A special hello again to each of you.  I have been away from the writers desk for a while but I can assure you that I have not left for parts unknown.  Just giving you all a breather.

I have written several times that I believe my love of wandering, as well as nature and human history came largely from my parents and the yearly family vacations that we experienced together.

I have always known how fortunate I was to have those experiences during my formative years.  It may  seem to many of you that I was lucky that my parents could afford to take yearly vacations.  I was very fortunate, but we had our own way of affording those trips. Please do understand that we were not vacationing in Europe or Asia.  These were all car trips.  Some of that money came from cashing in S&H Green Stamps.  For those of you who are young, when I was a kid and one of my parents gassed up their car, you sat in the car and an attendant gassed the car, washed the windows, checked the air in your tires and sent you on your way with a new drinking glass or cup, and five new stamps to put in a book.  You would redeem those stamps for either merchandise or money.  Of course the punishment was that you had to pay 30 cents for a gallon of gas.   My mother kept a jar in her closet.  She would put pennies, nickels and sometimes dimes in said jar.  By the time we were ready for vacation she would often have $80 inside.  That was enough for several days (often a week) of living the “high Life” while on the road.  $5 motels.  A package of rolls for breakfast while on the road.  We went to New York City in the early 1960s.  We were everywhere including Broadway and Wall Street.  Our room was luxurious.  We stayed across the river in New Jersey and lived in a tent for a week.  That’s right.  We stayed at a campground.   I have been in the Whitehouse and Capitol Hill.  I have experienced the “old section” of Quebec City, Quebec.  Then they changed my life by heading west.  Our first night of sleep was spent with my mother sleeping in the car, while Dad and I slept outside next to a cow pasture.  I was awoken by a dairy cow licking my face through a fence.   Then came the Badlands and the Black Hills.  Then Yellowstone and the Tetons.  I am forever grateful.

Those trips were made by a family without a lot of money because our parents wanted my sister and I to see and experience America.  Lessons learned by the willingness to stay in cheap motels and eating while traveling only meant that when I grew up, I would take dozens of meaningful trips in my lifetime instead of few or none.  I was willing to sacrifice in order to get to the stuff that really mattered.  That carries over into the rest of life too.

Thanks Mom & Dad and may God Bless.

I had a former One on One Workshop student manage to locate my current email address and send me a note for help.  I am always thrilled to help with photography.  His issue was, that after getting down the technical and compositional aspects of photography he does not seem to be able to move forward any further.  I asked how often he creates images.  He told me that he was on a trip to the south last spring and made many pix, and now tries to shoot once a week.  He goes out on Sundays for about an hour.  Now I can related to having a brief few moments a week to make pictures.  I spent a few years on that schedule.  He live’s alone with very few social requirements, and works a 40 hour week Tuesday through Saturday.   With all due respect (I told him) I would be making a couple of thousand images a week with that schedule.  My advice was to decide whether he wants to be good at this or not.  If is too much bother to gather up your equipment and explore and make pictures then it is better to regard this as a very casual hobby, and find something that he is more passionate about for his main focus in life.  It is not a shock that the world’s best nature photographers make pictures every chance they get and they do so with love and passion.  Those facts are what makes them great.  Some of those photographers are nearing 50 years at this.  There is nothing wrong with being a casual hobbiest at photography.  I would just suggest that you find another passion and stay with it.  That passion should be on your mind all of the time.  It should be difficult to stop yourself from going out and pursuing this endeavor, not difficult to make yourself do it.  We all have something that we have to do.  Find that and do it and yo will be all the richer for it.

A couple of posts ago I wrote about Doug Gardner’s http://www.totallyoutdoorsimaging.com/   Wild Photo Adventures http://www.wildphotoadventures.com/ on PBS.  I stand by my criticism about the episode where he was photographing the deer rut, but I have seen several more episodes, and while there are more professional shows on PBS, WPA is well worth watching. He is a knowledgable and good photographer and he imparts information that is perfect for the intermediate photographer.   After watching Doug and another photographer in their early Spring Smoky Mts. flower shoot, I came to appreciate the show more.  I have been through everything  that they experienced dozens of times.  The information they gave was good, including the suggestion to bracket f stops on some macros.  That is something I taught for many years.  I look forward to viewing each episode.

I struggle when I make posts that do not contain images.  They seem so naked.  I guess I still remain a photographer with every cell in my body.  It is to that fact that I have added the images below.

My first four shots are four different species of North American Grebes.  They are all in alternate plumage.  I do this in honor of the approaching winter season.

Our first image is one that (I believe) I have never shared before.  It is an immature Eared Grebe.  An adult winter plumage bird would look very similar.  This shot was made in north central Colorado.

Our second bird is another western bird, appropriately named the Western Grebe.  This is winter plumage and the bird was actually photographed in Kenosha, Wisconsin.  The Western is substantially larger than the other three pictured here.

Next we have the Horned Grebe.  This bird is pretty spectacular in breeding plumage.  This winter plumage bird was photographed in northern Illinois.

Our final Grebe is the most common kind in this area of the Midwest.  This is the always cooperative Pied-billed Grebe in it’s immature form and was photographed at Horicon Marsh NWR, here in Wisconsin.

I also have pictures of the Red-necked Grebe but all are in their summer plumage.   The final North American Grebe is the Clarke’s Grebe.  I have never even seen a Clarke’s much less photographed one.

The Muskrat is similar to the Pied-billed Grebe in the sense that it is pretty easy to get close to for great photos.  Most of my Muskrat pix are in fact of the detailed variety.  I jumped at the chance to remain “backed off” from this guy and have the opportunity to actually compose a Muskrat image along with its reflection.  This shot was made at Goose Pond Sanctuary in Columbia County, Wisconsin.   Those of you who have read my “rules of photography” posts, will note the comp in this photo.  Of course those rules are also made to be broken.

After wild canines, my favorite mammals to photograph are of the small variety.  I have without a doubt made more pictures of the Thirteen-lined Ground Squirrel than any other small critter.   This was made at Illinois Beach North S.P. in Illinois.

Recently I blogged a series of quotes that I have inserted in various articles here on Earth Images.  They were from a variety of authors including several from myself.  Since I published that piece I discovered that I unconsciously  plagiarized a quote from another author.  I would never do that intentionally as I hate writing thoughts that are not original.  I was looking for quotes to publish (and give credit for) at a website when I discovered a quote that stated something to the effect of living not only the length of your life, but the width as well.  I obviously had read this somewhere over the years and it stuck in my subconscious.  It is a pretty good quote and I wish I had written it.  Sorry bout that.

I’ve written and spoken many times of the adventures that I have encountered in my lifetime.  I have also stated that I am not brave and am not an adventurer in the true sense of the word.  Many of those incidents have been accidents.  Just the same I always embraced life on the road, and the exploration of the land.  Combine this with my innate curiosity, and I have allowed myself to have many an exciting moment.  Those memories (through others) will live on much longer than I will.