"Flag Buoy", taken with a Canon 20D camera, circa 2006: Digital manipulation & overlays.

I was basically on assignment for the Daily Herald's The Lake Magazine, shooting and writing an ongoing series entitled "The Creeks of Lake Gaston". Initially, then Managing Editor John Moeur and I had decided to pinpoint each episode by using Lake Gaston's numbered mile marker buoys as a reference point. For example, in this case Buoy # 1 featured Lee's Creek. Eventually, the mile marker numbering scheme didn't geographically pan out and we stopped using it. For a while, though, I was running up and down the lake shooting mile marker buoys at all odd hours. This picture is one of them. (I have a heck of a lot of Buoy # 1 photographs.) Because of the harsh sunset backlighting conditions, a fill flash was required to light up the numbered buoy graphics.

I sat on this photo for years. At some point I began playing with a shot I had taken of an American flag flying on my deck. More than anything else, it was an exercise in developing my Photo Shop masking skills, as well as exploring layer transparency properties. At any rate, the flag and the buoy came together in a natural progression and I am very pleased with the results.

No doubt I will play with the flag for years to come.