Dave Arntson : Photojournalist North Dakota & Minnesota Photojournalism, Editorial and Commercial Photography701.371.7363
west fargo, n.d.
Archive for March, 2009
Red River Flood – Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Kris Kerzman described today as a floozard – flood and blizzard all at once. We multitask up here.
I spent part of the afternoon out of the floozard with Sarah Kjos and Robby Njos in their home along the Red River in Moorhead. Their dike is right next to their home, so close it’s under the [...]
Red River Flood – Sunday, March 29, 2009
Early Sunday morning a dike at Oak Grove was breached and the school (which my nephew attends) was flooded but due to the massive emergency response damage was limited to a few buildings. The rest of the community was relatively calm as people continued to watch their dikes and waited for the river to drop [...]
Red River Flood – Saturday, March 28, 2009
(Note: I was almost done typing this when I realized I had the wrong day in the headline. I think there are a lot of people in the area that can relate to that.)
Saturday was calm. While there were occasional rushes by rescue personnel with lights and sirens to shore up a leak, the dikes [...]
Red River Flood – Friday, March 27, 2009
Early morning Friday was a far cry from the scene on Thursday. Congested roads and stalled traffic gave way eerily quiet streets. Swings through Moorhead, downtown Fargo, Meadow Creek and the Amber Plains subdivision in the morning found few people out activily fighting the water but after Thursday’s marathon who would be surprised.
The volunteers in [...]
Red River Flood – Thursday, March 26, 2009
An optimistic day of sandbagging was ruined by a new, record-setting crest prediction of 42 feet. Volunteers are at it again to try and raise the dikes on the southern end of town to 44 feet in 24 hours.
Thursday I started in Meadow Creek where they were busy trying to get the dikes to 43 [...]
Red River Flood – Wednesday, March 25, 2009
I spent the entire day in Oxbow, N.D. just south of Fargo photographing the deteriorating situation. The water came up higher and faster than expected and several people need emergency evacuations in the morning. The command center was the Knickerbocker Liquor Locker in Hickson (literally on the other side of the road from Oxbow) which [...]
Red River Flood – Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Tuesday started out sunny unlike the previous two days but the urgent nature of the flood fight was still the same. The Rosecreek and Meadow Creek neighborhoods raised dikes to protect their areas from the rising water of nearby coulees. Sandbags from Sandbag Central and the Fargodome were still delivered with lights-and-siren police escorts throughout [...]
Red River Flood – Monday, March 23, 2009
Sandbagging moved into high gear on Monday across the area with massive amounts of clay, sand and sandbags being moved around the community. In Fargo trucks loaded with sandbags were given lights-and-siren escorts by police cars from Sandbag Central to the southside of town. Scores of students from Shanley and Fargo South high schools built [...]
Red River Flood – Sunday, March 22, 2009
Sunday was a massive day of preparation in Fargo-Moorhead. On the North Dakota side flatbed semi-trucks, city and National Guard trucks delivered palette after palette of sandbags to residents along the Red River. City buses delivered volunteers to private homes to help build dikes. With rain moving in and an earlier record-breaking crest expected the [...]
Red River Flood – Friday, March 20, 2009
After a wet fall, record snowfall in December and March blizzard the Red River is expected to reach levels similar to the flood of 1997. Massive preparations are underway to fight the flooding including the filling of sandbags by volunteers and dike building.
Mid-America Aviation
Mid-America Aviation in West Fargo, N.D. remanufactures airplane parts for military and commercial clients. They are a small but very interesting operation. These photos are for the North Dakota Trade Office.
Foot and Ankle Clinic
A local video production company was shooting a television commercial for a Bismarck foot and ankle clinic and I was hired to get stills for complementary print pieces. The location was the Fargo Theatre and there were movies scheduled to be shown that evening so we had a hard deadline to be done. The shooting [...]
Smoke-Free Press Conference
These are a couple of PR photos for Clay County Public Health when they held a press conference to promote a new no smoking initiative.
Hotel Donaldson
We recently did a shoot at the Hotel Donaldson for their web site. They needed updated room photos along with some people photos. We’re going to be doing more but the first people shot we took care of was the hot tub on top of the building.
Britta and I used three lights: a main light [...]
March Storm
We had a doozy of a blizzard this week that left some impressive drifts. Unfortunately this wasn’t even our worst storm of the year. Yikes. Here’s a couple of photos of my daughter by the drifts around our house.
After the Goal
I think reaction shots can be some of the best photos in all of sports. This is after a keeper allowed a goal during a shootout.
Do the Right Thing
One of my worst days as a photographer was when I got behind a high-speed chase of a stolen car in Oshkosh, Wis. A teen had stolen his mother’s car that morning and he and a friend had been hiding out all day. In the early evening they were spotted by the police and the [...]
Deadline Riot
The universities in Wisconsin are known for the occasional overly-enthusiastic gathering (or riot, if you’re in law enforcement) and a Packers victory on Monday Night Football is as good of an excuse as any.
The game ended late as usual and the students at UW-Oshkosh began to pour into the street to celebrate. Since there had [...]
Rural Farmer
The Forum ag reporter and I spent a growing season in the late ’90s following a farmer near Casselton, N.D. He is just an average farmer with an average amount of land who is trying to make ends meet. At the time grain prices were low so earning enough money just to pay for health [...]
Spacemen
This is one of my favorite spot news photos because of the humor. There was a chlorine leak at the water treatment plant in Menasha, Wis. and all the local media descended on the scene. The rest of the competition stayed on the same side of the river as the plant and only had a [...]