Buck, Along the Bluegrass Scenic Byway

It had been late Spring since I had paid a visit to the Bluegrass area near Midway to check out the horse farms. So when I took the day off Friday, I decided a drive along the Byway was in order. While the Fall color wasn't perfect, as peak color is late this year, the drive itself was still as beautiful.

Off Highway 1681, the main byway route, I took a turn onto a side road that leads back to several horse farms. Normally I take this detour and drive back about a quarter mile before turning around and heading back to the main highway. This turn off always presents deer grazing in the thickets just off the road. Today was no exception as there was a doe grazing in the thicket not far from the road. As I turned my car around to head back to the main highway, I looked up just in time to catch a glimpse of this buck. He was grazing in an open area between two thickets. And to my surprise, he was sporting a full rack. I'd forgotten that it was late October and I should expect to find the bucks with full antlers in display. It was a pleasant surprise. Knowing the buck was too far away for a decent photo, I still snapped a few images with my 300mm. Before I purchased my 300mm I always kept my 200mm lens on my camera. Now my 300mm stays on my camera at all times. There's only a few instances where I have to downgrade to the 200mm. When you photograph wildlife and landscapes for the most part, as I do, the longer the lens the better. ENJOY!

Fall & Freshen Up

I'm no expert, but recently I read keeping your blog 'fresh' is a great idea when you've had a blog for some time and especially if you get to feeling lackluster about blogging in general. So here's what I did to change things up.

I started by giving my header a makeover. I downloaded 'copyright free' textures and graphics for the background, added two of my images to the foreground of the header and saved it as a collage. Then I switched to outlined fonts and changed the font colors. I also added a seasonal description at the top. I've noticed other bloggers do this too. Keeping to one of the important rules of blogging, if you care about that stuff, I sized my header to half the size of my screen so my content is visible. I'm guessing the header is the opening act and the real drama is your posts and sidebar.

A few other things you can do to freshen up your blog: Customizing your template background width and colors, switching to new fonts and colors and changing your layout format or columns are all great things you can do. Beware, Blogger recently closed the old dashboard only to discover the new dashboard won't allow you to customize template features. So they're working to fix it. Other things you can consider might be changing the flow of your sidebar components or repositioning the sidebar images. I did this on my blog and put what I consider my number one image at the top. Categorizing your Blogrolls is another option you can try and something I've chosen to feature on my blog. Design and decor bloggers do the best job of this I've noticed. It really aids your followers when they're blog surfing from your blog.

And the single most important thing you can do. Get outside, take your camera, shoot something different, look at things in a different light. You'd be amazed what you can create from images you don't think will serve your purpose. Drop them in your software, add textures, borders, labels, make a header, whatever. After freshening up my blog I've decided it was a good thing because it actually empowered me to get back into the blogworld more than what I had been recently. Like I said, I'm no expert. These post images were taken Sunday while on a short drive through the Bluegrass area of Kentucky. I wanted a sharper image of the young buck, but he moved on too fast for me to capture it. ENJOY!