Mike Houge

The above image is from my recent trip up north. The fall color this year was very hard to find and we had to go inland to find this image. There is a long stretch of road (several miles) northwest of Tofte that is lined with maples and the foggy conditions really add to the mood.

Some years when the sun is shining the colors are so bright- it almost hurts the eyes. If some year you should go north for fall colors- there are several maps available for self guided tours. The above area is always a fun trip and the Carlton Peak area is also beautiful- if you can time it right.

As always- thanks for stopping by and have a great week.

Here's a couple more images from my recent trip up north. I missed the best fall colors by at least two weeks but I was still able to find pockets of color. It seems I'm on a mission to capture as many birch trees as possible, before they're all gone. It's really sad how few are left compared to ten years ago.

The above image was something I've been working on for a few days. My friend Dan Ruf (www.danielruf.typepad.com ) mentioned a new software he found from JixiPix and I've really fallen in love with it. The above is a woodcut look and I thought it worked well with the birch.

Thank you for stopping by and I hope you have a great week.

New techniques:

I've been having fun working with some new software from JixiPix. My wife wanted me to come up with a woodcut look for the Grand Marais light. It took some work to get the feel of what I had in mind and of course the colors had to blend with our living room ;-) . I hope you like the above image, it was fun doing something different.

As always, thanks for stopping by and have a great week.

Grand Marais revisited:

My wife and I were able to go north for our birthdays last week and spent 4 nights in Grand Marais. For the first time this year the weather was fantastic, cool days and evenings. I wanted to find time to photograph items outside my comfort zone - due to the fact that I've been in a bit of a rut.

The bay there was full of sail boats but we only had one morning with calm winds so luckly I was up early to capture this scene. I filled up a memory card with a lot of new images but it remains to be seen if I let anyone else see them ;-) .

That's it for now- as always thanks for stopping by and have a great week.