A recent roadtrip took me through some small towns in Minnesota. Here are some of the shots from that journey:

I finally had the pleasure of taking care of my first foster dog, a four-month-old German Shepherd mix named Kobe. He was adopted after just two weeks! This little dude broke my heart, but I’m happy he found his forever home. For more information about fostering or adopting rescue dogs, visit the Midwest Animal Rescue website.

Continuing the theme of familiar faces, here are a few new ones of these cuties…

I recently had the pleasure of photographing one of my favorite repeat customers (Who am I kidding, I love all of my repeats!).  We had about 5 good minutes before the boys decided they’d rather be playing, but no one could blame them given the beautiful day we had. Can’t wait for the next time I see these guys.

I’m attempting to finish last spring/summer’s collection of pictures, before the gardens are in full force again. Lofty goal. Here are a few of the gems.

As a method for coping with the current sub-zero temperature and piles of snow, I decided to work on pictures I had taken during the summer, in order to remind myself that this frozen hell does not last forever.  I continued my experiments with texturized landscapes, as well as a requisite flower.  I am particularly fond of the coloring on the first lake image, a product of serendipity.

This is such a fun – and photogenic! – family to photograph (this was my second session with them). The oldest daughter is so lively and loves to have her picture taken; the youngest would rather be crawling than sitting, but is nevertheless the cutest thing ever – how could one not want to photograph those big blue eyes!

This volleyball team needed a poster with their schedule that included the theme “No limit but the sky”. I took small group photos of them jumping and then edited them together – choosing each girl’s best shot – and added a landscape background, so that they appear to be jumping high into the sky. I also took a variety of team poses.

Meet my new canine friend, Banjo.  He is a rambuncious chocolate lab who is always ready to play; don’t let the white snout fool you, he’s just a big puppy. During a breather from our game of Tug-o-War, I grab my camera and quickly got some shots, before playtime soon resumed.

Lately I’ve been playing around with adding textures to my pictures.  While I like the depth and color the textures add, I wonder if this is another one of my artistic phases that I will look back on and wonder why I thought it looked good.  At least I can always go back to my original RAW file and redo it if I want; yay for Photoshop. Here are a few of my latest works.  The self-portrait was taken at the Sherburne National Wildlife refuge (my adventure there is a story for another post) and the other two were taken of a farm in St. Bonaficious.