Has It Been Two Years?

Yes, today is the 2-Year Anniversary here at Views Of Texas.
315 posts with 546 photos.
Over 18,546 page views.
And at least ten times the word-count of your average photoblog, maybe more.
I want to extend a big thank-you to all of my visitors, especially those who take the time and trouble to leave comments.
If the counter at the bottom didn't keep climbing so fast I would have axed this site long ago.


Please click on the photo to enlarge it
This will be the last tree post for a while, I promise.
This pine is in a local park, and can't be more than four or five feet tall.
I don't recall exactly because for most of the time I spent with it, I was laying on the ground trying to get the best angle and exposure.
The clouds were moving and changing very quickly due to high altitude winds, so photos taken even a minute apart are completely different.
This one had the best sky, but some of the others are pretty cool, too.
It was a tough choice to make.

I was in manual mode and using a polarizing filter.
The exposure was set at a -2EV underexposure metered for the sky, with the underside of the tree brought up using fill flash.
Not much of a message with this, except that even a naturally pretty scene can be improved with some creative camera work, so it's more of a showcase for technique than anything else.
Good practice for when something really interesting is happening under similar conditions.

The Rodeo was great yesterday, and I got a ton of pictures.
So many in fact that I'll need to break it up into at least three posts, starting tomorrow night.

Have a good weekend, and thanks again for stopping by.