July 24: This was a very stressful day--heading back home, vacation essentialy over, the campground with our reservations had no spots and claimed they didn't even take reservations, and on the way to search for a place to stay, the truck started to overheat. I managed to snap a few shots of an orchard as we sat by the side of the road flipping through the campground book. I used Chalk and Charcoal to give it a muted pastel tone.

Unfortunately, this is one of those pictures that looked better in the field than they do out of the camera. Now, to take it, I was pulled over to the side of a narrow winding road, keeping an eye in the rear view mirror all the while. I was only able to get off three shots from the car window before I saw a school bus coming up behind me and had to get going. I've never used the Sponge filter before, but it worked fairly well to enhance the contrast between the wet black truncks and the fading yellow leaves, as well as adding some texture to the lowering sky.

Ever since the Challenge began, I've been posting pictures taken at Rogers Orchards in Southington CT. Today, they celebrated their 200th anniversary. Ever since 1809, the orchards have been in the ownership of this one family. They grow apples, peaches and plums. We stop on Sundays on our way home from church to snag some fresh fruit. The year's cycle MUST include making peach jam as well and peach and apple pies. Every September, we go there to pick our own apples. We took our kids as they were growing up, and now we're taking grandsons.

For the celebration, they had this little bluegrass band. I've been looking for a photo that would work with the Fresco filter, and I've finally found one.

I was driving past the orchard this afternoon during a brief period of sunlight in our long stretch of drizzly gloomy weather. This stretch is being planted with new trees. To my rain-weary eyes, the grass seemed to glow in the unfamiliar light. The Water Paper filter shows forth the incandescent colors the way I saw them.

The wonderful thing about the orchard is that it changes week by week. The orchard I saw last Tuesday is not the one I drove past today. What I loved about this week's orchard was the fresh colors--the pale green of the leaves and grass, the intense blue of the sky, and the softer yellows of the mulch under the trees. Film Grain highlighted those elements.

When we rounded the reservoir on our way to church this morning, and the orchard spread out before us, all in full bloom--it just took my breath away. The day was overcast, but the apple blossoms glowed under the lowering sky. Diffuse Glow helps the trees to light up the way they did to my eyes this morning.

I posted yesterday that apple trees were not blooming here yet. I was wrong. Since last Tuesday, the trees in the orchard have exploded in to glorious pink blossoms. The Ink Outlines filter given emphasis to both the joyous color and the laciness of the flowers.

Fog hung over the orchard this afternoon. Using the Pencil Sketch effect gives the photo an extra sense of dampness and mist.

This is an example of where what I saw and what the camera saw were two different things. There's a few days in early spring when the grass suddely turns a brilliant green, before anything else had budded. The green is so fresh and so bright amid all the grey and dull brown that it seems to glow. That's what I saw in the orchard today--swaths of luminescent grass running amid the rest of the dormant vegetation. The green caught and held my eye. But in the camera, the tangles of dead weeds and bare branches dominated. The Sponge filter simplifies all that unwanted detail so that the surprising green of the young grass stands out better.

The orchard is still dormant. Today, the late winter sun cast a pallid light on the skeletal branches. The use of the Chalk and Charcoal filter with a bit of subtel coloring creates an eerie moonscape.

The Pencil Sketch effect, at a reduced opacity, better conveys the muted colors of an orchard in February.

The orchard is beginning to show hints of awakening--there's a subtle red shade to the tips of the trees. I'm intrigued by the bars of snow and bare ground.

The Pencil Sketch effect softens the effect of bright sunlight, so that the photo better expresses the sense of waiting in a winter orchard.

In late winter, the awakening of the orchard is still in the future--not yet seen, but begining to be felt.

To me, there is something about this version that seems to increase the sense of subliminal life moving under the surface. I used the Flourescent Crayon efffect, then decreased the opacity so more of the original photo showed through.

In another few months, this orchard will be all aglow with blossoms. Right now, it feels like it's holding its breath. One can sense the stirring way down low in the roots, but nothing is on the surface yet.

The Pencil Sketch effect brings out the barren, bony nature of the dormant trees.

Come spring, the words of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins will apply here: "Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!" But right now, the apple trees are skeletal, patiently waiting out the winter in rows.