It is time for all of you photographers out there to put autumn to bed, leaving it gently tucked away, waiting for next year. You are getting closer to awakening winter…hopefully gently.  Typical of me, I thought I would celebrate with some images from spring and summer.

Sunflower Field  I caught this commercial sunflower field as an approaching storm filled the sky.  This was done right here in Racine county, Wisconsin, many, many years ago. This image did grace the cover of a Wisconsin calendar sometime in the 1990s.

Summer Marsh This image was made in western Minnesota at the end of a wonderful walk on an inner forest boardwalk over a bog.  Ron and I were here together and the next day we were photographing Black Bears.

The Hollow  There is nothing like Hawthorn Hollow Nature Sanctuary in spring. I get a lump in  my throat when I think of it.  Birds& Blooms (not the magazine) are the first subjects to cross my mind when I think of HH in spring, but there are an abundance of great images to be found here.  I taught many workshops here, both Hawthorn’s and my own.  We had to turn people away several times and one could not have more fun.  When I think of all the great places I have made pictures, places like Yellowstone…Arches…Monument Valley and The Badlands certainly come to mind.  Just the same I never forget the Hawthorns or for that matter the little meadow near home. All great things are made of little things. One is just as valuable as the other.

Summer Meadow  Several areas along Lake Michigan are rimmed with a bank ranging from 10 to 40 feet in height. The meadows leading to the edge of those banks can be quite beautiful in summer.  Grasses and flowers are abundant. I have made many a summer meadow landscape photo in the fields along those banks. Notice that this is a saturating cloudy day landscape. If there was not some interesting definition in those clouds I would have taken it out of my composition.

Actually I just wanted to work the term “cloudy day landscape” into this post.  My second most popular post on Earth Images is on the subject of cloudy day landscapes, and using that phrase will assure me that this post will appear in search engines at least for a while.

Decisions  I found this old springtime picture hiding deep in my files. I think it was hiding because it is not a great shot. Viewable yes, great no. I have zero memories of making this image. I can appraise the photo with an unbiased mind, but just the same, I know how I think. This is an old slide shot and I can see I used a short to medium telephoto.  The visual compression from the foreground grasses to the trees and barn in the background tell me all I need to know to come to that conclusion.  There is nothing great about this picture but it is not a disaster. It is busy and confusing to the eye, but the green trail through the image opens it up enough to allow the viewer some room to roam. You believe you could walk through this scene with some minor irritation.  That being the case, why not go vertical and give the viewer a real trail to the (mostly obscured) barn?  This format does diminish the trees and the barn but it makes a “more comfortable” scene.  A leisurely walk is now possible or at least imagined.  I am quite sure that way back when I made this picture, most of those thoughts were used in my compositions.  Unfortunately I did not find a masterpiece lurking in my files that I created from this subject.  Hopefully that only meant that I needed to get on with my busy life, or something near-by caught my visual attention.  I say that because I now see some wonderful semi-abstract potential within this scene.

The above paragraph and photos prompt me to close this post as I did the last…..“Photography…much like life…is the art of blending discipline and freedom”  Wayne Nelson

It’s funny how sometimes it can seem like we are passengers in life.  We are aboard an out of control train and our fate belongs to the train….not to us.  When I look back on my life, I either did, or  more likely could have, controlled the path I walked.  The good and the bad.  We really do own the direction that we travel.  Walk too far in the wrong direction and your life will be lost.  Sometimes we find the right road “just in time”.  We don’t need a GPS or a compass to find our way.  We are given the skills at birth and we let ourselves get lost.

Find yourself and stay on target,

God Bless