This fall I discovered a new flower called a Blue Curl. This little gem is smaller than my thumb, but up close it’s a marvel to look at. I found this flower while walking around Morningside Nature Center in Gainesville, Florida during the fall wildflower bloom. I photographed this flower up close in order to isolate it from the background. This resulted in a nice pure color green background which helps the flower stand out.

This fall I had the pleasure of visiting Acadia National Park in Maine to photograph the beautiful fall colors that occur in the park. This image was taken at Otter Cove in the park and I like not only the blurred water from the waves, but also the pre-dawn light. Pre-dawn light is particularly soft and is much cooler than what occurs after when the sun rises. The light has a surreal quality to it that makes landscape images stand out significantly from those photographed when the sun is above the horizon. Photographs taken during the pre-dawn hours have to be carefully planned since there is little time between adequate light and the sun coming above the horizon.

Paynes Prairie has a sizable heard of wild horses which roam freely within the preserve. Despite their large size and abundance, they often go unnoticed in the park. Some friends and I were lucky enough to notice this horse along route 441 during the warm glow of evening light. We pulled off to the side of the road and watched this horse for about an hour. During that time, it only looked up and back toward us 3 times and I had to be quick on the shutter to capture this image. The warm evening light is a bonus.

I recently took a walk on the Bolen Bluff Trail at Paynes Praire to look for wildflowers, when I found an unexpected treat: a cooperative Tawny Emperor butterfly. The butterfly was sitting on a white sandy area, so I approached slowly and set my tripod up directly above him. I was able to get only a few images before he flew off. I used a relatively wide aperture of f5.6 because the subject falls naturally in one plane.

One of my fondest memories is the northern owl invasion during the winter 2004-2005 in northern Minnesota. During years of low prey abundance, northern owls will come south in great numbers from Canada into the Northern United States. During the winter of 2004-2005, the migration south was the largest ever observed and owls could be easily observed around the Sax Zim bog area. The ability to observe the behaviors of these charasmatic owls in Minnesota’s boreal forests was a surreal experience for me. At this point in my life, I had not converted my photography to digital so the above image is a scanned slide taken with a Nikon F5 and a 400mm f2.8 lens. The image was capture on Fuji Provia slide film, scanned on a Nikon Coolscan V film scanner, and processed in Capture NX 2.

On my last trip to Long Island, I was able to photograph a bird feeding station at Orient Point County Park. Most of the birds that I observed there were species that I was used to seeing while growing up in Pennsylvania. One species that I did not have a good image of was a Downy Woodpecker. Although this species is common, it moves almost constantly and it is diffcult to get a sharp image of this species. I was particularly happy with this result.

Recently on a trip to Idaho, I had the privilege of observing a lek of Greater Sage-Grouse. Many of the prairie grouse display in leks where several males will display together to attract females. As its name implies, this species inhabits sage brush habitats in the western United States. I used a continuous frame rate of 8 frames per second to capture the males in various poses during their displays. This image is one of my favorite poses of a displaying male, and I liked the inclusion of the surrounding habitat.

Often common objects when viewed close up can look far differently than we would otherwise think. The Longleaf Pine is a common tree species that occurs in the southeastern United States. The stem of this tree was about at eye level and I noticed the intricate patterns within the stem. The closer I got to the tree, the more intrigued I became with the patterns. I attached my micro lens and focused as close as the lens would allow which was at a 1:1 ratio. I contemplated about converting this to a black and white but after trying several conversions, I decided I like the color version best.

Last month I was fortunate enough to visit Long Island, New York for work related travel. During my stay, I managed to visit Jamaica Bay National Wildlife Refuge to photograph the overwintering snow geese. The birds were active and flying in and out of their loafing areas. I used manual mode to make sure the camera's exposure meter would not be fooled by the constantly changing backgrounds as a result of following moving subjects. This image was about 1/6 stop underexposed and I was able to compensate for that in the RAW converter. Because of the dark overcast conditions, I had to use an ISO of 800 which necessitated some noise reduction in the final image. Because this is predominately a light image and noise is generally not a problem in the lighter areas, I selectively applied the noise reduction to the black wing feathers and parts of the breast that are in

Every morning about 1/2 hour after sunrise, hundreds of Sandhill Cranes would fly to this field in southwest Gainesville to feed. During my visit, there was a considerable amount of fog which made for some unique photographic conditions. When photographing in fog it is usually necessary to overexpose, so the fog is not rendered dark (much like snow scenes). I overexposed the photograph below by +1.3EV to render the fog as close as possible to the actual colors and brightness. I used a 300mm lens so that I could include all three cranes in the image, and this was the only image where all three cranes had their heads in similar positions.