This is one of the first images I captured with my new camera, a Nikon D5100, and new (longer!) lens, a Nikkor 55-300mm telephoto lens.

Nikon D5100 f/8.0 ISO 5000 1/250sec 55-300@195mm – Spring 2012

It feels like I have wandered off the trail and entered an enchanted land of green grass and mist. In a way, that is what my camera helps me to do. I escape from my everyday world and mindset (not that there is anything at all wrong with my everyday life), and those thoughts and feelings fade away while I am totally caught in the here and now through my lens. Funny that my alternate world is actually the here and now! It is a mystical, magical experience. The glowing bright light of sunrise or sunset is what most often draws me out into my alternate world, but on this day it was a soft mist that formed the portal.

The misty look is partly an effect of depth of field, but it really was one of those days when mist rises from the ground and softens the world and its noises.