April Blah

I simply could not come up with a good topic for an April post. Not something I'm happy about. In fact, a real letdown.

It might have had something to do with April having been depressingly dry for us this year -- no rain, virtually no snow, windy, and just plain dry. Which meant I had little to push me into

finding new imagery. And little motivation to work on what I already have. And nothing I'd entered  in several juried shows was selected, which was disappointing. Plus, I just felt mentally blah. There! I've moaned and groaned and had my private little pity party about how

Profile of a bull elk right after a mud bath

messy April was for me.

During the first part of May, I've been helping friends paint the interior of their new home (NOT blah, and honestly really enjoyable!). And we finally got some snow recently -- in May! I suspect that means it's time to pick myself up and put something together, even if it's really late. So, how about a few pics from my archives that I wasn't too thrilled with at first but I'm taking another look at now?

To start, I rather like this profile of a nice five-point elk I took several years ago, but on looking it over carefully, I'm seeing areas where I still need to improve it. Particularly, he needs to have more definition between his nose and the tree trunk. And the gold of his coat should probably be punchier. And straight-up personal critique: maybe the reason he's been in my archives is that there's not enough delineation

Landing Formation

between his antlers. I can see that one's shorter than the other, but they run together.

Another photo I haven't posted previously is this one from a trip to Monte Vista, Colorado, for the sandhill crane (Antigone canadensis) migration. It was taken in early morning light and I've fussed with it a bit over time, never being quite happy with it. I've cropped some excess sky, removed digital noise, and adjusted the colors some more, and now the sky looks more realistic than the original. I think the hardest thing has been to make the sky and background snow look real, while keeping a touch of the early golden light on the birds.

Storm light on rock outcrop, southern Wyoming

Speaking of golden light, this rock outcropping we passed in southern Wyoming has fascinated me for quite a while, and I've worked on it off and on. I think I'm finally happy with it now that the background hills provide more contrast. We found it while driving through alternating rain bands, looking for a BLM campground for the night. Turned out, it was much farther out than we'd expected -- closer to 20 miles from the highway than the seven to 10 we'd anticipated. We drove a few miles past this point (which was on private

Sunrise Reverie

ranchland), then turned around and went back toward a nearby town. We found a campground next to a local reservoir, which was serendipitous. Early the next morning, I got to watch a flock of American white pelicans (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos) having their breakfast before the sun came up, and got photos of an amazing orange and gold sunrise on the water.

I have several images from a trip we took to Wisconsin several years ago that I've either never worked over or been happy with when I did try, so I'm pulling a few of those from the archives, too. For example, I've reworked this old barn image a few times without success. However, I'm reasonably happy with this

Old White Barn

version, which brightens the entire image and highlights the barn better than my previous experiments did. I'd love to revisit Wisconsin during the fall, but my husband was so disappointed in how things had changed from when he was a boy, he doesn't have much interest in returning.

We'll see what this summer holds in the way of camping and photo trips since fuel prices are a bit daunting at the moment. For now, I just finished up resetting oodles of stuff on my computer after a hack attempt -- that I THINK has been thwarted (funny how you're never quite sure afterwards if you were successful). I have some new things that have happened in May and will include them in the next post. In the meantime, be sure to check my website, https://www.denisedethlefsen.com/ for new happenings. As always, I want to hear from you -- either directly here: https://www.denisedethlefsen.com/contact or in the Comments, below.