A couple more photographs from my trip to Pere Marquette State Park on Saturday afternoon.
This is the view from one of the lookout points just off the scenic drive that follows the top line of the bluffs that overlook the Illinois River valley. 
It illustrates that there are only two types of color on a clear Missouri/Illinois winter's day – blue and brown! I love these subtle colors; not for me the super saturated primaries that seem to be in vogue for a lot of digital photography. Far in the distance to the right of the photograph you can see the silver strip of the Illinois River and beyond that Calhoun County.
And here's a close up of some Calhoun County farmhouses, beyond that strip of water with the evening mist rising from the valleys
The focal length (35mm equivalent) of the top picture is 10mm, that of the bottom is 560mm. Different lenses, it goes without saying. I was using a 1.4x extender on my long 400mm zoom for the long shot – I wanted to see how well it resolved at that magnification. I found the result pleasing.
I do like the second photo. The mist makes it look very pretty 🙂
Thanks you, Kimbers! 🙂
More wonderful pictures, Richard. :up:By-the-way, you've been tagged!http://my.opera.com/Stardancer/blog/2008/01/29/my-first-tag(Humor me, please. This is the first time I've ever been tagged, and I promise I'll never tag you again. :D)
Thank you, Stardancer. Oh my! 😮
The second photo is outstanding. And I agree with you about all that supersaturated color. For the occasional shot, it might be okay. But I think that it is very much abused. I don't shoot color all that much, but when I do I use the "Natural" mode on my camera, which gives me the same color space as a Zeiss lens shooting color film. The colors, as in your photos, are much closer to reality, to what you would get with the naked eye. I hope there are more photos coming. At least in an album. 🙂
Thank you very much, Edward! I'm very happy to find that you, too, prefer the natural look for color photography. There don't seem to be very many of us, unfortunately. I'm strongly tempted to blame the oversaturated images from TV and the advertising industry (my natural boogie-men!) for providing a distorted color world. I can see why monochrome photography appeals by by-passing this consideration altogether.