Galloping out of my comfort zone!

That is what I decided to do today - starting with an early morning visit my favorite stand of maple trees and a stop at a deserted picnic table. Curious as to what you think about the picnic table? I had my finger on the delete key when I decided that I kind of liked the sunspots on the image. Delusional, or was I right?

Back to the office to attend to some business, then a wonderful long phone chat with my parents (love you, Mom and Dad!) and then back to the park armed with a tripod and my new polarizing filter.

This spot is one I've photographed before - and one that quite a few local photographers have snapped, too. Its particularly captivating at this time of year when the trees to either side of the pine are bare. Anyway, I took a ridiculous number of shots, trying different adjustments to the filter as well as experimenting with some of the D600's in-camera settings. This shot was taken using the camera's HDR setting (with tripod, of course). I have to say that I liked the effect quite a lot. My second favorite shot was this one which used the camera's dusk settings.

I used my Nikon 28-300 lens for this shot and the only thing that kind of irritated me was that I got some vignetting of the image at the 28 end of the lens. Had to crop it just a bit to get rid of that. Annoying.

I think my new Facebook Page is off to a good start - I'm up to almost 40 "likes" which seems good for a little over 24 hours and not much promotion. We'll see.

The weather continues to be stunning - it's currently 62 F and sunny. Morrow, however, the high will only be 48...winter's coming.

Thanks for your rather generous comments on yesterday's chipmunk - definitely not one of my better photos, but yesterday was about the audio experience for me.

Happy Monday!

Debbi