Running on the pier

Bird of Paradise

Sister Bay Marina

Saint Louis Gateway Arch

The Saint Louis Gateway Arch is a spectacular thing to see if ever you're in Missouri.

Some really nice rides in Geneva

Birds of Prey

The pictures pretty much speak for themselves. Mother's Day was quite an adventure...and my kind of day.

A gray morph screech owl.

A Barn Owl

 A Barred Owl

The magnificent Peregrine Falcon

Experiences like these leave me speechless...the thrill I get out of it is beyond words.

Coyotes are out and nearby

The other day I went out for a walk with my dog, and guess what was crossing the street right in front of us? He was just trotting along, looking around, quite interested in the noisy geese nearby. All he succeeded in doing, though, was getting them to squawk and fly away. And get my dog very excited about a possible opportunity. Opportunity of doing what, though, I never found out - because I didn't let him off the leash.

But I was very tempted. The coyote ended up dashing off across the next street, and I do not know where he was headed.

I was just glad that my dog didn't have the opportunity to confront it.

An example of acrobatics on horseback

These girls were very daring and reminded me of an act that you'd see in one of the rings at the circus.

Northern Illinois Outlaws

These guys were a lot of fun to watch. There were barrels placed around the ring, and balloons, which they were shooting at. They did a great job with there 45's and then switched to their rifles.

Dressage

Two ladies and a gentleman demonstrated dressage at the Fall Festival.

A man and his horse

The two make a very attractive team, but the horse's owner said 'he looks better than me..."

Purple Iris Pastel created in Corel Paint from original photo

I never tire of playing around with taking pictures and then seeing what I can do with the images once I have done the shoot. Corel Paint does a wonderful job of converting photos to oil paintings, pastels, watercolors, etc. I tend to favor the 'sketchbook' colorations, but this one was 'watercolor' coloration.

Thistle black and white focal point

I've always wondered how to achieve this effect, now I can with Picnik.

Old barn in Canada

This was taken in 2010 on one of my trips to Espanola, Canada. It is an experiment with the HDR effect, using the free version of Picnik.

North American Mockingbird

North Carolina's birds are very different from the birds in Illinois. Even the crows sound different. When listening for birds, all kinds of bird noises would be coming out of the same tree. I kept seeing these very sharp-looking birds with flashes of white on their wings, and was wondering what it was. They were everywhere. When I start searching on the internet, I discovered the reason why it sounded like there were many types of birds in the same tree; it was the North American Mockingbird, which mocks the songs of other birds!