Michael Farrell is the co-founder of the Platte Basin Timelapse project. He is also a 51-year veteran of public media, 49 of which have been spent in the production and management of documentaries about the culture, history and environment of Nebraska and the Great Plains for Nebraska Public Television (now NPM). His areas of content specialization include history and humanities documentaries as well as programs about diverse topics such as rural and environmental issues, the fine arts, opera, ballet, jazz and blues. His most well-known award-winning production was In Search of the Oregon Trail, which aired three times on prime-time national public television and was one of the top ten most-watched PBS programs in its premiere year of 1996. His 90-minute special The Platte River Road won the coveted National Cowboy Hall of Fame award in 1992. From 1998 to 2009, Farrell led the Nebraska Public Television Network’s television production team managing local, regional and national projects. Beginning in 2006 he also established an internship program at NET for students from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Now through PBT the program offers paid professional experience to over a half a dozen undergraduate students per year. Farrell also teaches classes in documentary and visual story-telling. Farrell, an accomplished still photographer, has had his work appear in numerous one-person museum and gallery exhibitions as well as in Nebraska History magazine and NEBRASKAland Magazine. He has authored four photo books with accompanying essays. His degrees include an M.S. - Illinois Institute of Technology in Visual Communications and A.B. in Fine Arts (Graphic Design and Photography, Art History minor) - Indiana University. He lives in Lincoln with his partner Lynne Ireland and has three grown children and two granddaughters. Contact him directly at mfarrell.1st@gmail.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaelfarrell47/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michael.farrell.photography/ Websites: https://michaelfarrell.com/ http://www.ninemileprairie.com/ https://boalps.com/ https://the-stoneman.com/
Michael's Work
Posted on January 16, 2018
It is Spring 1975. It is just coming on dawn at Crow Dog’s place on the White River. I am trying to get some sleep after being up for the last two nights. I am laying on the frosty grass half tucked in under my Chevrolet Vega wrapped in a sleeping bag – but the […]
Posted on August 11, 2015
____________________________________ Cheesman Dam At the end of the 19th century Denver was reaching the half-century mark. By 1900, the former mining camp founded in 1858 at the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte River had grown to 130,000. Denver’s early efforts at providing safe and reliable water first depended on water taken directly […]
Posted on November 11, 2014
We all know that water flows downhill, seeking its own level, flowing to the sea. Water is a primary force shaping our planet and environment. It will erode rock, move soil, and, in its frozen form as glaciers, sculpt mountains, valleys, and plains. I’ve been traveling upstream on the North Platte River through western Nebraska, […]
Posted on September 12, 2014
Just to the north of my hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska, is a patch of undisturbed tallgrass prairie, one of the largest of the few remaining remnants of an ecosystem that once covered the eastern reaches of the Platte River Basin. Since 1983 this 230-acre tract has been owned by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, but university […]