January was a different month then most January’s in past. We had some temperatures in the pluses. Which was a nice break from the normally brutal coldness we usually get. During the really cold parts I was able to experiment with my new macro extension tubes.

Here are some extreme close-ups. Can you guess what they all are?

January 10th I had great exploration. After a super cold stretch of weather it was nice to get out of the house. I revisited a few spots I have been before and found some new locations in the process. I finally stopped to get a shot of this old house that is barely standing (see below, right). Strangely, I found this old house (top, below left) just down the road from another abandoned place I found last spring. Why I didn’t find it then is beyond me but I am glad I did find it.

On the way home I took a different route then I normally do. The sunset was started to really pop with color and to my luck I found myself near my favorite tree (see above middle & below) just in time to catch the colors.

January 16th was probably one of the best explorations I’ve had in a long time. Not only was the weather great but the finds were plentiful. One of the first things I found I can’t say I’ve ever seen before. Sunflowers in Winter. Needless to say, they made for some interesting shots.

The blue sky really helped these sunflowers pop. On this exploration I found many lonely trees in the fields. Here is one of my favorites (see top right). Below is a macro of a sunflower plant.

I ended up getting so many shots I decided to convert a bunch of them to black and white. Here are a few of my favorites.

I decided to revisit one location since I was close. I found this old homestead last fall just before the snow came. Now here is a shot with snow (see below).

An exploration just wouldn’t be complete without a culvert photo. These culverts were big enough for the snowmobile riders to drive through. Near the culverts were some bales which looks like its on a drag strip waiting to take off.

My last find was the cherry on top of the icing on top of the cake. I was hoping to find something in time to catch this great sunset. To my luck, I came around a corner and spotted this old Massey Ferguson Tractor. While composing this shot and getting my camera set up I was blessed with a little bird that came and landed on the steering wheel. At first it was bouncing around too much to take a photo but then it stood still long enough to get a capture. Then flew off.

January 23-25th was an interesting weekend. We were hit with a ton of wet snow that started on Saturday and continued on through to Sunday. During the day Saturday I didn’t venture too far from home but I did manage to get a couple shots of the storm.

Sunday I decided to venture out a little further. Although the roads were pretty bad I still needed to get out. The trick is, drive according to the road conditions. Apparently someone didn’t know this. While I was out I passed the ambulance and sure enough, on the way home I saw a van that had rolled in the ditch. Something which could have easily been avoided had the driver slowed down. The start of Sunday’s exploration was a quick drive-by shot of this really need looking tree I call the Guardian Tree. If I didn’t already have a favorite tree this one would be it.

Stuartburn Auto Service closed it’s doors in 1960. I have driven by this old garage many times and many times I’ve wanted to shoot it but for some reason it was never the right time. This time it was. Since it was an overcast day I decide to try some different processing on these. I really like how they turned out.

As you can see there are some interesting textures on this old garage.

Monday we were snowed in due to a blizzard. The winds were too bad to drive into work so the boss told me to stay home. Yes, a free day! My only trip out was to the store in town but I did manage make one quick stop. Here is a 360° (14 image) panorama of the main intersection in my town.

January 30th was my last exploration of the month and a good one. Definitely the coldest day I’ve been out shooting. Even though I thought I was going to freeze my toes off at one point it was still worth getting out. Sometimes the coldest days make for great photo opportunities.

A good friend of mine collects animal skulls. He has a wide variety in his collection. He said I could use what ever I liked for props for photos. This expiration I chose one of his bison skulls. One of the challenges with using a skull like this in a scene is to get it to look natural and not placed. I had to make it snow with my hands to get a natural look. Below is my favorite shot of the day. I had to go back to my car to warm up and let my camera battery charge before I could get this shot. The cold cuts right through you like a knife and eats batteries like nobody’s business. My toes were so cold at one point I could barely feel them so I turned the heater on full and stuck them in the vent below the dash. Eventually they came back to life. I waited until the light was just right then returned to catch this sunset.

December is always a busy month and with some of the nasty weather we received, I didn’t get out and about as much as I would have liked to. The few times I did get out where quite successful. Here are some of my favorites from December’s photo explorations.

Here are a couple from my neck of the woods. This was one of the first snow falls of the season.

One of my photo explorations was in The Whiteshell area. I was hoping for some decent landscape shot but after not really finding anything I was looking for I decided to return to a familiar spot.

These are shots from 2 trips to The Whiteshell.

This is a great example at some of the beauty that mother nature can produce.

I’ve never seen ice formations like these before and am really happy I decided to return to this spot.

Above is an interesting site. A farmer has stock piled feed and covered it with a giant white tarp and used these bales to keep it in place.

Sometimes when you can’t find an interesting location to shot you have to improvise. These two shots are some of the roads I’ve traveled looking for something to shoot.

These buffalo were kind enough to pose for a shot and this old building was located in the middle of a cemetery.

On this particular exploration I found only one shot. These snow drifts caught my eye.

The Adventures With Garfield continues….

Enjoy!

Finally, an update. I’ve been quite busy and keep forgetting to update this site. I am in the process of completely redoing my site. It will quite different and one of the main things will be a fully functioning store.

On the photos for November 2009. I definitely didn’t get out as much as I would have liked. I did get three explorations in including one with some fellow photographers.

This was a staged shot. I found a very large rock quarry and while setting up this photo, some people were target shooting. I swear they were shooting a canon. Not a camera LOL. While there I found six .22 cal. unused shells. If only I had a .22 gun.

After the rock quarry I found a few abandoned places. One of which was quite spectacular. Unfortunately there were ‘no trespassing’ signs everywhere.

Here is a panorama of this old farm.

————————————————————————————————————

More culverts! This one was a nice find as it was large enough to get into and wasn’t too full of water. The middle section was partially caved in so the over shape was distorted. It made for one of my personal favorite photos.

Even though this little spot had a lot going on, it was actually too busy to really get a good shot. A black and white conversion saved this panorama as the color version was too much to take in.

While exploring I came across several field fires. One made it into a ditch where there was much more to burn. It made for a great photo opp. This color spectrum concept is by no means new or original but its something I’ve wanted to try for a while. I’ve just never had the right photo to try it on. That is until this fire shot.

————————————————————————————————————

While exploring with two other photographers we came across a few abandoned places.

I called this exploration “Dead Eagle Tour” as we saw a dead eagle on the road. First time any of us seen that. We also saw at least a dozen eagles in total. That would have been a great time for a 600mm with a 1.4TC.

————————————————————————————————————

————————————————————————————————————

Adventures With Garfield!

This month I started a little on-going project I’ve wanted to do for a while. For years I had these Garfield figurines and since getting into photography I though of doing something with them.

To leave comments use the Guest Wall on the right side of the page.

Thank you!