Tag: badlands

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Shooting the Great Wide Open

By Christian Begeman

Recently on National Geographic’s website photo section I ran across a tip that got me thinking. It went something like this: when shooting a landscape, try to think of a word or phrase that describes the scene in front of you and then concentrate on shooting a photo that obviously states that description. Seems easy enough…maybe. Then I thought to myself, how would I describe South Dakota scenery? The chorus of a Tom Petty song immediately began playing in my head.”Into the great wide open, under them skies of blue.” Seems like a pretty accurate description of our countryside to me. So, how does one shoot a photograph that says”wide open spaces”?

I hadn’t really thought of shooting landscapes like that before. My technique was to simply find a scene that looked vast and start shooting. So I started looking through some of my photos over the last couple years to see what I had that showed the big and open feel of our state. I ended up finding a few to share. In doing so, I think I stumbled upon three ways to help convey the feeling of the great wide open.

A prairie morning in Corson County.

The first thing to think about is scale. I like to find things that are relatively large (when compared to me) and place them in my photos to show how vast the area is around them. The Sage Creek Wilderness Area in the Badlands provides good opportunities to practice this technique with its buffalo herd often spread out amongst the rolling hills and creeks. Another trick is making use of a telephoto lens to pull in a distant background behind a subject that is much closer to you. Recently I photographed a white tail buck on the ridge above Lake Vermillion Recreation Area. By chance, my long lens showed cows grazing on the distant hill on the other size of the lake. This gave the photo a sense of bigness and scale that I really like.

The second thing to be aware of is spacing. It is natural to place your subject directly in the center of your photograph. I would recommend playing around with placing your object of interest in a corner and see how that changes the feel of your composition. If your subject is running or faced in a direction perpendicular to your camera, try giving them leading space to emphasize where they are going or what they may be looking at.

The third and most important thing to be aware of is the sky. This actually is very similar to the spacing point above, only emphasizing using the sky to gain that spacing. Whether it is a deep blue sky, a colorful sunset or a heavy sky laden with thunderheads, each skyscape can be used with great effect to emphasize the size of our landscapes. One word of warning, however, is a typical sunny or partly cloudy sky will be at least a couple stops brighter than the ground. So unless the sun is at your back when shooting you may be dealing with silhouettes of the objects you are shooting on the ground. There are a couple of ways to deal with this: a graduated neutral density filter or bracketing your exposures of the scene and using photo software to combine the shots later.

Now that I’ve written this, I’ve decided that this weekend I’m grabbing my iPod, cueing up some Tom Petty and heading out into the great wide open of South Dakota to practice what I preached above. We’ll see what more I can stumble upon in the journey”out under them skies of blue, into the great wide open, a rebel without a clue.”

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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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.

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Scenic: Where Characters Have a Town

EDITOR’S NOTE: The little cowboy town of Scenic, South Dakota, located on the western edge of the Badlands, received local and national attention this week when Twila Merrill, who owns much of the town, put it up for sale. The buildings may belong to someone else, but the true legacy of Scenic lies with its unique and colorful characters. Several years back, our publisher Bernie Hunhoff wrote this story about Scenic and its residents. You can find this story and more like it in our book, South Dakota’s Best Stories.

Scenic certainly can boast that it has South Dakota’s most unique main street.


By Bernie Hunhoff

“Every town has its characters, but in Scenic the characters had a town,” wrote Philip Hall in the book Reflections of the Badlands. Traders, trappers, homesteaders, drunken monkeys, saloon-keepers, missionaries, rodeo champions, bikers, gamblers and other interesting sorts have called Scenic home.

The town site below Sheep Mountain has long been a”last stop” for travelers arriving in the Black Hills. Scenic’s very first businessman, according to Hall, was bad-luck rancher Ab Jefferson. When a May blizzard pushed all of Ab’s cattle over the edge of Sheep Mountain, he decided to open a saloon. Ab drank too much of his own merchandise, and sold some of the rest to his Indian neighbors. Selling alcohol to Indians was then a federal crime, so Jefferson ended up in jail.

Brands from local ranches decorate the ceiling of the Longhorn Bar, where almost nothing has changed for many years. Saw dust is thick on the floor and patrons rest on oil barrels affixed with metal tractor seats.

All the flat land on the outskirts of the Badlands was claimed by the time Mary Hynes and her eleven children arrived. She was told that the only land not homesteaded was an inaccessible spot atop Sheep Mountain, so Mary and her boys clawed their way up the mountain, and were delighted with the view and the rich, flat grasslands. She brought her 20 cows up, staked a claim, built a sod house and made a life for herself.

Mary Avenell of Yankton, the granddaughter of Hynes, said growing up in Scenic in the 1950s meant living shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the most colorful people in North America. Mary’s dad,”Happy” Hynes, ran a bar that competed with the Longhorn. Once, her dad bought”black market” meat and he felt guilty about it — maybe because he learned that officials from Rapid City were planning to investigate.”Hap,” a non-Catholic, went to the parish priest to confess and ease his conscience. Meanwhile, her mother cooked and served all the evidence before the sheriff arrived.

Scenic is a company town these days, owned lock, stock and longhorn by a single corporation and run by a petite, pony-tailed woman who came to this windswept place against her will in 1963. Twila Merrill was riding rodeo stock, not barrels and poles that are usually the domain of the womenfolk, but the real thing: bucking broncs. She was mending from injuries in Omaha when her father, a longtime Pine Ridge Reservation trader and rancher, telephoned to say there was an emergency. Twila drove all night to get back to Pine Ridge, fearing someone had been hurt in an accident.”When I got home, Dad told me Bud (my brother) was going to show me a bar and a house in Scenic that I was supposed to buy,” recalled Twila.

Twila Merrill rode wild broncs before she “settled down” in Scenic.

Knowing her dad’s determined ways, she reluctantly agreed to take a ride.”There wasn’t even a road all the way between Pine Ridge and Scenic then. We drove through Cottonwood Creek and mud was flying everywhere,” she said.”The bar was a one-room affair with a nickelodeon. I didn’t even look at the house. Tumbleweeds were blowing down the street and Scenic was the last place in the world that I wanted to live.” She and Bud returned to their dad’s Pine Ridge ranch, where a big argument ensued. She lost the argument but gained a town. Her family’s corporation now owns all but one home in town. They also don’t own the Congregational church, the school or the fire department. But they do own the land where the rented post office is located. And they own the Catholic Church, built in 1913 and now abandoned. Twila is considering a renovation project that would include”Michelangelo-style murals” in the interior. But the town’s landmark — to some its very soul — is the Longhorn Saloon, little-changed since the 1960s when Twila’s father persuaded her to come to Scenic. The front is lined with rows of skulls from longhorn cattle. Brands from area ranches are painted on the ceiling. Sawdust covers the floor. Oil barrels with metal tractor seats serve as sturdy bar stools. Twila has tried not to change the aura of the place. However, she did have the sign changed. It once read”No Indians Allowed.”

She painted over the word”No.”

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Backpacking Sage Creek

By Carl Johnson

Photographer Carl Johnson traversed the Badlands for three days without a human encounter.


Badlands National Park is a pleasant, scenic loop away from fast-paced Interstate 90 in South Dakota. Most visitors enjoy short hikes among the formations or fossils on designated trails in the Cedar Pass area. But, unknown to many, the Badlands also offers a superb backpacking opportunity in Sage Creek Wilderness. During Carl Johnson’s month-long visit photographing the park as an artist-in-residence he took a three-day trip to explore the area. Here are excerpts from his field journal.

May 1

There is no designated trail system in the Sage Creek Wilderness; you merely need a compass, a map, and a desire to explore. At 11 a.m., I started at the Deer Haven check-in point, just behind the picnic area on the Conata Road. Deer Haven is a ledge of grass and thick juniper above the main floor of the Conata Basin. I decided to go through rather than around Deer Haven, so I checked the contour lines on my map and surveyed the land for the best way up. Each time I found myself traversing areas with abundant mule deer tracks. I followed them because I figured they knew the terrain better. Their trail led me to a clay scree field, where I crawled up about 10 feet on all fours.

Once over the top, I headed west. There were a lot of drainages coming down through the Sage Creek area, all flowing where I wanted to go, essentially forming the beginning of Sage Creek. Again, I noticed game trails, now a mixture of mule deer, bison and bighorn. To find the best way through the drainages, I followed the trails. Without fail, every time I needed to cross a drainage, creek or gorge, the game trail provided the easiest path. Where I had to cross an active stream, the game trail always led through the shallowest point.

I stopped for lunch atop a small hill adorned with interesting formations, some of which looked like pyramids made of volcanic ash. I had my first bison encounter as I photographed what looked like a crumbling wall from an old city, a geological formation called a clastic dike. The bison stared at me, and I talked to him, letting him know that I was just passing through and wouldn’t bother him. After leaving him I saw something new — several scattered rock beds of quartz and sedimentary rocks. I encountered another bison as I entered greener areas, closer to where I wanted to pitch my tent for the evening. I finally selected a spot, about six miles from where I started, on the edge of some rock beds. The sky was getting cloudy and the wind had picked up. I made dinner, eager to have a hot meal and hoping the weather would change. It was still cloudy when I finished dinner, so I waited inside the tent, taking notes on the day’s trip. The sky opened just before sunset. I worked furiously with my camera, and then retired to read my book.

May 2

Johnson’s journal describes a day’s changing light as the sun rises and moves across the Badlands sky: “It washed across the landscape like a painter’s brush, selecting pastels to adorn the scene.”

When I arose at 5 a.m., the skies had cleared and there was a spirited exchange of howls and yips from coyotes to the west. I grabbed my camera gear and headed to a small hill I identified the previous day as a good spot to catch the morning light. In the distance, I spied three bull bison sitting on the same grass ledge where I saw them yesterday. There was another large bull about a half mile to the west — grazing in the middle of my planned path. Just before the sun crested, I saw a pink glow on the ridges and formations to the south. As the light climbed, it washed across the landscape like a painter’s brush, selecting pastels to adorn the scene. I kept working with the light until its magical golden hue disappeared, then I went back to camp, made breakfast and was on the trail by 7:50.

Fortunately, the large bull was no longer on my path, and I found myself meandering along a landscape shaped by drainages and a creek that frequently changes course. Eventually I left grassy mesas and a stark, white clay terrain, littered with rock piles and slides, washed and wiped over the centuries by flash flooding. Bizarre pedestal formations popped up intermittently, a reminder of the strangeness of this place.

I finally got around the end of an east-west formation I had paralleled all day and worked my way southwest. I found myself in the middle of what appeared to be the bison freeway. Sets of heavily traveled trails, exhibiting tracks from hundreds of animals, littered this gumbo clay area. By 1 p.m., I found a flat, grassy table — almost a small mesa — about 30 feet wide, 60 feet long, and 50 feet high. Even though it was early, I had found a good spot and did not feel like hiking in the heat. I set up camp, took off my boots and crawled inside my tent.

I loved the rocks on that table. There were several large and unusual boulders covered with a variety of lichens, predominantly a vivid orange. As the evening concluded, I played the same song and dance with the skies. From hot, sunny and clear, it had turned cool and windy with thick, scattered clouds. I worked with those clouds and found some breaks of sunlight to photograph the landscape. I retired my camera for the evening and went inside to read. Sleep came as I lay there, completely alone in this broad landscape, listening to the soft sounds of the winds, accented by the occasional yip or howl of a coyote.

May 3

Realizing that light would not hit as early here as yesterday, I slept in until 5:15 a.m., and made breakfast while waiting for sunrise. Again, it was a clear morning with nary a sign of clouds, and I enjoyed the rare opportunity for solitude in a majestic setting.

By 7:05, I was on the trail toward Sage Creek Campground. Within a mile of my final destination, I stopped for a drink. Soon I realized that I was looking upon a large prairie dog town. What clued me in was the cacophony of back and forth chattering among the mounds. After my snack, I passed through the town and noticed that one prairie dog must have picked a bad time to come out of his hole — bones were scattered around one of the openings. I took some photos, and then hiked to a small grassy hill, where I spooked several grouse. The encounter highlights how well camouflaged these birds are; I could not see them at all until they flushed and headed southwest.

I was on my final approach. There was a hill I had been hiking toward for the last few miles that I thought was the last rise before the campground. I was about to discover the accuracy of my navigational skills. Around noon I reached the top of the hill, looked down to the left and saw the campground right where it should be. Then I saw two large bull bison in the middle of my path. I gave them a wide berth, watching them as they watched me, and then crossed the creek using a game trail that crossed a shallow, gravel bar area. I noticed people camping, so I chatted with them while waiting for my ride. In three days, I had not encountered anyone. Then at the end of my journey I found a man and his son enjoying the quiet and solitude that other visitors miss. I recommend taking time to do what 90 percent of park visitors do not — get off the road. You will discover a Badlands you have never visited.

EDITOR’S NOTE ñ This story is revised from the May/June 2010 issue of South Dakota Magazine. Carl Johnson was the Badlands National Park artist-in-residence in May of 2009. He lives in Anchorage, Alaska with his wife, Michelle. Visit Carl’s website to see more of his photography. To order this back issue or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.