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These photos were supposed to go up back in May, and I was going to be all cute like “April showers bring May flowers,” but then I forgot about them and here we are, two months later… lost without a corny joke to make.

Isn’t it bizarre that butterflies survive by licking flowers? That’s really what it comes down to. Except when Wikipedia tries to sneak by incendiary information like this when nobody’s looking:

Butterflies feed primarily on nectar from flowers. Some also derive nourishment from pollen, tree sap, rotting fruit, dung, decaying flesh, and dissolved minerals in wet sand or dirt. 

I’m sorry, but did you say decaying flesh? Oh, ok, you did. Just wanted to make sure of that before I added butterflies to my ever-growing list of mundane horrors.

Yeah, so… there are close shots, and then there’s this close shot. Obviously, it would have been better if in the adjacent shot that ambulance had been the Ecto-1. Not that the Ecto-1 has anything at all to do with orchids, I just really like Ghost Busters.

In other news, the arachnid invasion in my apartment is unrelenting. It’s not obvious what they want, aside from lots of bugs, and I don’t really mind the company, but the statistical likelihood of me inhaling at least a few of these little fuckers in my sleep has got to be skyrocketing by the day. And the thought of that just makes my insides, um, crawl

So yeah, if you never hear from me again, you know what happened.

And so begins a very long, and very gratuitous series of photography posts chronicling my recent camping trip to Nevers Dam in St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin. It’s going to be very hot, it’s going to be very uncomfortable for everybody.

These are going to be some heavy-assed posts because I shot approximately a billion photos on this trip and I’m really self-indulgent. Depending on what you come to this site for, that might work in your favor. And if not, I’m confident that one day, after much time and awkward prodding has passed, you will come to love me. It works like that in arranged marriages, anyway.

Shortly after we showed up, the sky starting looking kind of creepy.

As it turns out, a pile of really mean thunderstorms moved in, with very tornado-friendly conditions in tow. Now, setting up a tent in gale-force winds is not exactly an argument-free undertaking at this point. Luckily, we’re told that tornadoes “tend” to veer away from rivers and other bodies of water. Now, waterspouts on the other hand…

More to come. You know where this is going. That’s right, PICTURES OF CLOUDS AND SUNSETS bitches!

Boring photos of clouds post #531.

Now that the worst week of my life has come to an end, I can start sifting through the pile of photos I snapped during my camping trip two weeks ago. These are just a few taken on the bus ride to Wisconsin, which, while lengthy, was a relatively painless journey as budget bus rides go. Nobody barfed. Nobody got stabbed. Nobody installed a bomb that would detonate if the bus’s speed dropped below 50 miles per hour. All in all, pretty successful. The drive back… now that’s a horror story for another day.

All credit for these two really should go to the tint on the bus windows. What an artiste.

Some natural phenomena just never stop impressing me, no matter how routine they may be. Lightning, rainbows, rays of sun shooting out from behind clouds… the simple beautiful things that were there long before the concept of beauty was even created. Mamma Nature just knows how to keep a man interested, what can I say?

One of my earliest motivations to get into photography was seeing awesome, evil storm clouds on the horizon and wishing I could capture that image forever… that I could create a memory that would never fade (unless some jerk blows up a beer next to your camera). So I guess it’s no surprise that I’m still taking pictures of the sky, 7,000 shots of the sunset later. Sure, I’ve been accused of living with my head in the clouds before, but as far as I’m concerned, that isn’t such a bad place to be.

Aside from the fact that it waited until the exact moment I had to leave my apartment to start pouring, last night’s epic thunder showdown was well worth it if only for the view afterwards. Although, a tornado touching down a couple neighborhoods over isn’t anything to sneeze at, either — in fact, the proper protocol in such a situation is to go chase after the, um, twister in trucks and try to shoot ping pong balls into it in order to develop a more accurate early warning system before your slippery rival does it first.

Since I moved to the Midwest, I’ve learned that the creepy, blank green horizon spewing lightning every half minute that usually portends a typical tornado apocalypse always gives way to a really fucking incredible sunset. I guess all the death and fear that get stirred up into the air make for optimal atmospheric conditions for a jaw-dropping evening sky.

For the record I barely touched these in Photoshop. That color is accurate. Can you believe how weird the world would have been like for our grandparents before color was invented? It must have been so moody.

And I know I take too many photos of the sunset as it is, but really, how could you say no to this? You’d have a better chance of convincing me you don’t like to eat pizza. And if you sincerely don’t like to eat pizza… I’d like you to back away very slowly… no sudden movements! …Robot.

Chicago’s been having some weird weather for the past couple months. Winter ended abruptly in March with a series of 80 degree days, and it’s been a montage of wind, thunderstorms, and rapidly changing temperatures ever since.

Good thing that whole global warming thing turned out to be liberal propaganda, huh? And I mean, who really even cares if your kids know what a polar bear is, anyway? Fuck, our generation’s kids probably won’t even know what “outside” is.

We used to worry about acid rain. Now it seems more appropriate to expect shimmering, multi-colored globs of oil to fall from the sky. 70,000 barrels of it are flooding into the Gulf every day, adding up to the equivalent of an Exxon-Valdez tanker every four days.

There has never been an oil spill this big and this deep before. And the fact that no governmental agencies or even BP are aware of how much oil this well was able to put out sure strikes me a bit oddly. But let’s say there isn’t any kind of conspiracy here (even though there probably is) — just chalk it up to plain old greed and idiocy and it’s still fucked six hundred ways to Armageddon.

Our future is getting strangled by a blackened claw, dripping in fossil fuels, reaching out from the darkness of the 19^th century and dragging us back into the hellish depths of dirty industry. Basically, think of Lord of the Rings when the Balrog defeats Gandalf — the greedy dwarves dug too deep and now look what happened!

In the end, the Earth will be fine. It’s us humans I’m worried about.

These semi-abstract close ups of sunsets are probably pretty boring to some people, but I am obviously not one of those people. There are those who may feel that I’m only capturing a background image without a proper subject. But to me, a sunset is a fantastic subject — always moving, always changing, always different than the last. In fact, they’re one of my (again, obviously) favorite subjects, and I’m not just saying that because I dislike almost every person I’ve ever met.

Oh smog, how boring and healthy (and therefore even more boring) the sky would be without you.

Maybe as boring as saying the word “boring” six seven times in a single post?

Or maybe… as boring as these photos?

I believe these are Stratocumulus clouds, but I could be wrong. Did you know how fucking intense clouds are? Check the Wikipedia page on cloud types, and you’ll feel like an idiot… assuming you aren’t a meteorologist. There’s just so much to know about clouds!

It looks like the sky is engulfed in flames!

I love watching the sunset, the way the colors change — and the clouds as well if it’s windy or stormy — all so quickly. Maybe it’s trite and it’s definitely corny as shit, but you might as well look at something beautiful everyday, right?

If you’ve been following along, you might have already picked up on my tendency to take pictures out my window. It’s always been a natural subject for me really… I spend so much time looking out the window as it is. And there’s always something new anyway.

The sky in general just has so much to offer.

I once heard that rays of sun through the clouds like that were called “the hand of god” — although that might have just been part of the Christian brainwashing I underwent during my younger years. Anyway, NASA being the good scientists they are, found the real God’s hand in space earlier this year, which is great, because now we can hunt him down and kill him!

‘Hand of God’ X-ray nebula - photo via NASA

However, it turns out that NASA scientists estimated the moment depicted in that photo actually happened 17,000 years ago. Who knows where God could be now? Damn it!