O.K., I can't resist...

Having stuck to my one-photo-per-month rule above, here are a few "deleted scenes" from the retrospective's last few months.

In October, I also visited the famed Cedar Creek Grist Mill in southwest Washington, long a favored autumn location for Northwest photographers. Surprisingly, I seem to have never posted any of those images here, so let me make up for that oversight now.





If the first day of November brought images of flame-orange foliage, two weeks later, an arctic blast had brought winter to the region in no uncertain terms. An attempt to photograph a frozen-over Franklin Falls came to nought when I discovered that the approach to the falls was a solid slope of sheet ice. On the way back, however, I was able to capture these ice patterns along the edges of a still-flowing Denny Creek.





I thought long and hard about my December choice above, as I had several worthy images from that vantage point. I elected to go with the earliest, with the city and mountain bathed in "golden hour" light. However, I also thought it worth including this shot, taken the better part of an hour later, with Seattle lit up in holiday colors, Rainier still hovering, ghostlike, on the horizon.