South dakota badlands Photo Workshop (part i)

*The jagged teeth of the Badlands reach for the clouds and sometimes catch them. Double exposure photograph, 2023.*

The first time I experienced the South Dakota Badlands was around 1991.

It was also the first time that I had leapt the Mississippi rivers’ boundary to the west. I was on my way to Oregon to start my real life. Growing up in Ohio was great. The East of the Mississippi was great. But I was now in my early 20’s and had a thirst for adventure. Something new and different.

So, with a few bucks in my pocket and a VW Fox Wagon loaded to the ceiling with everything I owned I headed west, as a young man. I made it all of 30 miles of this 3000 mile journey, before I hit a doe, a deer, a female deer (or as it were, a doe hit me) and shattered my passenger window and tactfully removed the rear view mirror on that side of the car. I guess I didn’t need that mirror anyway, as I was NOT looking back, NOT turning back and NOT going back. Hell, I’m not sure I even slowed down. Besides, how bad could it be to travel 3000 miles in October without a side window.

Side note: I damn near froze to death crossing the Rockies!

Another Side note: the doe bound away without as much as a limp after hitting me.

And one more side note: The night I finally arrived in Oregon, I stayed with a friends parents and woke up in the morning to find my car had been ransacked and EVERYTHING I had owned was gone. AND they broke my other window to get in! (but that is another story. On with the Badlands)

*Crossing the Mississippi for the 36th time, 2023*

That first visit to the Badlands National Park stayed with me, became a part of me.

What is it about this place that gives me such wonder? The beauty in its vastness? Of course. Its strange and unusual landscape? for sure. The diverse wildlife? Yes. But there was something else. Something with depth, something tangible, something enlightening. This was a place that I seemed to find deeper meaning in and of myself. It was more of a feeling than a particular thing. A feeling that I could never find words for and to this day, they still elude me. This is my solitude.

I came here many times after that first visit to renew my sense of wonder and faith in myself and humanity.

The destination used to be everything. I would hop in my car and drive as straight and as fast as I could to get here. Over the years of road tripping out here I have let go of that notion, learning that the journey can be equally rewarding.

*A friend along the road, 2022. JD taking Betty for her last road trip.*

*55 Stay alive, 2019. Driving through the night.*

Lightning and tornado forming through the windscreen while driving. Don’t text and drive. Stay safe, 2023.

It wasn’t until 2019 that I began to bring my photography workshops to this very personal place.

I had been teaching workshops all over the world for many year prior, but this place seemed off limits. I think maybe I thought of it as an invasion of my solitude.

But things had started to shift in what and how I was teaching.

I was helping others get to the root of their artistic being. I was asking them to dig deep, be vulnerable, and soul search with great focus. What a better location to tease this out of them than here in the South Dakota Badlands.

Here are a few of my favorite photographs over the years.

Lots more to come in Part II of this post.