Wild about Montana

We spent the 4th of July weekend in the Bear Paw Mountains of west central Montana.  The weather was outstanding and a beautiful morning beckoned me out to shoot the many varieties of wild flowers around our campground.  These are just a couple of my favorites from that morning.

Yellow!

A beautiful summer day and a trip to find wild flowers.  I did find a few including an elusive Ladies Slipper (in fact this is a first for me in this area).  The two photos may me also realize that I had a yellow theme going.  The two shots were also a chance to practice with my 60mm macro lens.

A Goldenrod Crab spider hangs out on a wild iris.

A yellow lady slipper along side the trail to Spearfish Falls.

May clouds aged

May clouds aged, originally uploaded by Sue Gannaway.

Storm clouds started rolling into Spearfish Yesterday. Here is a shot of Spearfish Canyon from Rosehill Cemetery. Again playing with some texture and aging effect on this particular photo.

Via Flickr:
Today's rain was predicated by rolling fog and clouds yesterday morning. Several shots overlooking the Black Hills from Spearfish.

Glorious Spring!

A great combination, a beautiful spring morning and blooming daffodils in one of our Spearfish Parks!
Here are a couple from this morning.  You can find more at my flickr feed.  

Butter cream daffodils shine in the sunrise

Bloom on black for drama!

Wyoming

Yesterday I made a side trip to Devils Tower through Hewlet.  As the storm clouds gathered I captured a couple of shots from around the area.

A Wyoming homestead under the gathering clouds.

Devils Tower from the north side of Hewlet, Wy

Spring?

We are starting to see some warmer temps between rain and wind here in Spearfish.  Today I traveled north of town to shoot a patch of purple crocus.  As you will see the one oddball was a 

yellow colored one on the edge of the small patch.  The garden also had a couple of cute little features that I incorporated into the photos.  Just a fun afternoon in the sun!

Snow and fog Bismarck, North Dakota

Last week I spent a couple of days in Bismarck, North Dakota.  While we were there the weather changed from sun to fog overnight.  Even though the weather was a bit colder than I am now used to, I decided to venture out and shoot some of the fog and ice at the Missouri River and the state Capitol complex.  Below are a couple of those shots and more are posted at flickr.com

Playing around

Finally getting around to working on some photos I took a couple of weeks ago on a quick trip to Pierre.  The weather was cooperative along Hwy 34 between Sturgis and Pierre except for the wind.  This group of photos are part of my learning curve with Photoshop, textures and blending modes.  My goal this winter is to get as comfortable as I can with Photoshop and experiment along the way.   Hope you think these are a fun result. 

Abondoned ranch house with a grunge texture over layed and a hard light blending mode.

The old schoolhouse near the Cheyenne River.  Sun was getting pretty low. Over layed with a blue texture.

A group of horses in a pasture dig for grass.  A black and white, tinted layer with a vintage texture over layed.

Arizona dreaming

With the cold moving in today I finished up some of my photos from our trip a week ago to Arizona.  Missing the 70+ weather already!   One of the fun moments there was while visiting friends in Green Valley.  Their backyard opens on the edge of a deep desert ravine and so the wild life comes right up into the backyard.  Of course I love birds and so got an opportunity to fire off some shots of several different types from what we see here in South Dakota.

Playing with photoshop

One of my goals this year is to get better with processing of my images in Photoshop.  So today with the snow coming down and too cold a weather to venture out, I played with two images from a recent stop.  The images were taken last week while returning from Pierre to Spearfish.  Because I had to make a stop in Rapid City, I took the cut off on Highway 34 through the little town of Cottonwood.  Not much remains, but its been a few years since I have been by there and the dwindling afternoon light drew me to try and capture a couple of the buildings left in town.  These included the church and the elevators.  Because the original images didn't seem as dramatic as I would like, I thought these would be fun to play with.  Here are the results.

Here are the elevators with a light brown paper texture.  I also used the orton processing technique to slightly blur the image and give it more pop.

Here is a texturized version of the church as well as using a crosshatch brush

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