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Time to start the new year off with a brand new wallpaper for your desktop! This is literally my new year image, taken January 1, 2013.

I had been fighting a little cold bug for a couple of days over the holidays that prevented me from getting out more than one day. But with the new year upon me I knew I would feel better out in nature regardless the conditions rather that setting home wishing I were so out I went into the cold wondrous countryside. I traveled some familiar roads taking me through favorite places enjoying the rolling hills, open spaces and wintry rural scenes. I find that rural areas such as with outbuildings, barns and typical farmland scenes seem to come across to me better in the wintertime when there is snow on the ground than any other time of the year. The same can’t be said with prairies and flint hills that I spend a majority of my time in. Oh they are beautiful as well and will never pass up a winter road trip into my favorite places. But for at least the present time rural areas take on a new type of secluded look and feel to me when the land is sleeping and cold air whistles pass the scattered fields of last years crops. I think it’s like most things with me it can change and it mostly depends on the mindset I’m in at any given time. Like the weather it fluctuates with the seasons.

I had taken a few images and the was heading eastward along a snowy country road when from behind a treeline the scene opened up to wide field of what looked to be last years corn crop. Obviously the crop had been harvested and only small remnants of stalk were visible sticking up out of the few inches of snow that had covered the ground the night before. There is something that takes place in my mind when I connect with a view of the land. I know the very second I see it that I have to stop and explore the area more. The moment this open field came into view as barren as it was I knew a photograph was going to have to be made. The way the land gently met the sky the seem to become one as if the only thing that changed were the cool colors of nature the distance between land and sky seemed to be irrelevant. This was something different I knew it the moment I saw it.

Out I came into the cold and began the process of scene reduction. What parts were to be concentrated on in order to capture what I was viewing. I had approximately one hour before sunset so this would give me enough time to check out various views and hope the setting sun would provide the typical winter pastel colors of sunset in the eastern sky.

I have worked up a half dozen images from this area so far and specifically picked this image made moments after sunset looking to the eastern horizon for this months wallpaper. As the darkness set in and began my way back to warmer civilization I felt my new year had started out just fine.

I hope you enjoy this months offering and may 2013 be filled with wonder, adventure and all that makes you smile.

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© Brad Mangas

[box] You may first click on the image to see it at full size or to save as your background simply right click the thumbnail image and chose; set as desktop background, image will be saved without borders to your desktop background. Then in your desktop properties chose the best properties to display your image. (Example; center, fit, stretch)[/box]