Road Warriors - NV, UT, and WY

Unexpected

Usually we hear about snow coming for a week. This time, they downplayed it so much I didn't know until the close the schools and I woke up to this. It's like Narnia. Without the white witch.

Cherry Blossoms in Bloom

In the Cool of the Evening

When the Sun Goes Down

Grey Day on the Coast

Grace and Joy

A rare sunny day at the beach in Oregon's Seaside. The sun set just as this young girl discovered the joy of ballet in the waves.

Purple Mountains and Amber Waves

I don't know what happened to me in the last month. I thought keeping this blog would be easy...a single shot every day. Surely I could keep up with that, right?

Oh so wrong.

So now that I'm getting around to posting these, the colors are gone and decaying on the ground and the trees are bare. But the sky? It's always beautiful, and I never get tired of that!

Ghost Trees

Those bare trees look like white birches, but they aren't. The trees themselves, actually, don't have white bark; they are brown. They are covered, though, with some sort of greenish-white mold-moss, the color of those glow-in-the-dark stars kids stick on their bedroom ceiling. They are eery, almost, sticking out like ghosts among the healthy, red-leaved trees around them.

Shenandoah National Park, November 2011

Mountain's Majesty

I took a trip up to the Shenandoah National Park this weekend, hoping to catch some fall colors. At our house not too far away, the trees are bright oranges and reds and, although at the tail end of peaking, still beautiful. Up in the mountains, however, there was already snow, and the trees above 2,000 feet had lost their leaves. The cloud-bedazzled sky and lower trees still  made for some pretty pictures, though.

Morning Fog

Twilight

Spin Art: Earth Rotation Style

We sat on the beach this week and watched the sunsets: one of my favorite activities. My kids were amazed at how fast the sun disappeared once it reached the horizon. All day it seemed to creep across the sky in almost imperceptible increments, but once it sets, you can tell how fast the earth is spinning, swallowing the sun in a gigantic, quick gulp.

Who Says Lightening Never Strikes Twice?

Taken from our backyard on Sunday night. The storm was wicked! Wish my camera could take pictures of sound!


My husband says our tree line looks like the United States, which would make the lightening the Mississippi.

An Evening at Elk Cove Winery

Field of Graves

Some heroes wear capes around their necks. Others wear dog tags.

Postcard Shots

I don't think shots like these are great photographic shots. They're the stuff of postcards, that anyone in the right place with a decent camera could take. There's no "making the photo" here, but still - I like getting the postcard shot every now and then. If for no other reason than I no longer have to spend twenty five cents on them. :)

Chasing the Dream

I think most photographers have something they spend years trying to capture that seems to elude them. There's been lots of those for me: bees, butterflies, hummingbirds in flight, and fireworks. I've read articles, taken thousands of pictures, and still not been able to capture the color and crispness of fireworks without also overexposing the smoke that inevitably overpowers them.

At Disney World last week I was able to finally figure it out. I don't know if it was chance, or I actually figured it out. But I'm thrilled for once I got the shot.