And You See???

I love creating abstracts with my photos.  Now that I have these new lenses, I doubt I ever look at the surface of a lake the same way again.  I’m always flabberghasted at what I see floating around on the surface…and I let my mind just wander through the image as I try to see things in a new and different way. 

Here’s my new favorite…I caught it last night right before the sun started to set.  I did a little “channel mixing” in Photoshop (just to see what it would do) and ended up falling in love with the teal color I created with the CMYK sliders.  

A Midwinter Night’s Dream

I must be in a really “reflective” mood right now.  I seem to always end up at the water’s edge, right as the sun is setting, tree branches bouncing around on the surface of the water, with an image looking like something out of a movie.

And I keep wondering…haven’t I seen this all before in a dream?

Icy Hot

True, this ‘icy hot’ won’t loosen any tense muscles but, if you stare long enough, it does help unwind the mind. 

Witch’s Fingers

Some trees invite you to come sit in their branches.  Others become home for the nests of birds and squirrels.  Some provide shade when the summer sun is beating down.  Others color the landscape with their beautiful autumn leaves.

But some…

Some seem almost scary with their branches long and gnarled like a witch’s fingers, stretching down to scratch against your bedroom window and sending you shivering in fright beneath the covers… 

Inlaid

It warmed up into the upper 30’s today so, out I went, looking for any excuse to get a few new images. 

Even with the warmup, I looked around and still saw plenty of signs of how brutal this winter has been for the Midwest.  I just don’t recall ever seeing the lakes this frozen over before. 

Luckily, spring is just a few weeks away and I can’t wait to turn my camera from all this snow and ice to the new growth of flowers, grass, and trees.  But, when in Rome…

Mallard Conversion

Wow…I’m posting back-to-back black & white prints.  Now that’s a first.

But this one, although beautiful in its original color version, came into its own once I cropped away almost all of it and really dug into the pattern of those beautiful mallard feathers.  It was then that I heard it screaming out, “Convert me!”  

I was only too happy to oblige…

Mesmerized

There’s something about the reflection of items off a body of water that just mesmerizes me.  I managed to add several new images to my collection this past weekend - some with deep blue tints, some with a steel liquid grey cast, some with the sun setting across them, some with trees reflected downward…all of them lovely to sit and gaze upon. 

One of my favorites was this one.  There’s just something about the pattern of the brown tree limbs swirled onto the surface of the blue lake water that draws my eyes in and leaves my mind skimming across the silkiness of the water’s surface.

 

The Edge

This weekend got up into the 40’s so much of the snow and ice from earlier in the week began to melt.  I spent a few hours on Friday and Saturday at a local park, just happy to be out in the sun again. 

This was one of my favorite abstract images both because of the lines and the colors.  I hope you like it, too.

Peggy

Mother nature…she can be a bit of a hard ass.

Meet “Peggy.”

She lost her entire right foot somehow. 

A fight?  Disease?  A trap? 

I have no idea…

But tonight, as the other geese all squirmed in my presence, Peggy and I got better acquainted.  By the end of the afternoon we were BFF.  Tomorrow, I’m going back to this same lake to take her some bread crumbs and dried cereal.

Mother nature might be a hard ass but, lucky for Peggy, I’m not.   

Two By Two

I took my new Canon 70-200mm f/4 L lens for a spin today, trying to see what all it could do. I think I’m going to need a 300mm or 400mm telephoto if I’m going to get really serious about taking bird images in the wild but, considering this lens is lightweight enough that I can handhold it in good light, I’m really not complaining. Besides, look at the pattern of the tree reflection on the water that this baby created.

Be still my beating heart…