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The Rieth-Riley asphalt company in Ludington always has large piles of crushed up material behind their headquarters. I have always thought they would make an interesting photograph, but never took the time to do it. Today the giant pile of black asphalt looked strikingly beautiful against an all-white sky. F11.0 at 0.3, ISO 100, 18-50 mm lens at 18 mm

This is the first photograph I have ever made of a Michigan coyote. Photographing a coyote has been near the top of my bucket list for several years. This wily coyote was circling around in long grass to get closer to a herd of deer. I shot this photo with a 600mm telephoto lens from about a 800 yards away near Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Leelanau County. Hopefully next time I will be able to get closer, but I still really like this environmental portrait of the large coyote.

Electric Shoreline

Frankfort Lighthouse and Lower Laker

Charlevoix has always been a favorite vacation place for my dad and my stepmom, Debbie. I have been there several times with them. We love photographing Lake Charlevoix and also their beautiful red lighthouse on Lake Michigan. I drove over three hours in a snowstorm to make this image. I am so glad I did!

Frankfort Lighthouse

When the owners of Patton's Junk Yard, on Stiles Road in Riverton Township, granted me permission to photograph the yard I had no idea of the history that lay within. It became apparent that most of the vehicles and machinery reflected a long ago era. I found a delivery truck with "Old Tyme Milling Co." painted on its weathered side. I took many photographs, but I liked this closest, simplest shot that summed up Patton's Junk Yard. The old-fashioned junk yard, with all its relics, has disappeared.

Driving from Michigan to Georgia makes for a long haul, but the journey does have its benefits. Spectacular views

Yesterday my dad and I stood on the north shore of Grand Haven for almost six hours and photographed during the storm. The waves were running 15 feet with an occasional 18-footer. This was the largest wave we saw all day hit the lighthouse and it was well over 20 feet tall. The spray went over 100 feet in the air. I named the photo "Fuel Injected" because after shooting, on the drive back home to Ludington last night, my dad said that having all that wind in his face for so long made him feel alive and fuel injected.

This alpha doe was protecting her family from a hungry wounded coyote near the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Leelanau County. To get a little closer to this scene, I used a 1.4 extender on my 600mm lens. That made my lens 840mm and with my cropped sensor my lens became 1260mm at F5.6.

Cardinals have always been my mom’s and my favorite. After my brother, Kevin, passed away, they are a welcome sight. I made this image to show my mom that he was visiting us this day.

The bow of the commercial fishing tug Judy Ann cuts through the water as the vessel heads for the chub fishing grounds far offshore on Lake Michigan. The tug was operated by Ron Walters and his father, Jim, for many years. It was the last commercial gill net fishing vessel to operate out of Ludington. I miss seeing the sturdy old boats operated by the Walters, Cloutiers, and others plying in and out of the harbor, unloading their catches or working on their nets.

At first glance, a dead tree is not a pleasant sight, certainly not a beautiful one. But when a person spends enough time in the forest and comes to appreciate the natural evolution of life and death, one can actually look for and see the beauty in natural things that have died. I felt that way as soon as I saw this scene. Flooding years earlier in this dune valley swale had killed this tree and many others nearby. New life was all around.

My stepmom's mother, Marjorie Brye Vyse, attended this old school house in her youth. The school sits vacant today on the corner of Hawley Road and Old US 31. I find it fascinating how Mother Earth is slowly reclaiming this building. F8.0 at 1/200, ISO 100, 18-50 mm lens at 18 mm

I did not have time to get my underwater camera housing water tight, so I made a quick decision to leave it in the truck and grab my normal Nikon D800. I ran down the beach to the water's edge and started shooting. I knew to get the image I really wanted I needed to get into Lake Michigan with my camera. I took a calculated risk and put my camera and tripod head just above the surface of Lake Michigan and waited for a breaking wave to crash just below my camera. With a 0.6 second exposure and my detached flash set to rear sync, I was able to make the image I had envisioned.

Something about this dead tree attracted me to it when I spotted this snow-covered bog along US131 north of Manton, Michigan, and decided it would be a good place to make some early morning images.

I walked out into Grand Traverse Bay early this morning to make this image of a large tree stump covered in snow and ice. I enjoy making photographs when the sky is reflected in slow-moving water.

A sign of times past, this sign once advertised a Ludington retail fish business on the waterfront where commercial fishing vessels once docked. The original location of the building and the fish tugs is now the site of Ludington Municipal Marina.