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08 Jan 14. Walk out the front door of the church I shared on Monday and go to the opposite end of the field and, at least potentially, you are home. I have no idea if the resident farmer & family worship in the church, but if they do they have a nice walk to and from with the only consideration being one of making sure where they step in the field. What you aren't seeing in either picture is the beef cattle that are grazing in between the two buildings. I took a shot of this barn once before in 2006 and it placed in a MD camera club monthly competition but it was a very different setting with the farm mostly enshrouded in fog and with the lighting casting an overall pinkish gray hue to the scene and overall it was much softer. Since they are so different I thought I'd share another version of roughly, although not exactly, the same setting. Some of you may recall that earlier shot. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/160 sec @ f / 6.3

06 Jan 14 . Watching the weather after Christmas for the "best" day to go view Bald Eagles in the "supposed" eagle viewing area of Western Washington, we took last Sunday the 29th as the best of what was available and the five of us (Jan &I, the cherubs, and Maggie) headed out to the Rockport area of WA state. The day was slated to be an "iffy" one and it held to its promises even if it strongly tended to stay on just one side of the iffy" which was a 20% chance of inclement weather. We got the 20% for almost the entire day, which presented itself in rain on the drive up I-5 and varying degrees of fog thereafter which lasted the entire trip. Apparently our eagles this year are of the fair weather type as we saw but 8 birds compared to perhaps 35 - 45 on most prior trips. The local eagle "experts" were blaming the poor numbers on a low fish (Chum Salmon) count but the local Seattle rag had been boasting just a week earlier on the huge eagle display. You may elect to decide who you wish to believe. Not seeing very much of what we drove the 300 miles round trip to see, I tried to shoot what was there and found this little church, directly across from one of the two prime viewing areas, to be of interest. It was as close to church as we got that Sunday. The fog was beginning to break up but what you see is about as broken as it got. The church is located at one end of a large field that holds beef cattle, so I'm not entirely sure if it is for the farmers or their cattle. I'm almost standing in the main highway while taking the shot, so you get a little idea as to the size of the road and some small degree of perspective relative to the church. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1.125 sec @ f / 6.3