01-17-13 Fall Color

I am balancing the rather lonely looking black and white farm photos with something that affects the eye and intellect differently. And no, these leaves aren't what I see out my window. In South Dakota leaves like this are long gone.

01-14-13 A Nice Bouquet

After a black and white weekend here at "A Photo A Day," how about a splash of color? And I have no deep thoughts today. . .

01-08-13 Nature's Artistry (HDR)

Nature provides the canvas, the subject and the paint. The photographer furnishes the frame. And the technological medium applied by the photographer sometimes enhances what nature provides and often diminishes it.You'll make your own judgements about this particular photo. All I can say is that this place is one of my favorite places on earth and my feelings affect what I see and do here. Every time.

01-06-12 Center Lake

Here's another one from my distant, digital past. I remember taking this photo, along with about 100 others of these reeds. I liked the reflection, of course, but I also like the way the tops of the reeds curve. Finally, I also like the contrast between the brown of the plants and the blue of the lake.

01-05-12 Nuts!

One of my new year's resolutions is to go through old photos that I have on DVDs and see if there is anything worth salvaging. I have found a few, including this one. Though I am also amazed by the number of really bad photos I took with my first high end digital camera (a Canon 1D). It is proof that it isn't the camera that takes the photo. The photographer makes the photo.

12-26-12 Taking Flight

I should know what kind of bird this is. But I don't. I'm not really equipped for bird photography but this guy was pretty close to me when he/she took flight.Added 2-2-12: Jim Klinger tells me this bird is a Great Blue Heron. Since he took the time to identify my bird, you should take some time and check out Jim's excellent photo blog.Canon 5DIII 1/640s f/10.0 ISO200 102mm

12-23-12 From Mighty Acorns (Reprise)

I am taking a bit of a break from my blog and so I thought I'd post a few of my favorites.

12-17-12 Winterscape

I went wading through snow that was calf deep to get this shot. Twice. Was it worth it? I'd say so, but only because the drive north of town in mysterious winter fog, the trek through snow and the framing of the frost lined trees was a small adventure and it got me out of the house on a gray winter day.Whether I was successful in my adventure or not wasn't the most important thing. Sometimes it's the concept and the process that matter most; it's the journey, not the destination. Or, in the words of Harry Chapin in his song Greyhound, "It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good."

12-16-12 Country Road

I spend a couple hours driving out in the country looking for something suitable to photograph. It had snowed last weekend and today was foggy so I figured I'd find something interesting involving fog and frost. This photo is one of several I took.Once I had the images, the next challenge was taking what turned out to be very low contrast scenes into something worth sharing. Thanks to Aperture and a couple of software plug-ins, I got was I had imagined I might. I should say, incidentally, that this is an HDR photo - there are two exposures layered here to help me get a good overall exposure.

12-06-12 Kinkankuji

I'll have to admit that I like this photo, which isn't something I'm inclined to say about my work. A photo should speak for itself, I guess.But I like this one because it's green, and South Dakota is anything but green right now. I also like it because I rescued it from the virtual dumpster. Finally, I like it because it helps me see the value of software processes in a photographer's work flow. I don't want to get technical in today's post but I will say that I started with this image (click), and ended up with the "adjusted" version in the blog. They say you can't fool Mother Nature. But she can be enhanced. :-)Kinkankuji is otherwise known as the Golden Pavilion, which is near/in Kyoto, Japan. Here's a satellite view (click) of the location. I wish I could tell you exactly where I was standing when I took this, but I wasn't in to GPS fixes in 2004, when we visited Japan

12-02-12 Back To Lonesome Lake (HDR)

It has been more than a year since I have photographed near Lonesome Lake. That session resulted in the photo I donated to the "fireplace room" at Lake Area Technical Institute in Watertown, South Dakota.On this occasion, I told Deb around 4:15 yesterday afternoon that I was going to go looking for a photo opportunity. I wanted to see if I could get something in HDR at sunset that would look good. Then, I invited her along for the ride and she said "yes." What a treat!I started heading north of our town, all the while watching the sun and clouds off to the southwest. My vision for the photo involved bare trees and a beautiful sky just before or just after sunset. I also didn't want any clear signs of civilization. If you go 20 miles north and a few miles west of Watertown, that isn't hard to do.After one other stop, I ended up at Lonesome Lake. By that time, the sun had set, and the clouds weren't all that interesting. But I thought that I could at least show Deb the location. It was getting dark but I decided to try to take a series of photos, knowing that the camera sees light in ways that I don't. I also knew that if I put my camera on a tripod and bracketed the exposures properly, I had several software tools that might produce something worth sharing.And here's the result. There is a surprising amount of texture in this photo, especially given that this (click here) is much closer to what I was seeing when I took the series. Pretty interesting, isn't it?

11-26-12 ALF

When I wandered out into my wife's dormant flower garden, I noticed the cornflowers first, mainly because they are still standing. Bare and brown, they still shout, "Look at me!"ALF is an acronym made popular by a sitcom that Robin Williams starred in a long time ago. It means "alien life form." And that's what I see when I see these cornflower hulks: they look like something from another place. And close up, they remind me of the evil Death Star in the Star Wars movie.Such is the nature of my imagination when I put the camera to my eye. . . .