Guyer Creek – End of February

Yesterday morning I took a stroll down the road to see how our beaver problem was going. Aha — a few more trees down! Guyer Creek runs through my property, on through the neighbors’, finally dumping out into Lake Michigan. A local native American man has been hired to trap them. We like beavers, but none of us want our places flooded by a pond! I snapped a photo and printed it out in black & white. This morning I sat in my nice, warm studio and used the photo as a “suggestion” for the composition.

All the colors had to be improvised. I tried to remember how beautiful things looked a few nights ago. The sky was glowing in warm, fiery shades and snow looked surprisingly greenish-gray. I knew I wanted to try to capture that magical feeling of the northern woods at sunset.