This image of a rain shaft descending from a thundercloud was captured in monochrome north of Amarillo at the edge of the Llano Estacado.

    These horses feast on hay and lay around until someone wants to ride them; a relatively easy life. They are mostly old and friendly and the photographer petted them and talked as he shot these photos during the last snow of 2010.

    Taken during the last few moments before sunset Randall Derrick barely noticed this scene out of the corner of his eye as he drove south along US highway 87 a mile north of the Canadian River. "Chance favors the prepared mind," as Blaise Pascal once remarked, and fortunately the light waited long enough to get 26 exposures.

    The last year Randal Derrick used film was 2007 and that was appropriately the same year as one of our most prolific wildflower seasons. During that season Randall Derrick and his partner Frances Pool shot over 3000 photographs of wildflowers throughout the Texas panhandle. These gaillardias were photographed in Palo Duron Canyon in front of a dead piece of magenta-colored cottonwood.

    The windy spray off the top of the dunes at Great Sand Dunes National Preserve near Ft. Garland, Colorado.

    The effect of light on the convex and concave-shaped dune waves at Great Dand Dunes National Preserve near Ft. Garland, Colorado.

    Blanca Peak in southern Colorado, photographed from north of Taos, New Mexico.