This week, it’s Ann-Christine’s week to dream. Her challenge is Dreamy. She writes in her challenge post, “There are many possibilities hidden in Dreamy – maybe you are given to or indulging in daydreaming? You might even want to illustrate one of your own dreams?” You can read her entire challenge post on her site.

For my response, I chose two photos of skies that I have never shared before. The first is a view from above the clouds in a small plane. I added just a touch of Luminar Neo’s Mystical tool to soften the edges of the clouds. I used Adobe Lightroom Classic’s AI removal tool to remove a couple of artifacts in the image caused by the rolling shutter effect in my Samsung S7 cell phone camera. In 2018, I was sitting in the right front seat, acting as co-pilot for the pilot flying the aircraft. I took a moment to capture the scene with my cell phone. I always enjoy the views from above the clouds, which are much closer in a small plane than they are in an airliner at 32,000 feet.

On a cruise in 2021, I captured this photo from my Samsung S20U cell phone. The picture was taken at 6:55 a.m. as we were getting ready to dock for the day’s excursion in Mexico. I picked this photo to process for the challenge as I was struck by the dreamy early-morning sky. I minimally processed the photo for this post, sparingly using Luminar Neo’s Mystical tool to soften the sharper edges of the clouds. You can view the images in 2K HD and peek at the metadata on my Flickr site.

That’s all for my response to Ann-Christine’s challenge. Lynn and I are traveling on our annual fall trip for the next few weeks, so I’ve been a little scarce in commenting on others’ posts. For this trip, we are trying an experiment. Before we left Fargo, we used Gemini AI to help plan our trip routing from North Dakota to New Orleans and back. We specified the places we want to stop, set a limit of six hours per day for travel time, and asked Gemini to assist with highway routing on U.S. and State Highways not classified as Interstate Highways. The planning was a lot harder than I thought, and we are avoiding the use of GPS tools as they always want to route via Interstate. It’s quite a project, and as I am writing this, it’s early morning in Abilene, Texas. When the trip is done, I’ll post a photo story on whether the use of AI in trip planning was a good idea or not. I apologize for not being timely in my responses to comments in the next few weeks.

Last week, I enjoyed reading the responses to my challenge, “Looking Back to Autumn,” and seeing the excellent fall colors in everyone’s photos. Next week, it’s Sofia’s turn to host the challenge. Be sure to follow her here so you don’t miss her post, which will go live at noon Eastern Time (ET) on Saturday. For more on our Lens-Artist Challenges, check out this page.

John Steiner