Mt. Rushmore from Iron Mountain Road

South Dakota

August 20, 2007 at 10.46am CDT; Pentax K10D; Exposure: 0.004 sec (1/250); Aperture: f/5.6; Focal Length: 120 mm;
ISO Speed: 100

Mt. Rushmore seen through a one lane tunnel on Iron Mountain Road

It was a very smoky day because of forest fires in the western USA.

August 20, 2007 at 9.12am CMT
Camera: Pentax K10D
Exposure: 0.004 sec (1/250)
Aperture: f/6.7
Focal Length: 200 mm
ISO Speed: 100

I like trains and pictures of old trains, particularly nice images of the steam locomotives. I can remember — barely — when some steam engines were still used on the Union Pacific.

I also like to find large old images where one can see a lot of detail when you look close. I’ve cropped this one several times to show all of the people in the image.

“Giant Bluff.” Elk Canyon on Black Hills and Ft. P. R.R.
A wood-burning locomotive with four cars, on a track below a cliff; several people are posing in front of the train.
1890.
Grabill, John C. H., photographer.
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsc.02546

Buffalo at Custer State Park in South Dakota.

They once darkened the hills and the plains of the American West. The buffalo (American bison) herds of today are but a meager shadow of what they once were.

In Custer State Park the size of the herd is managed to ensure that it does not grow larger than the park natural resources can support. Each year, the park holds a Buffalo Roundup Day in September. The entire park herd of about 1400 buffalo are moved to the buffalo corrals where they are sorted. All calves are branded and the female calves are tested for brucellosis.

Most of the buffalo are released back into the park. Those that are not released will be sold at auction in November. All animals that will be auctioned are tested for tuberculosis and brucellosis.

We visited the park several times during our week in the Black Hills of South Dakota and saw over 1000 buffalo — we actually keep track of the number of large animals that we see during a trip. We didn’t double count as we saw part of the herd in different locations.

August 20, 2007 at 2.03pm MDT
Camera: Pentax K10D
Exposure: 0.003 sec (1/350)
Aperture: f/8
Focal Length: 18 mm
ISO Speed: 100
flickr

This flower was in the the Adolph C. and Eugenie Mayer Bolz Conservatory, in the Orbrich Botanical Gardens in Madison, Wisconsin. We visited on December 22, 2007, the first day of winter.

Camera: Pentax K10D
Exposure: 0.05 sec (1/20)
Aperture: f/4
Focal Length: 90 mm
ISO Speed: 400

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