Photos by Big V

This photo was pretty cool until I decided to 'mess with it' a few years ago. I tried to give it an effect to make it look like it was a water-colored painting, but I didn't like it. Now, I can't find the original! Sign in to see full entry.

I had seen this animal many times, but nowhere near this close. It was 'not there,' and suddenly, it was 'there.' I suspect it weighed about 250 pounds, with a massive rack of horns. It had been a warm fall, and the leaves hadn't begun to turn colors yet. Sign in to see full entry.

This is where the mighty Tahquamenon River becomes a river. It starts as a swamp and slowly begins to get deeper and wider, finally wandering away from where it's being pooled. Sign in to see full entry.

This isn't the best shot I have of the color changes as the big lake got deeper, but it shows how quickly it got deep Sign in to see full entry.

This is the old 'leader of the pack' wolf stopping to check us out. You can see his eyes are on us, searching to see if we are friends, enemies, or prey. I had Buster with me, my 140-pound part German Shepard/Black Lab mix. Even he understood our presence in the wilderness was not as a prime animal.... Sign in to see full entry.

On its own, this set of falls is beautiful. The 'fall' on these falls is about 18 feet, a mere spit compared to the upper falls, some fifteen miles up the road. Those have a 'fall' of about 95 feet. Still, the scenery always caught my heart. Sign in to see full entry.

Black Slate Falls is a series of short, stepping drops scattered along the Slate River for about a half mile. Near the town of Arvon, this waterfall flows down from the old slate quarries northwards towards Huron Bay. I was playing with the length of time my lens would be open, and it only took a... Sign in to see full entry.

In this shot, you can still see the insulating feathers on the younger bird. Mama was talking to her chick about its last attempt to fly, softly 'quacking' to it about what to do. Three attempts later, it did manage to stay in the air for several minutes. Sign in to see full entry.

I had seen this puppy fox many times before, but this was the first time I had seen it after Mama gave them all the boot. He saw me coming down the trail and waited for me to get quite close to him. I was able to kneel beside him, almost within petting distance. He looked like he was asking me,... Sign in to see full entry.

This is an average-size freighter crossing the lakes as it nears the "Mighty Mac' - The Mackinaw Bridge. The lake was calm, and the captain had the power at full tilt at speeds approaching 28 mph. As the old saying goes, "You had to make miles while the sun shines." Sign in to see full entry.