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We always seem to be lucky.

On the day before our first big hike into the high country of the Sierras we decided to drive up to the Mt. Whitney trailhead to scout our hike for the next day. As we were wandering around, we bumped into someone who asked us if we were going to hike Mount Whitney today.  We said no but we are going to hike the Mount Whitney Trail tomorrow to Lone Pine Lake.  He told us to check the weather because it's supposed to rain and snow in the mountains tomorrow.  We said whaaaat?

Without really giving it a lot of thought we decided to trust this stranger and do our hike to Lone Pine Lake today, in the beautiful alpine sunshine. We spent many hours that afternoon hiking through beautiful gray granite peaks, surrounded by golden autumn color, and topping out at over 10,000 feet at the lake where there was snow on the ground from the previous week's storm.  After seven miles and two thousand vertical feet of hiking, we emerged from the trail late in the day... tired, hungry, thirsty, and cramping from our change of plans.  But it was such a great day!

The next morning before sunrise, we entered the Alabama Hills to do some photography of the Sierra Crest. We could tell it was cloudy because we couldn’t see any stars in the pre-dawn sky. As the daylight grew, we could see there were ominous clouds above the Sierras that quickly turned into a storm.  We were comfortable in the warm weather down on the desert valley floor. But minutes later, in the mountains, a storm was raging with lightning, thunder, rain, and snow. We saw lightning strike from one granite peak to another and we heard crashing thunder echo down the peaks.

And, we counted ourselves lucky that we had decided to do our high mountain hike yesterday, instead of today.

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Yes, I know it's just a postcard photo and that many people have taken this same image.  But so what... I enjoyed the entire process of making the photo - getting up before sunrise, hiking to this location and scrambling to sit in the exact one spot that would get the arch with the snow-covered Lone Pine Peak centered beneath it.  And I loved watching the light change... the magentas and blues of the dawn hour followed by the alpenglow on the peaks at sunrise.

I just came back from a week of hiking and photographing in the Eastern Sierras in California.  These are the same mountains that hold incredible places like Yosemite NP, Kings Canyon NP, and Sequioia NP.  And on the eastern side where I was, they present a formidable, steep, rugged range of mountain faces to the valley below.

We explored the Alabama Hills... a unique rocky landscape so beautiful it has been the setting for more than one hundred movies (mostly westerns).  We hiked long trails to beautiful alpine lakes over 10,000 feet.  We drove the Jeep over a narrow twisting mountain pass deep into the Sierras.  And we witnessed stunning bright yellow cottonwood and aspen trees in full autumn color.

And, to make the trip just simply perfect, it had snowed a week before we arrived.  It was the largest October snow in the Sierras in a decade.  It made the photography even more enjoyable!  Look for a few more images from the trip in the coming months!

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Several months have passed since my last newsletter.  I still enjoy photography as much as I ever have.  I just don't need it as much, now that I am retired.  I have learned there is a big difference.  When I was working, I needed photography as a balance to a demanding career.  Photography was a nice refuge, away from work and people and deadlines.  But now I spend my days doing largely what I want to do... and the need to photograph has diminished.  But not my enjoyment of it.

The grand scenes and large vistas get all the likes.  It's what everyone wants to see.  But I like the smaller scenes.  Don't get me wrong... I love being in those grand vistas and seeing them live.  But I enjoy making photographs of the smaller scenes... the overlooked, quiet images by the side of a trail.  Just a few plants... and rocks... and a splash of late day sunlight and shadow.  The spotlight of sun on the cactus is what made me stop and take notice in the image above.  And I composed it trying to create a feeling of calm in the late day light.

Who knows when you will see the next newsletter.  I have taken a good start though... I leave in seven days for a week of hiking and photography in the Eastern Sierras of California.  I may be out of practice, but I will give it my best and hopefully be able to send out something nice... not too long from now.

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As I write this, it is our fifth straight day of cloudy, damp, drizzly, rainy weather.  I heard that we have had measurable rain on twelve of the last fifteen weekends.  You would think we live in the Pacific Northwest!  It has been the rainiest spring I can remember.  I went to Scotland in May for a week of golfing... it was sunny and in the upper 60's and low 70's every day... we played in shorts every day... and it rained back home!

I made this image the morning after we attended a concert with good friends.  It was an outdoor concert.  It rained.  It seemed like a good idea when we first heard about it... go see a concert in Hershey, have a nice dinner, stay at the Hershey Hotel and enjoy the company of our friends.  But... it rained.  All day, and all night.  We wore all the rain gear we had, sat on cold metal bleachers, and got wet.  But we still enjoyed the company of our friends!

As I walked around the grounds of the hotel the next morning, everything was soggy (including me).  I saw the raindrops clinging to the leaves of this tree and it seemed to summarize both the day we had and the spring we are having.

But fear not, I hear the sun is coming out in a few days and it is supposed to be 95 degrees and humid for many days in a row!  :(

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Cherry blossoms and marble...  

...That is what I think of when I think of Washington DC in the spring. The bright clear sun, cherry blossoms at peak bloom, and the clean look of polished marble on the federal buildings.

I used to travel to the DC area regularly for work for more than twenty years and I vividly remember the spring taxi rides from Union Station.  I'd watch the buildings roll by in dappled sunlight.  I'd see the school buses emptying hundreds of kids onto the Mall for the annual spring field trips.  I'd see cherry blossoms merging with daffodils merging with tulips and all kinds of color blurring together under a clear blue sky as the taxi crossed the bridge into Virginia.

For the last five years, we have also made a spring cherry blossom pilgrimage to DC while visiting our daughter.  Forget about politics... Washington DC in the spring on a sunny afternoon is hard to beat.  It just may be the nicest city to spend a spring afternoon!

This year, we timed it perfectly… a very warm spring weekend in DC at exactly peak bloom.  We joined a hundred thousand of our closest friends and all tried to squeeze onto a narrow footpath around the tidal basin ringed by perfectly blooming pink and white cherry trees.

I made many unremarkable postcard images that day.  But the one that stands out for me is this simple scene of cherry blossoms against the back of the National Gallery of Art.  The pink of the blossoms is echoed in the pink of the granite and I love the contrast of the organic shape of the cherry tree branch against the rigid marble wall.

Happy Spring... finally!

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Joshua Tree National Park should really be called Great Rocks National Park. Sure, there are Joshua Trees there, but you can find them in other places in the Southwest. The biggest draw for me at this park are the incredible rock formations. They are unlike anything I have seen anywhere else... smooth and rough at the same time… interesting lines and cracks… and fantastic colors. There is even one section of the park called the Wonderland of Rocks!

We spent three weeks in Palm Springs California escaping the winter’s cold back east. It was a great way to spend late February and early March. Every day was sunny, warm, and beautiful! We spent a full day hiking in Great Rocks National Park (aka Joshua Tree) and I can’t wait to go back. Towards the end of the day, I took the big camera out and spent time walking around some big rocks. I came to this scene above, fully cloaked in shadow because of the lowering sun. There were no sunny highlights and so I almost didn't make an image. But I couldn't resist the shapes and colors of the rocks, even in the full shade. And that tree was the crowning touch.  How does it grow out of rock?  I can't get grass to grow in ideal conditions!

Back home, as I started reviewing the images from the trip, this one quickly jumped out to me as one of my favorites.  I had been to Joshua Tree thirteen years ago and the rocks were a main subject of my photographs even back then. We are going back to Palm Springs next February and I will spend even more time here making images. And hopefully by then, my campaign to rename this park as Great Rocks National Park (GRNP) will be complete. 

Does anyone know who I can call to have the name of a well-known area of the country changed? Has it ever been done? :)

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Happy New Year everyone!

Last summer, Marilyn and I spent two weeks in England and Scotland and we absolutely loved it. We visited London, The Cotswolds, The Lake District, and Edinburgh. And while I really enjoyed all the places we visited, my personal favorite was The Lake District in Northwest England. I had seen many photos and videos from the area and the real life experience exceeded my expectations. I loved it on the warm sunny days and I especially loved it on the cloudy, damp days as in the image above!

William Wordsworth was a 19th century English romantic poet who is most known for drawing inspiration from the natural environment, and especially from the Lake District of England. He was born in the Lake District and eventually lived near Grasmere, at Rydal Water.

The image above was made early one drizzly morning as I wondered around Rydal Water. It was quiet, except for the sound of the rain hitting the leaves and the water. Not another soul was out this morning during these conditions… exactly how I liked it. I was drawn to the long stretching branches of this tree over the water and the deep color of the wet bark against the green leaves.

I made many exposures from different angles but really liked this one in panorama format because it emphasizes the width of the tree… showing the branches reaching out more horizontally than vertically.

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Sometimes it happens... I really liked this image the second I made the exposure.  But even today, I'm not sure exactly why I like it so much, I just do.  We have a large framed print of it hanging in the upstairs hallway of our house.  The photography magazine "Elements"  contacted me after seeing this image posted in their online group and they are going to publish it in their next issue.  And it received the most feedback of any image I posted in a photography forum online.

But not everyone likes it.  A friend said it was nothing special.  He had seen several others similar to this that I have made in the past and this one just didn't do anything for him.  I won't name names... that wouldn't be right.  Let's just say... he was my college roommate, lives in New Jersey, spends too much time with us, is terrible at Pickleball, and doesn't know anything about photography!  :)

If I told you the location, you'd say "you went there and this is what you took photos of?"  The location doesn't matter for this image.  And it's not an exotic looking landscape from the canyons of Utah like the last image I shared.  It's simple, and calming.  It's the light and the gently rolling fence reaching up to the brooding clouds that makes this image interesting for me.  

I have some more images to share in the coming months as I catch up working on them and selecting the best.  I may share one more from my Utah trip in May, and I have several to share from a two week trip Marilyn and I took to England and Scotland.  And then I have some interesting local images I might share.

Seems I'm making some new images again!

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I couldn't resist sending one more blog post on White Pocket.  This is from a trip I made to Utah earlier in May of this year.  As you may recall, we drove for three hours, the last hour through deep sand, just to get to this location.  On the afternoon we arrived we were sandblasted by fifty mph winds as we hiked over the rock formation.  And we spent the night sleeping in the Jeep, wearing every article of clothing we had, barely able to keep warm.

The next morning, sixty minutes before sunrise, I started walking back towards the rock formation and saw something I had never witnessed before.  A group of eight photographers were walking out of the landscape near sunrise.  Out!  Their back turned away from the beautiful pastel colors of the rocks.  It turns out this was a group that spent the entire night on the rocks doing night sky and Milky Way photography.

I walked toward the pastel colored rock formations and made this image within twenty minutes of arriving.  The harsh sunlight of yesterday was gone and a pale blue colored the surface of the white rocks.  It was amazing how soft and different everything looked.  I made this image and then kept walking and exploring, making more images along the way.  As the sun came up, the light and colors quickly changed and it didn't take long for the harsh light of day to return.  I am starting to prefer this pre-dawn, blue hour, light.  It's very calming and peaceful.  The only problem is that it comes even earlier than sunrise!

I have released the Southern Utah Gallery Page on my website.  Click that link to get there and view a small collection of images from white Pocket, Coral Pink Sand Dunes, the canyons of Escalante National Monument, and a return hike on the Fairyland Loop in Bryce Canyon.

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In May, my friend Rich and I made another pilgrimage to Utah for some hiking and photography.  This is the seventh time I've been to Utah to hike and there are still so many things I haven't seen.  There are five National Parks in the state, but you could make an argument that the entire southern half of the state should be a national park.

Since we had been to all of the national parks in Utah, this time we concentrated on staying off the beaten path.  We traveled along dusty, sandy, one-lane roads; we hiked through canyons; we spent sunrise in the sand dunes; and we slept in our rented Jeep one night.  Why?

The centerpiece of our trip was a visit to a place called White Pocket.  And yes, I know this is really just across the border in Northern Arizona.  It took us three hours to get there and the last hour was on a narrow, very deep, sand road.  I spent that last hour gripping the wheel tightly hoping we wouldn't get stuck, and hoping the few Jeeps coming from the opposite direction would get out of my way so I wouldn't have to pull over and risk even deeper sand.

We made it by mid afternoon and arrived at the most beautiful rock formation I have ever hiked on.  Of course we had to contend with fifty mph wind gusts sandblasting our skin and making it very difficult to get sharp photographs.  We hiked, explored, and photographed in the late afternoon, culminating in the photo above.  After that, it was time for dinner in the Jeep (you guessed it... chicken in a can!) and then some sleep before doing another hike and photo session at sunrise.

After a freezing night of sleeping in all the clothing and jackets we had, a hat and gloves, under two heavy blankets, we went back out for sunrise.  The soft pale colors before the sun came up made the place look completely different.  

White Pocket is an amazing place to visit.  It's hard to get there, but so worth it!  Look for more images from the rest of the trip in upcoming blog posts.

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Today marks ten years to the day that I sent out my first photography blog post!  On December 4, 2013 I created my (then) new website and sent out the first blog post from a trip I did to Joshua Tree National Park.  I didn't have any grand aspirations.  I wasn't looking to build an audience of thousands.  I just wanted a better way of sending out occasional photographs to a handful of friends.

And over time, I used the monthly blog post as a way to force me to create more photographs locally, rather than only when I traveled to National Parks or other far away places.  And for many years it worked... Each month, I would wander around nearby places and see things in a fresh way and create a meaningful photograph.  I still did great trips to National Parks.  But I also did more photographic work locally.

And then I retired.  And somehow became even busier than when I was working!  My photography has suffered a little... I don't devote nearly as much time to creating images as I did in the past.  But, things ebb and flow and I'm sure I'll find a way soon to balance photography with all the other things we're doing.

The image above is from a recent trip to Glacier and Banff National Parks.  It's also a complete lie and fake.  No, not the color of the water.  It truly was that magical shade of brilliant blue-green.  But the peaceful and remote feeling you get looking at the image is a complete lie.  For anyone who has ever been to Lake Louise in Banff NP, you know that I was surrounded by hundreds of tourists, babies in strollers, teens taking selfies for Tik Tok, a chinese choir group singing on the south shore... with a five star resort right behind me.  It's a beautiful sight to see... but I prefer much quieter places!

Thanks for sticking around these last ten years.  And to ten more!

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We awoke to a perfectly sunny, clear autumn day outside Glacier National Park.  This was the first day of our trip and I couldn't wait to get up into the mountains.  I could see the majestic peaks rise up quickly in the distance and they got even more impressive as we drove toward the park.  But I noticed something else too... some clouds in the middle of the peaks.  Probably nothing to worry about.

But the persistent cloud shelf wouldn't leave... in fact it got larger.  And as we drove up Going To The Sun Road I started to think the National Park Service had the wrong name for this road.  Sure, they had a hundred years of experience in the park and this was my first day... but I was certain I knew better... this road should have been called Into The Clouds Road!

We gained altitude as we gained distance and it started to get brighter... and brighter.  The layers of mountain peaks in all directions were revealing themselves as the clouds and fog thinned out.  And as we continued gaining altitude, we emerged above the clouds.  The tallest peaks stuck out of a bright white foggy floor... thousands of feet above sea level.  It was time to make some photos!

Things started changing quickly.  Even though we stopped moving, the landscape changed before our very eyes.  Light rays shone though thinning fog... unseen pine trees suddenly became visible... and the foggy floor high above the valley started breaking up.  I made many images, but this is the one I liked the best.  You can see the remnants of the fog and clouds that had earlier obscured the landscape causing me to think I knew more about this park than the National Park Service.  Fortunately, they knew better than me!

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Sometimes you are simply at the right place at the right time.  All the planning in the world is of no help.  When weather changes as frequently as it does in Newfoundland, it is hard to conceive of an image in advance and then go try to make that image.  Sometimes you need luck... and you need to be at the right place at the right time.

It was a little past eight o'clock after a long day of hiking.  We were driving back to our cottage in Rocky Harbour when we saw the sky start to light up.  And... we had just driven past a scenic overlook.  What luck!!  We made a u-turn and zipped back to the parking lot of the overlook.  I worked quickly to get the camera and tripod set up since the light was changing fast.  I made several attempts and liked the image above the best of all.

At first we had the place to ourselves, but slowly a few more cars had the same luck we did.  They were at the right place at the right time too.  They quietly joined us and we all watched the light show eventually fade into early evening.

This is the last of the Newfoundland images I will share on the blog.  Please visit my Newfoundland Page to see more images (you'll see Puffins!).  I hope you enjoyed this "trip" to Newfoundland as much as we did!  We recently came back from a trip to Glacier NP and Banff... so I hope that is what you will find in the next blog post.

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Twelve days and not a single clear morning for sunrise photography.  Twelve days and very few clear evenings for sunset photography.  The weather in Newfoundland was very changeable and rendered all advanced planning almost useless.  On my photography trips, I meticulously plan sunrise and sunset photography locations.  Everything else is secondary... eating, sleeping, even bathing!  It all happens only if time permits and only after the sunrises and sunsets. 

We met our match with the Newfoundland weather.  But we adapted and it turned out to be great weather!  We had some beautiful periods of sunny skies.  We had fog.  We had clouds and even a short period of rain one day.  What we learned was that each day would start off with fog or clouds, turn sunny by late morning, then cloud up again toward sunset.  And on very few evenings, we would be treated to about five or ten minutes of absolutely magical sunset light.

In the case of the photograph above, we were on Cape Bonavista when the sunlight broke through a small gap in the evening clouds and lit up the coast with incredible golden light.  I was literally running from spot to spot to get the right composition before the light faded.  One hundred yards behind me and across the road, Marilyn and Rich were watching whales put on an amazing show... breaching, diving, blowing air and water and simply playing in front of an appreciative audience.  The light faded quickly and my work was done, so I joined Marilyn and Rich and watched the whales enjoying their evening of fun off the coast.

I'll probably share one or two more photos from our trip.  Newfoundland is not a place that many people know about.  And hardly anyone has it in their top locations to visit.  But it should be... it was simply beautiful.  We will go back.  For sure.

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I've always been fascinated by extremes.  If a place is described by a word ending in "est" it grabs my attention and almost begs me to see it!  Tallest, driest, hottest, furthest, highest... these are some of the words that describe places that appeal to me.

While planning our trip to Newfoundland, I found out that it has a location that is the furthest east in North America.  I had to see it.  Cape Spear is a section of rocky coast on the eastern edge of Newfoundland.  The sun's light touches this rocky coast before any other land in all of North America.  And what a beautiful place! 

We hiked for six miles along a thousand foot high barren headland along the coast... through small stands of stunted pines... over boardwalks through boggy marshy fields with granite outcroppings...  alongside carnivorous pitcher plants... and more.

We saw humpback whales swimming in the waters below... breaching, feeding, and blowing air as they reached the surface of the water.  We sat at North Head Point and just enjoyed the magnificent views and sounds all around us.  Definitely one of my favorite hikes in all the places I have been.  And we finished the day with five minutes of magical golden sunlight on the Cape Spear Lighthouse as the sun slipped out from under the clouds before dropping below the horizon. 

We recently returned from a twelve day hiking and photography trip to Newfoundland.  It was a fantastic trip through a rugged landscape, charming coastal villages, with warm and welcoming people.  I'll have some more images to share as I review them to find the best.  

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This blog post is coming to you on the summer solstice... the beginning of summer and the longest day of the year.  Unfortunately this also means the days will be getting shorter from now on!  :(   

Equally momentous is the fact that I was out in the landscape with my camera for the first time in a very long time.  I spent a couple days on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay near the Blackwater area.  I have been here several times and it is one of my favorite places to visit... flat, wide open, marshy areas with lots of wildlife... and hardly any people.

Those grand, wide open, flat marshy scenes require great light and interesting skies in order to make worthwhile images.  And if you live in the northeast, you know we have had terrible hazy white skies almost all spring because of the wildfires in Canada.  Hazy white skies are about the worst you can have if you are trying to make good photographs.

Luckily, the smoke does something else.  It partially obscures the sun and gives a warm, orange glow to the land at sunrise.  So, with a wake-up call at 4:45am, I went to my favorite place on Maple Dam Road and started looking.  After some time, I found the right combination of color, sky, water, and trees.  While the Jeep was parked on one half of the road, I set up the camera and tripod on the other half and created this image that I really like.  It conveys how quiet the morning felt as the sun slowly rose through the smoke filled skies.

It felt good to be out there again.  I have a couple more trips planned and some other nice images from Blackwater.  So... there just might be some regular monthly blog posts coming again!

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Why not? I had never been to a real live auction in my life. I’ve heard the stories and I had a good idea of what I thought it would be like, but I had never been to one. So when the sign went up on the property of a local farm saying the auction was next Wednesday at 9am, I thought… why not?

We arrived early and were surprised at the large parking lot in the field… with a separate area for trucks and trailers. We parked the Jeep among rows of huge pickup trucks and walked up the hill to where the machinery and farm equipment were on display. We immediately noticed the auctioneers in their black hats and coats and couldn’t wait for it to start. People greeted each other with warm recognition. Clearly we were the outsiders here… the only ones in sneakers and the only ones with a camera. Once the main auctioneer started with his sing-song melodic voice, the reality matched what I imagined auctions to be. It was a great way to spend a couple hours on a Wednesday morning.

Click on this link to see seven more images.  And be sure to click on the button with some background audio while viewing the photos.

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For regular followers of my newsletter, you will obviously see this is very different from the photographs I normally create and share with you.  As you know, my pickleball addiction has caused me to spend much less time creating new landscape images.  But it has done something else as well.  It has provided a break and allowed me to experiment with other kinds of photography.  And this has brought back some of the excitement in making images again.  Who knows if this is a real change in direction or just a temporary experiment.  Either way, its been fun!

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"Just another sunset"... that was the reaction I got from a friend when I previewed this image.  Now I know he was joking, but it really got me thinking.  Are we that jaded with images showing special moments in nature that we don't even appreciate them anymore?  Jaded means "lacking enthusiasm, typically after having had too much of something".  Do we not get excited at a spectacular sunset image simply because we have seen so many highly saturated, over-processed sunset photos on Instagram, or Facebook, or the Internet?  How about the real thing?  Are we so flooded with photos that we don't even slow down the car when we see the real sunset?

I hope not!  Each special moment is unique, and worth noticing.  We can afford a few minutes to stop the car, or stop what we are doing, and witness the beauty in something as everyday as the sunset.

We were on the gulf coast of Florida visiting close friends when I created this image.  Not only did we stop the car, but our friends purposefully made dinner reservations for thirty minutes after sunset so we would have time to stand on the beach and watch the sun sink below the horizon.  And for the second day in a row, we were on the dividing line with clear skies to the north and clouds to the south... giving us this beautiful mix of clouds and sunlight and color that simply could not be seen anywhere else.  At least fifty other people took the time to stand on the beach with us and watch the colorful ending to a beautiful winter day down south.

Thanks for bearing with me as I share just anther sunset photo.  Maybe next month I'll get back to a more meaningful image!  :)

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Happy New Year Everyone!

Here is something a little different from my normal photographs.  I've often noticed how street lights illuminate the bare trees of winter.  The light source seems to change the physical shape of the trees by revealing some branches while others remain obscured by the dark of night.  As you drive by in a car, the shapes change as your perspective changes.

I decided to make a few images to see if this might become a small project.  I was pleasantly surprised by the first image I created a few nights ago.  It looks mysterious and almost as if it's from a different world.  I like how the trees just seem to fade away into nothing as you move further from the light.  What is hidden in the dark world beyond? 

The trees in the light seem to provide a line of defense against unknown forces.  What are they protecting?  Why are these trees so important that they are illuminated?  Many questions, but no answers.  (As a side note, I posted this image in a fine art photography group on Facebook.  It received a very positive response and gained the "Editor's Applause" award for the week!  There were many comments... most unique is that from a distance, the image looks like two animals engaged in a fight.)

Stay tuned.  It may turn into an interesting small project.  Or it simply may be one nice picture taken one warm winter evening.  Either way... I'm using my cameras again!

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That’s a curious title… isn’t this a picture of three trees?  At first glance it is.  And in our fast paced world, that is all most people will give this picture and even the real scene.  A quick glance… “Oh, that’s nice”… and then move on.  But when you slow down and let the picture sink in a little, you notice the larger gap between two of the trees.  And once you see it, you cannot “un-see it”.  It very clearly changes to a picture of two trees and one tree.  

I had a little help in noticing this because I made several images of this scene over the course of several days.  I was certain that I wanted a very clear sky with no clouds.  I waited until we had two days of clear weather and went out at sunset on the first day to ensure a clear sky for the background.  And, initially I thought I was making an image of three trees in an open field.  And the first images were in fact three trees… with evenly spaced gaps between them.  But on the last day, I changed my tripod location just a little, and the gap on the right opened up.  And the picture, and story, completely changed.

I’ve often thought bare winter trees take on human shapes and emotions when you look at them long enough and let your imagination wander.  With a little creativity, you might see two parent trees wishing their child tree well as she leaves to go who knows where.  It’s a bittersweet scene… the parent trees are proud as they wave to their child.  But she already has her back turned and is striding quickly into her future.

Yes, it’s just an imaginative story.  But that story never gets created or told if I didn’t spend time shivering in a field at sunset on a cold winter day and move my tripod ten feet to the left.

It’s good to be back out in the field with my camera, with an excuse to notice the little things.  I hope you are having a great holiday season and I wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!