One of my resolutions for the year is to do something creative each week and publish it. I came down with a pretty nasty cold this week unfortunately, so I'm just going to publish a few of my photos from my vacation to both Florida and New Mexico to see my parents. I've been processing them off and on over the course of the week.

This first image I got on our kayaking trip at Robinson Preserve in Florida. Its a little south of Tampa Bay near Bradenton. Here is the front of my kayak with my mom and her husband Brian in separate boats.

There's a lot of birds in the preserve. I kayaked around to get close-ups of them quite a bit. Here's an ibis looking back at me.

We took a break when we got near the bay and I walked over to a nearby bridge to shoot some of the nature around the preserve. The first image is a bird that I thought had a nice symmetry with the branches he was standing on. Putting it in B&W flattened it into what almost looks like a drawing or logo. The second is simply a leaf that I enhanced in Lightroom to standout from the water and bushes around it.

On the way back I got a shot of both my mom and Brian with paddles on opposite sides. There was a narrow corridor of green that I thought framed it nicely. One thing you won't see in this photo is a power pole that was sticking out of the top of the picture. I was able to remove that in Photoshop.

This picture I took on the way back from our kayaking trip. A couple other groups of kayakers heading the same direction overtook us and I hung back for a minute to get a shot with everyone.

I took several photography trips with my dad in New Mexico, so this is just a few of the trips I've processed so far. This is all from our first trip up to the Sandia Crest. Its a remarkable view up there and a little strange to be in such a snowy area in the middle of what's otherwise a desert.

I loved this gorgeous view of the city of Albuquerque.

After a bit of a hike on the icy trails we found ourselves at the Kiwanis Cabin, which is just a strange, now defunct little landmark overlooking the crest. It makes for some great photo ops.

Inside of the cabin, heavily HDR'd to get just a bit of the clouds in the distance.

A frozen pair of trees that I thought looked cool at the time. The clouds seem like they are bursting in the background.

And finally a couple pictures of my dad.

Not a bad first week of work!