When I started this blog soon after retiring I thought that I would be posting a lot of photography but that never quite happened.  I have a confession to make,  since I got my iphone I have used that camera much more often than my good Nikon and lenses.  It's always in my pocket so I can often get a quick shot that I might have missed with the "good" camera.  Actually the iphone camera isn't bad if you are careful while shooting the picture.  Since we are nearing the end of another year I thought it would be fun to post some of my own favorites from the past year and talk about why I like them.  So let's get started. There is about one each month.  

The common denominator in most of my photography is color and shape. This one was a good example of color on the vine and the shape and location of the window in the frame.  

One of my very favorite neighborhood homes in the beautiful early evening light. I really like shooting 

late afternoon evening light all the way into sunset.  

Here is another one with both shapes and colors.  The white, yellow, and blue caught my eye along with the curved stairs and circular ceiling above. 

Here we go again with shape and color, but with some local history in the background with the courthouse dome showing through one of the openings in the sculpture.  

Need you even ask?  I started out photographing a lot of people.  Senior pictures, a couple of weddings and some other events, but I soon discovered that wasn't for me but this one was just too good to pass up looking unrehearsed and natural.  

Besides color I liked the way the background color was soft while the foreground was sharp. Prophetstown State park and this one was taken with my Nikon equipment.  

This place just shows off for night shots. 

I love this one.  This guy comes around and keeps an eye on the bird feeders.  He was giving me the once over but he did let me get pretty close.  

I have a really good view of sunsets from my office window. I have no views of sunrise so I often take advantage of the sunsets...this one had great color and I like the roofline of the house next door and 

of the church steeple down the street.  

The sunsets can be so different from day to day but they all have great color 

This is not an especially good photo but it had some senimental meaning to me.  My grandparents had a windmill not far from the front of their house and a trumpet vine with flowers like these climbed all the way up that windmill.  When we were young we would pick those flowers and stick them on our fingers which made us look like we had long orange fingers.  

Some cool stone carving but I've never figured out how that face ended up on the side of a church.  

I'm always happy to see new life popping up when spring arrives.  The fern sprouts have a nice top spiral as they come up

Finally, this one of the Wabash just after sunset way back in February   I loved the striped sky and reflection on the water.