My entry "Alive" was taken on Goose Lake, Missouri.

The title stems from the experience that accompanied this image. When first arriving at the lake a couple hours before sunset the place seemed eerily devoid of any form of life. Even the trees were dead. I waded out into the mucky lake to compose my shot and left my camera and tripod sitting there until the sun was set enough to give the horizon a faint glow. As I waited, the place transformed before my eyes! Bugs filled the air, more than I have ever witnessed. Bats were catching them up like crazy. Fish were seen all over on the surface and the sounds of them jumping was never-ending. Spiders crawled out into their webs waiting patiently for a catch. As I found when I was packing up later, they even made webs all over my camera bag! Perhaps most unnerving was a very large gar that decided to surface right next to my tripod shortly before I had to go back out to it to snap the pictures. As with most fish tales, exaggeration is totally unintended and perhaps in my mind it was bigger than in reality, but I fully believe it to have been pushing 40 pounds. Of course he was not looking to make a meal of me but it was not comfortable knowing it was nearby in the nearly complete darkness.

After I snapped the picture of the glow of the horizon I waited just a short time longer and took a series of 20 second pictures for the stars. I blended the pictures together using Photoshop and converted to black and white using Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.