Join me in celebration of the lush and vigorous flora of Whidbey Island, and especially that of Ft. Ebey State Park. Imagine yourself as a strange species who perceives shades and textures to select tasty snacks. Maybe then a fungus could be an alluring crimson, or a fern might have a shy, violet underside.

I chose to hand-color many of these using oil tints and pencils. For the fungus, snail and moss photos my purpose was to emphasize the imagined possible colors of these deep forest natives. For the tulips, I merely wanted to express their rich colors while dropping out the busy backgrounds.

Many of the black and white images in this gallery used either high contrast filtering (Tri-X film with red filter), infrared film (Rollei film) or very high speed film (TMZ) to achieve more dramatic looks. I am particularly happy with those shot with Rollei infrared film because they show promise for recovering good images even from the most gloomy overcast. The infrared approach will triple the number of days that I can consider "shooting days" here on Whidbey Island.