. Some cameras have a panoramic mode built in that will match up a series of pictures taken from one spot and combine them into one shot. Even without that feature, any camera can act as a panoramic-capturing device.

All that is required is to shoot two or more photos without moving, but panning side to side to cover a wide area and overlap each image on the sides. Obviously some subjects work better than others, but you can do this just about anywhere.

Wide angle lenses might seem like an easy choice here, but the technique actually works better with 40-60mm lens. It’s also important to keep each shot as level as possible, but they don’t have to be perfect unless you’re really going for professional results.

Once you’ve got a set of images with overlapping edges, you will need to load them into software for the”stitching” part. Many cameras now come with software that does this for you, or programs like Photoshop and Lightroom do it as well.

If the idea of taking super-wide photos appeals to you a bit more instruction and practice will be needed, but hopefully you get the basic idea.

Finding horizontal subject matter is easy here. Small town main streets, prairie landscapes, wildlife in their environment, kids on the beach and scenic vistas all make great panoramics. Thinking completely out of the box, turning your panoramic on its side is also useful if you want to photograph our few vertical things — the Campanile in Brookings, aspen trees in the Black Hills and Nicollet Tower in Sisseton come to mind. Just shoot a series of vertical shots top to bottom and stitch those together.

With a little horizontal thinking, South Dakota becomes”panorama heaven.”

Chad Coppess is the senior photographer at the South Dakota Department of Tourism. He lives in Pierre with his wife, Lisa. To view more of his work, visit www.dakotagraph.com.

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Badlands Morning

By Christian Begeman

I am not a morning person. I hate rolling out of bed before I’m ready. The snooze button was invented for people like me. I blame cows. Yes, you read that right. I blame Holstein cows to be exact. Growing up on a small, west river dairy farm will do that to you. Getting up with (or before) the sun is not much fun when it involves hard work. Ornery cows, grouchy brothers and chilly barns didn’t help much either.

Bleary eyed, thoughts of missed sleep and milking cows jumbled through my mind as I got on I-90 at Kadoka and headed west just after 5 a.m. this Thanksgiving morning. Why, you may ask? Good question. Well, I’ve noticed a lot of really beautiful sunsets this November, but with the time change, I have been routinely frustrated because I couldn’t get out and shoot them. Working until 5 p.m. puts a real damper on scouting and shooting scenes when the sun sets at 4:52 p.m.

After pondering this dilemma, a thought occurred to me. If there are wonderful sunsets then there should be equally wonderful sunrises to capture as well, plus the time change would allow me time to get up, shoot, and get to work on time. However, with my aforementioned affinity for the pillow, testing the theory eluded me. That is, until this holiday weekend. I formed a plan to drive to Kadoka after work on Wednesday, then get up before the sun and drive to the Badlands to capture a genuine South Dakota sunrise at one of the state’s most unique settings.

As the alarm went off that morning, I steeled my will and told myself that the Thanksgiving meal that awaited me would taste even better if I followed through on my plan. I was right about the food (thanks mom), but the fact that I witnessed some of the most amazing pre-dawn clouds filled with color and wonder made every minute of lost sleep worth it.

Being in the park on a holiday means there is little to no traffic. Typically I like this, however walking out alone on the Door Trail in utter darkness takes a bit of starch. The eeriness of the badlands is markedly pronounced in the faint twilight. Thankfully, it wasn’t long until I saw light in the east. Nearly as soon as the first light painted the clouds purple and red, I heard a group of coyotes serenade the morning light somewhere behind me. It was magical. I took a few shots on the Door Trail then moved to the Big Badlands Overlook for my next set of shots. The eastern sky was ablaze with color and the view to the north was also amazing. The view to the south was equally stunning. A photographer’s dream was spread out before me. Missing this would have been tragic.

Later I made my way to Cedar Pass as the sun appeared over the horizon and saw a nice group of Bighorn sheep with one of the biggest rams I had ever seen in the Badlands. I also met and talked to another photographer from Minnesota who was also out shooting the morning light. Who knew that mornings would be so rewarding? I still love my morning sleep, but after witnessing this Thanksgiving’s sunrise over the Badlands, I will make sure to make South Dakota sunrises a larger part of my photography.

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog.