Category: Photo Friday

Fallow Season

Winter in the Central Texas Hill Country is mild when compared with more northerly latitudes. Typically we have a light freeze overnight followed by fifty or sixty degree days. Not a hardship by any means. The pace of rural life does slow down in the cool months. The fields are mostly fallow and some of the oak trees shed their leaves. It feels like winter even without the cold.

The cold season, such as it is, presents excellent opportunities for landscape photography. The color palette is more subtle and the bones of the natural world are revealed when foliage withers. It seems the starkness of the winter landscape pushes my photography to a more introspective place. The highly graphic scenes reveal something about the photographer as well as the landscape.

Green

Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for the New Year

This is a gentle landscape to remember summers past. Many Texans consider the Central Texas Hill Country to be the most beautiful part of the state. Of course just as many will argue that some other region is equally beautiful and to be honest they are probably right. The state is as large as many countries with beauty to be found in every region.

Soaring

The Devils River meanders through West Texas and finally reaches the Rio Grande at Lake Amistad. Devils River Canyon, which is partially flooded by waters behind Lake Amistad reservoir, is a spectacular sight. Vertical limestone cliffs rise a hundred meters or more above the river. The canyon can be explored by small watercraft for some distance upriver from the lake.

Updrafts along cliffs create a perfect environment for soaring birds. They can be seen rising thousands of feet catching thermals out above the arid landscape. You can watch the them starting out low to the cliffs, circling and rising to find warm air then disappearing to become small dots high above. There is something inspiring about this simple natural behavior. It is one of the many remarkable things to be found along the borderlands of Texas.