Award winning professional photographer Michael Hart juried and critiqued the Houston Photographic Society’s Print competition in November 2019. My wife Lexi received 2nd Place with her “Window Reflections” image in the Color Gold category. My “Long shadows” image received 1st Place and my “Swamp Forest Dream” image received 2nd Place in the Color Platinum Category. Enjoy these images.

During one of our New York City sightseeing walks, we walked on the main and side streets and found interesting the multiple reflections of the high risers’ huge windows. I wanted to show the location and the function of the buildings.

We hiked deep into the wind-combed gypsum sand dunes at White Sands National Park, looking for something simple, quiet, and only Nature-touched areas. I found interesting these water waves-like formations contrasting with the long shadows of the grass. I just relaxed when I clicked the shutter and made my carefully composed photograph. This color image was the reference shot of my black and white photograph on a large format 4×5 film.

Looked for birds on my “Through the Lens” photography hike at Brazos Bend State Park, TX,  when I found this quiet and peaceful spot of the Pilant Slough, near Elm Lake. I liked the bluish shadows of the Spanish moss and lichen-covered trees in the foreground, but I found even more interesting the Fall colored leaves on the trees behind them. I used a telephoto lens to compress the distance and an f8 aperture to make the leaves sharp but isolated from the foreground.