The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.  What was great about this is that I started out with this being a 365 blog – trying to post once a day.  I may not have been overly consistent – but I did end up with 378 photos – so I kind of made the goal.   My 2015 goal will be a bit different in trying to get some more verbiage to go with the photos, to continue to try new photo techniques) – 2 I learned this year were ICM (Intentional Camera Movement) and my first HDR photos (which I love now – I think if it is not a moving subject this will be a obsession of mine for a few!).

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,500 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 25 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

So I did not get any new photographic equipment (on a budget 🙂 ) for this Christmas, but I did pop for a bit of HDR software (Photomatix essentials).  So I went to my favorite lake and took bracketed exposures to give this a try.  The following 3 pics are various looks at the lake and using different filters after the HDR merge.

Chewie may be the pretty one, at least he thinks so, but Snoopy is my hunter.   And no I have not yet let him kill a mouse … right now he’s more like his canine pointer equivalent.   He spots them, flushes them out and I run quickly to make sure he doesn’t eat one.   But I just know he’s thinking – man that would sure taste great!

So just a little card for the season of some of my bird photos of the year – Happy Holidays