The year of 2016 was an interesting year for me photographically. I did more local trips but I started out with a trip to the Sylvan Heights Bird Sanctuary in Scotland Neck where I met up with many birds such as this White Cheeked Pintail. Please click on each image to view it on my website.

Because the birds come from all over the world, you can photograph many birds you don’t normally see.

A January trip to Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, TN gives you an opportunity to photograph deer, turkeys and occasionally, a bear. Because it is a remote 18-19th Century village, you can’t help thinking how people lived in such tranquility.

My first trip to the Magic Wings Butterfly House in Durham, NC was truly an experience. The butterflies are all around you there, giving you ample chance to photograph one or two.

Botany Bay, SC is a beach location that is popular for shooting long-exposure photography. I was able to learn more about long-exposure. In October of 2016 Botany Bay was hard-hit by Hurricane Matthew and has been closed to the public ever since. We hope to be able to photograph this tree again some day.

I was able to make a trip to Brevard, NC and the Blue Ridge Parkway to capture some mountain scenes, sunrises, sunsets,waterfalls. This was my first chance to photograph Turk’s Cap Lilies and butterflies.

While travelling out west with the family, we explored Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park and I made sure we got the late afternoon light on the rocks in the canyon.

And in the summer, I attended a workshop at Grandfather Mountain, NC and entered their photo contest. I was thrilled to capture an award for this photo of two otters.

I attended another workshop in  September 2016 where I captured The Scarlet Quince Flower at the UNC Charlotte Gardens, NC.

This photo means quite a lot to me because I was able to photograph the Milky Way at Cedar Breaks National Monument, Utah, with two of my sons, Dan and Sam Peterson and Lindsay Carter. They were kind enough to light paint the trees. There was a haze over the sky which made conditions not perfect for Milky Way Photography but the stars still pop in the sky there.

I’ll end with this photo taken at the Blue Ridge Parkway in the summer of 2016. If you have never been photographing the sunrise at a location, you don’t know what it is like to get up in the dark, dress for changing weather conditions and set up your camera in pitch black. But with views like this, it is all worth it.

In summary, I think I noticed that I still like to take landscape shots, but I am drawn to animals and birds and macro shot of flowers. It may not be obvious but I have improved on all fronts in 2016 and I look forward to more photography in 2017.

Happy New Year everyone! Here’s to seeing the extraordinary in the commonplace and may you have kindness and a sense of humor in the New Year! Thank you for following along on my journey!