During the last 3 to 4 years, I have not been able to shoot very much Nature & Wildlife photography per se, which is my real love. As a result of email with my friend and outstanding photographer, Jeri Childs, I made a pledge to get back into shooting nature & wildlife this year; no matter what got in the way! In order to seal this pledge and New Years resolution, I was to take some nature images first thing New Years morning, regardless of what the weather and other circumstances were. Aside from living close to a place where you can close your eyes and take a picture in any direction, I was lucky! The blizzard that started about 30 minutes later, hadn't fully settled in at 6 AM when I took this shot. The scene that greeted me as it started to get light that morning was kind of blah and much too gray or mono tone. Even the deep red rocks of the "Garden of the Gods", here in Colorado Springs, were dull looking. I pulled out an 81A filter and used Fujichrome "Velvia" with a lot of saturation to obtain the above image. This is shooting east with the sun about to rise over the horizon behind the rocks. ( only for 2 or 3  minutes before the fast moving blizzard conditions started taking over..<BG>) What do they say about the early bird? Strangest thing is I hate to get up at 4:30 AM and normally don't!

--- Lee Snipes  aka Greyhawk @ Greyhawk1