The Year 2013 in Visual Review

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Sarah says,

"Happy New Year!!!"

Winter Commute

Here I like the composition but not the blue tone. 

Removing all saturation and then adding back a little warm temperature gave me a more pleasing effect.

Somehow, though, the electric line bothered me even more

in the doctored image. 

That's where the spot healing brush tool came to the rescue.

This is the Indian Mission Church on M-22 between Leland and Northport.

12/27 - Coming back with one more image, just for Karen Casebeer. Here is the scene without the curve sign, Karen:

Doesn't it look as if something's missing? (It is.) Doesn't it make you, the driver, a little nervous as you approach the curve? Or does it just look more peaceful and less cluttered?

For the record, taking the sign out was a bit more complicated than removing the overhead wire with the spot healing tool. To remove the sign, I had to use (1) the eraser tool, then (2) the eyedropper to change the (3) foreground color, and finally (4) the paint bucket to spill the color of the surrounding snow into the blank space where the sign had been. 

Snow Dog

Who's the cutest girl in the winter world?

Winter Comes to Northport Creek

Weather Report: Windy and Cold

See the grasses bent by the wind? None of yesterday morning's strange, warm wind from the east -- today's blustery gales came from the west, from over Lake Michigan, relentlessly winter-cold.

No one on foot was loitering today. Pedestrians hurried about their business and back into their warm cars.

Even protected Grand Traverse Bay was filled with whitecaps.

A Flock of Cedar Waxwings

The flock high in the tree could be brought closer with a long lens, but cropping from the zoomed shot, while adequate for viewing on camera or on screen, would not give good resolution in prints.

Young Deer Antlers?

That's what these frost-covered catalpa  branches, glistening in the morning sun, brought to my mind. Sunshine and frost, though, make everything lovely. A clear, blue sky after a warm holiday at home -- what could be better?

When Red and Orange Are Gone

The sumac and maple have had their day by the first of November, and it's time for a quieter autumn palette. As days grow shorter and colder, the warmth of toasty, golden browns on branches and on the ground below is welcome, gladdening the eye in all kinds of weather. Soon only occasional pale and tattered leaves will cling to stripling beech, and clusters of darker brown oak leaves will be much fewer, as well, as we enter the black-and-white season of Up North winter.

Some of My Favorite Photoshop Possibilities

Through a rainy windshield --

Here's one of the least exciting shots from last Wednesday, and here it is again and again and again.

Increasing saturation makes for brighter color.

The distortion called crosshatching gives an interesting effect.

Ink outlines is very dramatic!

Just as a wonderful movie can be made from a mediocre book (yes, a lousy movie can be made from a great book, too...), a mediocre image can sometimes be turned into something quite magical.

Can't Get Enough of October Orchards

Here is the orchard kitty-corner SE from St. Wenceslaus Church.  My neighborhood is beautiful all year, but it is especially lovely right now. Below is the view on the old Lee Mann Road, looking west, where the dark green of the pines between a yellow mass of maples and the more complex yellow of the orchard caught my eye.

Finally, here are two shots of the same orchard on Eagle Highway, taken on the same day, just moments apart, first viewed through a rainy windshield and then with no filtering medium between camera and trees.