It is September 2006 that is probably the most responsible for this website. It was a Sunday that I decided to go to Crex Meadow in Grantsburg, Wisconsin. My goal that day was to take pictures of birds with my new souvenir purchased 2 months earlier at B&H photo in New York City. Everyone needs a souvenir, right? My souvenir just happened to be a Canon 5D DSLR, a 12.8 megapixels, full frame sensor camera.

Heading north on Interstate 35, I took the highway 70 exit. A right turn would take me to Crex Meadow, but there was a sign pointing to the left that said Northern Minnesota Draft Horse Association Fall Field Day. I thought about it for a minute and then turned left. Now keep in mind I had planned for a day in the meadow, you don't need much money in the meadow. I had my credit card and about $2.00 in my pocket. When I got to field day location (Heidelbergers in Pine City) I noticed they were collecting admission fee. I was pretty certain that they wouldn't take a credit card and equally as certain that it would cost more than the $2.00 in my pocket. A quick search of the floor of my van and the ashtray got me up to about $4.50. I was sure it would be at least $5.00. It was finally my turn to pay and I asked the big question, "How much?". The answer caused me to smile from ear to ear, "Three dollars", they said. I was in.

I spent the whole day, walking around and taking pictures. I didn't know why, but I couldn't help but smile. It was the best time I'd had in a long time. I looked at my pictures when I got back home and really like some of them. I took a cd of my favorites to ProEx to have them printed. As much as I liked them, I knew they would mean more to the teamsters than they did to me. I knew then I would be attending the 2007 Fall Field Day to see if I couldn't find the teamsters and give them a picture.

I tried to remember the name on the sign so I could try to find out where the 2007 Field Day would be. I remembered enough to find when and where I could spend another day with those huge horses. This time I brought enough money to get in and even enough for a hot dog. I am shy so to do what I was about to do was tough-track down people I didn't know and ask if they wanted a picture. Luckily my first stop was at the Northern Minnesota Draft Horse Association trailer. That is where I met Josie Stang and Joann Holthaus. I told them my plan and asked if they knew any of the people in my pictures. They could recognize most of them and pointed out where they were. Josie told me that I should join the club. She said it would easy to find the teamsters I couldn't find at the annual February Meeting.

I went to that meeting and came with a surprise. I had read that Door Prizes were welcome and could be dropped off at the door when arriving. In the time since September I had bought an Epson 3800 large format printer. This printer can produce images up to 17 x 22 inches. I went through and printed a few of my favorites from the 2007 Field Day, but how many 17 x 22 prints of draft horses does one house need. I brought the pictures to the meeting to give away as door prizes. When the members saw them some wanted to know if I had any pictures of their teams and where they could see them. I tried to figure out how I could show pictures on my computer to people that I only saw at mos 3 times a year. I started to look a image hosting sites and settled on Flickr. I soon found the free version confining so I signed up for Flickr Pro.

It worked great for me, but it was still hard for people to find the sets of images they were looking for and to give the address of specific sets (they are very long). See I told you it was mostly because of September 2006 that I started this website. I wanted to make it easier for people to remember the address they could find pictures I had taken.

More to come...