"Impressions of Fall in a Quiet Cove", original photograph taken with an Olympus, 8 megapixel all-weather camera, circa 2004: Digitally painted on, airbrushed, and manipulated using several different graphic arts software packages.

I love Fall. I like everything about it: from the smell of distant leaves burning (sometimes mixed with the aroma of hamburgers or ribs cooking on a grill), to the subliminal shimmer of trees as they prepare themselves for the colder months ahead, and particularly for the explosive bursts of color that can dazzle the eye slowly over the period of weeks, or can be blown away in a single day's worth of hard wind.

Through the years I've cruised Lake Gaston's fall shorelines on boats loaded with baloney sandwiches and digital cameras -- a great mix. Later, when leaves first begin to shake free, I like to seek out quiet coves where the fallen leaves are still nestled together underneath the trees that let them loose.

But that is a another story. And perhaps another poster. In this "Impressions of Fall in a Quiet Cove", the color of Fall was just beginning to poke through the still-languishing shades of Summer.