A favorite, early morning spot of mine. Sunday morning when my daughter and I were heading out from camp in the pre-dawn hours, I wasn’t in a particular rush to get there. There weren’t many clouds and breezy winds were sure to upset the water’s surface.

As we arrived though, I realized we needed to get a move on it to catch the show before it ended. There was just enough cloud cover and color to make it interesting and the wind had died down.

Walking quite briskly, we hurried to get in position and managed some nice shots of the streaking clouds and their reflection on the surface of Sprague Lake.

A lesson to never underestimate Mother Nature. You just never know what you are going to end up with!

An absolutely gorgeous morning on the last day of July in Alaska.

I woke up and stepped outside at our campsite overlooking Kachemak Bay and was greeted with this scene. After snapping a few pics, I pulled up a chair, faced it east and with a coffee cup in hand soaked in the view.

It doesn’t get much better than that.

Taken two weeks ago on Saturday, it was a typically gorgeous morning on the Great Plains. The sunrise didn’t fill the sky like they oftentimes do but close to the horizon, it was a beautiful scene. Crepuscular rays were shooting out of the rising sun and illuminating the patches of blue above. Not much to complain about!

No better way to start the day than taking in a scene like this. I love this place!

I often employ the “trick” of using a small aperture on my lens to create a ‘starburst’ effect. On this morning, I got more bang for my buck with two of them – one in the sky above the horizon from the sun and one on the water of the lake from the sun’s reflection. Kind of fun.

Taken at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge near #Denver, Colorado on May 27th.