There Is Beauty in Winter

 A Cherry tree loaded with buds just waiting for Spring to arrive.

 A dead tree in a tree line on a farm near by.  Hurrican Ike, several years ago, continued from the south into the midwest and this poor tree was a victim.

Twigs in the snow.  Actually this is an Indigo bush but it hides its buds. 

Knock Offs

Knock offs, are a means to attach a wheel on a car.  I decided to try to make a poster today out of a photo from a car show several years ago. 

Just Playing Around

Somewhat of a boring day so I thought I would get back into my Photoshop Elements 10 program.  I picked out a picture from a year ago that I took at night and thought I would work with my brushes, gradient and opacity tools.  I've titled it Targeted Star Burst

Contrails In Every Direction

Contrails going everywhere.  Where is everyone going? 

A Welcomed Sight

Two nights ago we lost gas pressure from the supplier due to the large area of the country hitting high demands on the system.  It's kind of like blackouts in the summer with electricity.  Our furnace was putting out heat but just enough to maintain about 68 degrees.  Some of our neighbors totally lost enough pressure to satisfy the furnace thus it wouldn't fire up.  This started about 9 PM and lasted until the next day when the local gas supplier went door to door to make sure everything was okay and lighting anything that needed manual restarting, like water heaters etc.

Most of the time when you see your exhaust stack spewing the steamy exhaust into the air you will say, there goes some more money down the drain, come on springtime or summer.  When I took this I was just glad to see it period.

Our Friday Snow Fall (Storm)

The weather people here just love to be in the spot light.  These shots are from this past Friday.  We got about 5 inches and they seem to love asking viewers to send in their pictures as well as sending their reporters out to sit in their vehicles clear up to the 11 o'clock news.  All one has to do is look outside to know what is going on.

We have another 5 inches coming today.  They are more prepared this time.....  The plan is to NOT interrupt the playoff games so they are giving updates every hour and NOT running the scroller at the bottom of the screen about the closings.  Again, They reported on it during every news time and all I have to do is look outside.  We were to get rain, then ice, then snow.  Well it didn't track the way they thought so the breaks haven't been so frequent and it has pretty much been raining all day.

It's winter people, get over it.  We could live in Bangor or Caribou, ME or up on the Dells of Wisconsin or Duluth, MN.

 Afternoon Shot

Night Shot

Going For Motion

 

Early morning hours of golden grass blowing in the wind.  Used ND filters and a circular polarizer to get the motion.  This takes practice.  Shot this in aperture mode as well.

Fallen Star Dust From the Sky

We had our blast from the Dakotas, Minnesota and Wisconsin yesterday.  Now it's headed up to New England, Boston got it today.  We are now getting ready for the Sunday/Monday blast of snow....get this, rain is the deciding factor as to how much we get.  If it goes south it's 6" to 10" and if it track north of Dayton it will be more like yesterday, 5".

All the havoc and this is the picture that I took that I like best.  There are others with shadows or pure white but this has something I have never accomplished, real sparkles in the snow.