Welcome to Dodge City

Howdy!

Cowboys in silhouette welcome you to Dodge City, Kansas, as seen during our recent visit.

For the long Easter weekend, we needed somewhere to go with Jaylin. Our plan was to leave here after Laura got home from school on Thursday, pick Jaylin up on Friday, and go somewhere. We had spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Wichita, so we were looking for something like that, but different.

We looked at maps and websites to see what we might find. In that search, Dodge City caught our eyes. It sounded interesting, and we knew just enough about it to know that there was some history there that we could discover, which was just our thing. Plus, it was only a couple of hours away from Sterling, where we would pick up Jaylin. So it fit our desires perfectly!

As is typical for us, we did not make all that many plans ahead of time. Laura found an Airbnb for us to stay at, and we identified a couple of things we would like to see, but that was about it.

We Arrived!

As you can see from the photo above, we did indeed get to Dodge City. I guess maybe I should have put a “spoiler alert” before it. Sorry about that.

Anyway, we had a pretty good time while we were there. We learned a lot about the history of the city. And we learned a little about Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson (real people) and Matt Dillon, Miss Kitty, and Festus (not real people).

And as you might guess, I took lots of photos of the things that we saw while we were there. I plan to share those over time here, although I do not expect it to be a full-blown trip report or anything like that. Just some photos and some stories to go with them.

As for this photo of the Dodge City welcome sign, Laura actually took it. We had seen the sign on the first night when we arrived and thought it looked interesting. Unfortunately, there really was not a place provided for us to stop and take a photo of it, although we talked about how it would make a good photo. A couple of days later, we had made a side trip and were coming back into town, and I knew we were going to pass the sign again. I pulled the car off onto the shoulder and handed my camera to Laura, who rolled down the window and took the photo.

To me, the color palette in this photo perfectly captures what we saw in Dodge City. Brown, dusty prairie grass, with a little green here and there. Beautiful blue sky. And rocks and western stuff. Once again, just what we wanted to see.

It was a fun adventure for us, maybe more for two of us than for the third one of us. But we had a good time, and we enjoyed getting to just do things together as a family. It was good.

Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times in every way. The Lord be with you all. - 2 Thessalonians 3:16

About the Photo

I already said some about the taking of the photo above. But I can also add that for this trip I never changed from the 35mm prime lens. That put the sign a little far away from the car window, so I cropped the photo slightly to get rid of some of the extra space.

I also tweaked the colors slightly to give them a little bit more of a “western” feel than how the photo looked out of the camera. That tweaking also compensated some for the direct sunlight, which washed out things just a bit. As I mentioned above, this was pretty much how we saw things. It is sometimes interesting how the camera does not quite see things the same way that your eyes do.

Photo: A single Raw exposure, processed in Luminar Neo. Read more about photography tips, photo software, camera gear, and more at Steve’s Photography Tips.
Camera: Sony Alpha A7 II
Lens: Rokinon 35mm f/1.8
Date: April 17, 2022
Location: Dodge City, Kansas