The Padilla Bay Estuary is a place to experience sky and water, clouds and colors. There is an old barn with a dock, on the water asking to have its image captured. Remnants of rusted equipment are strewn along the shore. Birds of all types visit, and the clouds grace the sky with shapes and colors.
Here is a series of images from the last years visits.
Thank you all for the wonderful feedback! Every month I am learning new skills and integrating things, be it with image capture or photoshop…I am definitely looking forward to 2015!
Here is my next set of 12 favorite images from this year. I hope you enjoy them!
Isolation Lake Panorama, Alpine Lakes Wilderness
Tulips and Stormy Skies
Barn and Dandelions
Lake Ann from the Maple Pass Trail, North Cascades
Mount Rainier Milky Way
Mount Shuksan from Skyline Divide
Padilla Bay Sunset
Mount Baker and Park Butte Lookout
Sunset in the Enchantments, Alpine Lakes Wilderness
Mt Adams and Pacific Crest Trail, Goat Rocks Wilderness
Tractor and Sky, Skagit County
Virgin River at Night, Zion National Park, Utah
I drive by this old truck and old buildings everyday, they call to me. Today the sky was fine and so I went and asked if I could shoot.
The shed once housed a Blacksmith. There is still quite a bit of equipment inside, under the roof and skies…
Skagit Valley is in Northwestern Washington State, nestled between the North Cascades Range and the Pacific Ocean. This view is facing up valley.
Skagit Valley Fall Sunset
Padilla Bay, Skagit County, Washington
The Padilla Bay Estuary offers some wonderful opportunities for imaging. The pathway leads through an open scene of grasses, water and several lone trees…
The abandoned barn and old, rusted equipment provide alluring back drops…
As the sun goes down it all glows with colors.
Soon the colors change from blues to reds…
The panoramas are endless…
All of these images were from last Friday night, along the Samish River and the farm fields nearby.
These first three images were taken along Cook Road, just east of I-5. There is a barn here, with no house nearby and the views are expansive. Of course landscapes and skies are always better with stuff in the foreground! 
This next set of three images was taken 2 nights later, out along the Bayview-Edison Road, just west of Edison. That’s the Samish River there.
I awoke at 5:30am to take sunrise pictures, but I was almost too late! As I was driving to the ocean I espied this barn and diverted, partly because of the dandelions and mostly because I could see I was late to make it to the shore in time…not that I’m complaining!
The generally dull, gray and wet winter months do not afford as many colorful photogenic opportunities as the other three seasons prompting me to come up with a new idea of what to capture.
Recently I had posted a few images of old barns and several people commented that they just loved them and wanted to see more and so the Barn Project was born.
A simple search turned up a Skagit County Heritage Barn web site, complete with images, descriptions and directions to each barn.
I am just getting started but here are a few images of Barns of Skagit County!
North Western Images - photos by Andy Porter 