It has been very cold in the mid-west this winter, and parts of the Mississippi river are frozen over. Last week my wife and I took a drive along part of the Mississippi river just north of St. Louis and saw several barges stuck in the thick ice. We stopped in at the Melvin Price Locks and Dam where we saw a barge go through the locks and then saw a tug boat trying (unsuccessfully) to break another barge loose from the ice. Here are a couple of photos of the frozen river and the barges. –Ron
While I was recently taking photos of birds, I also took some of the squirrels that were around. Here is a portrait of one of those squirrels. –Ron
After a recent snowfall, I took some photos of birds in our backyard. These little sparrows had their downy feathers all fluffed out due to the cold. –Ron
It snowed here recently and I decided to take a few photos of birds at our backyard feeder. One of the photos below was taken while it was snowing, the other was taken the next day after the snow had blown off of the feeder. I took these photos from inside, looking out through a window. –Ron
What says Americana better than a slice of apple pie and a cup of coffee? This shot was taken at Wall’s Drug Store in Wall, South Dakota when my wife and I stopped there on a trip last fall. The coffee is 5 cents per cup, you get it yourself and pay for it yourself on the honor system. Don’t see that too many places anymore. Anyway, I thought this would be a nice souvenir photo of our visit to Wall’s Drug Store. –Ron
A couple of months ago, I took advantage of sunlight coming in through the kitchen window to take some macro photos of mums. These were very small ‘volunteer’ mums that come up each year in our back yard. After I took the photos, I mulled over how I might turn one of them into something other than a straight-forward photograph. I decide to see what it would like if I sliced it up and re-arranged the pieces. I kind of liked that diced digital art, and then thought maybe I could take it one step further by trying to give it a 3-D look. So, I took the diced imaged back into Photoshop and applied some 3-D effects. I don’t particularly care for the 3-D tools in Photoshop, they are a bit clunky and awkward to use, so it took me a while to get something approaching what I had in mind. It’s still not quite what I was trying to do, I might need to look for other dedicated 3-D software if I wanted to take it further. So here are my 3 takes on one mum: Straight, diced, and cubed.
At first glance, you might wonder what the subject of this photo is. Here’s the short story: I was at the lake last weekend and decided to get up early one morning to see if I could get any photos of deer, as deer are fairly abundant around the lake area. I went to a spot just below the dam where I had taken some photos previously and waited for the sun to rise. I didn’t see any deer that morning, but did take some photos of the Osage River and of the Bagnell dam. –Ron
We used to just decorate the front of our house for Christmas, but a couple of years ago decided to put some lights in the backyard since we we spend a lot of time in our family room that looks out on the back yard. Here is a photo of part of our backyard decorations this year. –Ron
After looking at the photo I posted a couple of days ago (Fall Colors), I thought it might be a good candidate to use Photoshop’s ‘Polar Coordinates’ filter — it was colorful and already had a somewhat circular feel about it. So, I took it into Photoshop and applied the Polar Coordinates filter. I kind of like the patterns created by this filter, so I’m posting it below. — Ron
The fall foliage in this area has been especially colorful this year so I went out a couple of days ago and took a lot of photos. I went to several places where I thought the trees and other foliage would be colorful and I was not disappointed. I took photos of single trees and bushes as well as ‘group photos’ where there were a lot of colors together. After I got back home and reviewed the photos, the ones I liked best turned out to be the ‘group photos’ that had a variety of colors in them. Here is one I really like. — Ron
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