Spectacular Fall

Last week my son Tom had gone for a run down the Kent Trails. I say "the" when really there are many trails in the Kent Trails system. Many years ago the trains pretty much stopped running in Michigan at there was no real place to go. The could not cross the straights up north and the only real access to Canada is over in the Detroit and Port Huron areas of the state. So that left a large number of abandoned rails in the state. Many of these have been relegated to walking, running, bicycling and in some part snowmobiling. In the fall they are just spectacular to take in. This year was a very good year as there have not been heavy rains and strong winds which have left the leaves on the trees for most of the fall season.
Anyhow, Tom came back from his run and proclaimed that I must get down and take some pictures of the colors on the trails. By the time I got around that day the sky had clouded over and I thought I had lost to opportunity. The next day I found it had rained overnight but it was a light shower. I packed my ThinkTANK Shapeshifer bag with my 40D, the EF 24-105 f/4 IS and EF 16-35 f/2.8 lenses and my Induro Carbon tripod with the Really Right Stuff BH-40 ball head.
As I entered the trails I knew it was going to be a good day, the colors were absolutely stellar.I came across this cart bridge for a golf course about a mile from our house and the sunlights was filtering through the trees providing such beautiful shadows and colors. The image above is actually an HDR of three images at Ev-1, Ev 0, and Ev +1. The image below is a screen capture of the original images in Lightroom.

Tom has been in Chattanooga TN attending college for the past four years and said they just don't get to see colors like this. I gotta tell you, Michigan might have its problems but God has blessed it with a natural beauty that can't be beat.
That's going to wrap it up for this week so have a great weekend and go out and enjoy the beuty of creation.


Cya... Doug