Friday - my longest day - and it rained all day.  That meant that the school children had to be indoors all day.  They were fairly good, but I have some boys that just don't handle it very well.  
Here are some more of my flower shots from this summer :Jane's flowers , Near Mount St. Helens , Daisy Sun

More prairie stuff: Far 1 , and more saturation Far 2.

Back a few months I posted a picture of a prairie cemetery in North Dakota.  I was never happy with the picture because the sky was washed out and the grass was underexposed.  Also, in my mind's eye I remembered the sunbeams being more pronounced.  During some downtime over Thanksgiving I began working harder to learn how to use the digital darkroom capabilities of PSE.  Here are a couple attempts at fixing the issues I had with the original.
Enhanced Version III
Enhanced Version IV
With III I adjusted the levels of the sky and the grass separately by copying them onto their own layers.  I also did a little dodging on and around the Crucifix to highlight it a bit.  With IV instead of adjusting the levels I tried the multiply and screen commands on the separate sky and grass layers as well as some dodging on and around the Crucifix.  You'll also note some edge burning on IV.  I'm interested to hear what you think about the enhanced versions versus the original.

Okay, I'm going to give this another go to see if I can get the hang of this thing.

On our way back from Glacier National Park on highway 85 in western North Dakota I stopped to take a late-afternoon picture of this prairie cemetery. We've probably driven by this cemetery a dozen times over the years and I've always sworn I was going to get a picture. This time I did.  I had to dodge cowpies as the cemetery was surrounded by open pasture.  This cow was watching me closely. I made sure there were no bulls among the cows.  I also eyed the barbed-wire fence to see if I could hurdle it in a pinch.  On the way back to the car I saw these sunbeams shining down on the golden fields. Whoever said the prairie isn't pretty?