Looking through my files …

… I was filing all the shots from last year, and ran across this; it hadn’t been worked up, and was almost black (a night shot). So I shoved it into Photoshop, clicked one button, and got this:

I was bowled over by these colours; I hope you’ll like them, too.
Take care on the slippery walks and roads …
Cheers!

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A shot of the boss

He greets me as I come in each time, after I’ve been out ( swear he’s been waiting in front of the door), gets in the way and after he’s satisfied himself that it’s all very routine, he goes to sleep.

He’s really rather scruffy-looking, having long hair that knots up into big balls … he dislikes it intensely when I cut them off, necessitating a big thick towel, and sturdy gloves.

 

A sunny day, after a light snow …

We had a light snow last night, and that set the apartment complex’s manager into her usual panic, so everyone had to move their cars for the snow-removal chaps. There wasn’t an inch of snow, and it could have been safely ignored, but Ooooh, Noooo! it had to be scraped up. So, since I had to go out anyway for a couple of items at the local supermarket, I pulled out of the lot, and since the sun was positively brilliant, I had the camera with me.
After a five-minute stop for flour and baking powder, I headed down to the Lake, and got a few rather nice shots:

I swear I didn’t boost the saturation on these; the sun was that bright, and the colours, especially in the water, were really there. The little white line nearly at the horizon is ice offshore.

The ice is further offshore in this direction. We’re looking at a SE angle across the Lake.

A Great Lakes freighter at the horizon, heading south, to the steel mills at Indiana Harbor, most likely. Sorry for the quality, but I haven’t got any more than a 200mm, and the distance was, by my estimate, close to 20 miles. These boats (only on the Great Lakes are vessels of this size referred to as “boats”) run close to 1,000 feet in length, so they are quite visible at these distances. There was a good deal of atmospheric turbulence breaking up the image.
This is a more general shot of the same boat:

Some shots of the water near the shore:


Some ice in the little harbour enclosure … the wind wasn’t able to push these bits away from shore. There were, besides the usual mallards, some goldeneye ducks in the water, but I couldn’t get a shot.

The elecrical generating plant was putting out great volumes of water vapour, brilliant in the cold air:

And some shots of the local farmers’ fields on the way home:



And that’s it … Cheers!

 

A Post-Postscript …

In addition to the sun, welcome in this chill (-15°F when I got up this morning, not counting the wind chill), I noticed that there were some modifications to the æolian sculptures that I photographed before.
First, there was this:

And, a closer view … I liked the textures on the roof:

Shifting my attention, I noticed a really nice calligraphic sculpture on the ground … It was difficult to get, but this is a pretty fair rendering:

And a wider view, extending all across the courtyard:

It looks very artistic, as though someone were making a wall-hanging with a calligraphic theme. I can almost feel the pen-on-paper sensation.
That’s it …
Cheers, all!

 

Some sunny ones …

I shot these though a huge window, luckily quite clean. I had the camera with me, because of the sun, as I went out to move the car for the ploughing chaps. I had thought to make a few pictures while I was out, but thought better of it; the temp was -6°F, and I rather wanted to keep my fingers. But after I got inside, this window presented itself, and I seized the moment. These are the only ones that worked out well; windows are sneaky things, always slipping a reflection in where you can’t see it.
Anyway, here they are:





Considering the difficulties, they’re not too bad. I had some troubles that Sami mentions, inadvertently twiddling knobs and buttons because the camera seems designed with tiny-fingered Asians in mind, but I managed to figure the problem out before all was lost.
Cheers!