366 Days of Beauty in the Year 2020 by Brad Reed and Rachel Gaudette

We are HUGE Michigan State fans. My boys’ bedroom is painted green and white, with a large Fathead vinyl print of Sparty on one of the walls. They also have State-themed sheets and bedspreads.

While getting all our deer hunting stuff ready for opening day on the 15th, my dad and I took a break shortly before sunset and walked down in front of our cabin to the banks of the Pere Marquette River. We had excellent clouds, sun rays, and golden light as I made this image.

Growing up on the farm, we only had wood heat. Two wood stoves, and a wood kitchen range heated the entire home. In our home, we too use wood as our main source of heat. There are enough dead or downed trees on the farm that we do not need to buy any, it just takes time and sweat to cut, split, haul, and stack it. The warmth it gives us on freezing Michigan winter days makes it all worth it!

It was a calm morning today in the deer hunting woods. Not many deer were moving, and we had a lot of rain on and off. I was glad to be sitting in a waterproof tower and not in my open-air pit blind today. For a few minutes we had a break in the clouds and a tiny bit of sunlight appeared. I used my iPhone to make this image out of our apple orchard tower.

After a chilly and windy opening day of rifle season, David and I were headed in for a warm dinner. The foggy atmosphere surrounding the field was a perfect black-and-white setting.

I switched deer hunting towers for the second night of the season. Tonight, I sat in my brother’s blind and the rain turned to a beautiful, sticky snow. Within a half hour, I watched this scene turn from brown and kind of ugly, to a winter wonderland. The deer loved the snow too because they finally started moving after the snow fell.

Today was a long day. With a lot of projects going on at work, my brain was tired. It was hard to pull my head together to pick up my camera.

For the third night of deer season, I moved back into the apple orchard tower. It was another slow night of hunting, but the magic light appeared, and I was ready with my iPhone.

Mother Nature was showing off her dramatic self this afternoon. I love when clouds layer like this, with the sun backlighting each layer.

Our friend Bill Castonia can fix and build anything. My dad’s deer hunting tower down in the swamp along the Pere Marquette River had a bent metal leg that the ice had destroyed. It made the 22-foot tower unsafe and unusable for eight years. Bill came and looked at it and said he could fix it, no problem. A week later I made this image of my dad from that tower as he was walking by deer hunting.

I left work early today so that David Benjamin and I had a chance to get back out in the deer hunting woods. It is nice to spend quality one-on-one time with each of my kids. We didn’t see any deer, but we watched several squirrels while we were out there.

My grandma, Dorothy Reed, always loved chickens and cows. She had lots of art that was chicken or cow themed. While photographing this giant metal chicken in front of the Jolly Plate restaurant on US-31 north of Scottville, I was smiling thinking of my grandma in Heaven.

I have envisioned this with a sunrise filling the sky and reflecting in the creek. I have many memories playing here. I woke the kids up early to get them ready for school. They stayed in the warmth of the van while I climbed down the steep embankment to Weldon Creek. While the sunrise didn’t show, I am pleased with this black-and-white, and we managed to make it back to the driveway before the bus came. That’s a win-win in my book.

I made a drive north today looking for photographs. I ended up at the Grand Traverse Lighthouse on Lake Michigan. The lighthouse keepers had the historic building decorated for Christmas with several beautiful wreaths in the windows.

Tonight was Joshua’s turn to sit with me. We donned our hunter’s orange clothing and headed across the railroad tracks to the field. We hunkered down in the corner, waiting for the big one. Hunting with a four-year-old, it might not be a surprise that no deer showed. We had lots of laughs though and he was excited to be part of the hunting experience. Once we arrived home, I played around with a green mason jar.

While sitting with Julia this morning deer hunting in our apple orchard tower on our family hunting property, we were laughing, and she was telling me fun stories about her friends. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. I turned and saw this mature buck standing broadside looking at us about 70 yards away. I told Julia to grab her gun. Without hesitation, she made a perfect shot with her grandpa’s gun.

The kids and I will be celebrating Thanksgiving with my mom and dad tomorrow. They will be at their dad’s for Thanksgiving Day. We cleaned and prepared food all day today in preparation for the feast. I didn’t even step outside I was working so hard. As I walked past Joshua’s puffer coat, I thought it could make for a cool photo.

The clouds over Lake Michigan were so pretty tonight that I decided to focus on just them. I love when clouds have the orange outline like this.

Kasey has been asking for a hamster for many months. I decided that for her birthday, it would be a great time to buy one for her. My sister was coming up from Ohio for Thanksgiving, and we found a breeder near her. Kasey was a lucky girl and received Sugar early.

I stood in the mucky water of Lincoln Lake tonight along M-116 to make this image of Epworth. We often try to find triangles in our images. I used the log on the right side of this image to counter the clouds on the left side of the image. Together, along with the shadows of the clouds in the foreground, they created a triangle to point your eyes directly at Mount Epworth..