Exploring

The girls all decided to ski today, and I decided I needed some alone time to poke around.
As usual, I picked a direction and followed my inner voice that says "Turn here".

Before too long I found myself pulling into a marina looking for a place to turn around, and that place was the parking lot for a nature preserve!
Score.

On the walk out I shot infrared with the F828:








It was a wetlands reclamation project, and I didn't recognize most of the species of plants, so that was really cool.
On the way back to our rental car (a Chevy Tahoe, of course) I switched to shooting color with the Alpha 200:






There are two guys fishing this pond that I tried to hide with bushes, but you can Waldo one of them. They were drunk at 11am and singing silly songs until one noticed me and told his buddy "That guy's taking pictures of us" like he was pissed. I just kept walking, glad that they were now quiet.


It got interesting when it started looking like the ground was smoking. Man, the weather here changes constantly and quickly even on the ground, let alone up on the mountains. Love it.
These pics were all from 11am to noon, and you couldn't see the lake from 100 yds--I was bundled up. At 9am the girls rode the gondola above the clouds and it was clear and hot.




Here's some other stuff from later in the day.





Tomorrow we finally get to sleep late!
Hopefully taking a boat tour of the lake for more photo ops.
If not I'll find something else worth shooting on our last day in Tahoe.



PS: These new slot machines don't make any sense at all.
I would have tried gambling with a cup full of quarters, a big handle you pull, and spinning wheels, but these things are dumb.

Walker Ranch Park

One of my very favorite parks, but it has been discovered by everyone else.
Fortunately, the majority use the main entrance on West Ave--even parking on the grass and any other place where they can fit.
Sheep.
I use the "secret" lot at the end of Rhapsody, where there's always a few open parking spaces.

I have to time my photos carefully to keep a half-dozen random strangers out of them.

The zig-zag footbridge over Salado Creek has been the subject of some popular photos of mine, but this is the first time I used it solely as a high vantage point.
Timing is important again because people walking across (make that kids bouncing across) can set up a wicked vibration that'll ruin photos taken at longer shutter speeds like these.

Pure luck here.
Didn't have time to think or compose, and I really like it.


As always, if I post a photo in black & white it was taken with my Sony F828. This camera has a filter on the lens which blocks nearly all visible light, and is set to record only the infrared spectrum.
This is where the bright foliage and dark skies come from.
Now that using the F828 is as close to second-nature as shooting with my dead F717 was, expect to see more IR work from me.
Especially now that spring has arrived and the drought is over.



.

Margarita Sweet Potato Vine

I first noticed this vine as part of a three-plant potted arrangement we had purchased for a gift from Lowe's.
Subsequent visits revealed that the MSPV grew very fast--in fact it's capable of taking over half your porch if it gets enough water and light, even in a smallish pot of soil.
I was impressed and started shopping for my own but had no luck. (They are available now).
So I was back-gifted 2 cuttings from the ends of the original plant's many vines.
Took them home in a water bottle and started watching them.
Mine were about 12 inches long--the one above is a bit shorter.
All you do is strip 3 or four stems from the base of the cutting and keep it in water. I used a pint glass this time because after the roots grow you can damage them trying to remove it from a water bottle.
Oops--I ended up having to cut the bottle apart last time.
Set the cutting in a windowsill. Direct sunlight isn't necessary.

Within 12-24 hours roots will begin to grow from either side of where the leaf/stem was snapped off. You can see pores (for lack of the correct term) from which the roots emanate if you examine the vine of a mature plant.
The little projection in the stem's elbow sometimes grows into a branching vine--no idea what process stimulates this.
The above photo was taken after 5 days or so.
It's best to wait until at least 8-10 days before planting. By then you should see smaller roots branching off the main ones.

I planted mine in a mixture of Miracle Grow Garden Soil™ and local dirt with a moderate clay content that I had to dig up anyway to keep a fence gate swinging freely. Don't know if it helped or hurt--it's hard to tell with something that grows so explosively.
The plant above was just the two cuttings a couple of months ago.

The MSPV has a bright green color that provides a nice contrast to every other plant you might be growing.
Or you can go with the red/purple leafed non-margarita variety.
Can be used as ground cover or as a fence cover if you're willing to spend a lot of money on water, but I prefer to keep it potted and under control for now.
Likes it's soil damp all the time so I water it heavily every other day.
Martha's website says to wait until the surface of the dirt is dry before watering, and that's good advice.
The leaves will let you know, too.
Might be a good candidate for planting where your AC unit's condensation pipe drains.

Bonus: You get a free Central American sweet potato every Autumn, although I doubt I'll harvest mine.
My plan is to take several cuttings for next season's "crop" in a few months and grow them indoors (small pots) until Spring.
I've never played with vines before, so this has been a fun and educational experiment.

Rose-Bellied Lizards

We walked down a dirt trail into Salado Creek to look at a more natural version of nature.
Walker Ranch Park is great, but joggers, rollerbladers, kids and dogs tend to scare the critters away.

Before too long I was rewarded by several sightings of the Rose-Bellied Lizard.
They are plentiful, so I always see this tiny reptile skittering around whenever I'm in it's preferred habitat. But I've never managed to score any pictures, and in fact have found that photos are somewhat rare. A website that I use to ID various animals didn't have any pics until I submitted these.

Both of these females are showing their 'breeding colors'. The bright red splotches signal to the males that they are looking for some action.

This male is interested.

A Walk In The Park

This is the first time I have taken pictures at Walker Ranch Park (West & Nakoma) when the sun has been shining.




Went off the trails down to the Salado Creek.
Found a tree that had barbed-wire embedded within it's trunk.

SuperBowl Sunday

Lots of food and drinks, plus relaxing and quiet Hill Country views.
A great game, even though our team lost.



I wasn't consciously trying to shoot prickly-pear cactii, it just happened that they were in my favorite shots.

Playing In The Yard

Except for the band I haven't gone anywhere this past week or taken any pictures.
Spent my time building some photography gear but haven't gotten around to shooting those, either.


So I thought I would take some pics in my yard, and finally get around to using my polarizing filter seeing as how I've been able to put it on my new lenses for months but never have.


The dark corners are less about the CP filter and more about my lens--I have noticed it before, and really don't care much.
So it darkens edges and corners--big deal.




With 10.2 megapixels, you have some room to crop dark corners if they bother you.

2008 Leftovers

It's been my habit every January to drag out those photos from the previous year that never made the cut, but were close.


In February the Texas Mountain Laurel trees bloom in SA--our first concrete sign of Spring. We planted one in early 2005 that was under 2' high, and by 2008 it was much taller than I and blossomed for the first time. The resulting seed pods are still on it today--I suppose they'll drop soon, but maybe not until next year for all I know. As kids we would take the ultra-hard red seeds and rub them against the street or curb until they were incredibly hot, then press them against our friends and laugh at their reaction to the burn.
These lovely clusters of purple smell just like grape candy and really brighten your day as you pick up the scent drifting throughout the countryside.
In fact, before ours finally gave us some flowers I would creep across the alley and cut some from a tree at the back of a neighbor's yard just to have the scent in our home and cars.
I liked this off-camera flash photo a lot, except for the almost-microscopic bugs.
Taking out my leaf-blower seemed like too much trouble at the time.



This shot was an attempt at adding to my series of motion studies using playground equipment, first seen here.
It's okay, but didn't measure up against the others.
Not dramatic enough, too many leaves on the ground, boring light.
Trying to recapture the feelings of youth in a photo isn't easy, and neither is getting time by yourself in a playground with no kids or parents around who might freak-out and call the cops thinking you're some perv. When the light is good the playgrounds are full unless it's hot enough to burn your skin, and I don't really enjoy shooting in those conditions.
This series will continue, someday.



This is one of my unique female guppies.
Starting with a dozen or so fancy guppies my brother gave me, I soon built up a school that was much too large for their 5-gallon tank. Over the past six years or so, natural selection has created a strain of females that haven't been seen before.
Not only do they have color in their fins while most females are plain silver/clear, the tails of my girls have slowly elongated into scissor-tail status.
It's taken generations for the majority to evolve, and it's interesting to note that many of my males (which are usually the "fancy" ones) have at the same time become less fancy, as if the evolution of the sexes is destined to meet somewhere in the middle.
True equality of the sexes.
(Hillary would have taken credit, but this is entirely a Bush Administration Project).

There are always exceptions, with new males and females born all the time that resemble the original stock.
It's a fun experiment, but I don't put much work into it.
Nature takes it's course and proves Darwin was correct.

I never used this photo before simply because it isn't sharp enough to suit me.
These fish are little and hyper and never stay in one place long enough to get a focus-lock, and when I'm anywhere near the tank they get even worse since I'm the giver of food.
Using remote flashes to freeze the action helps but there's no practical way to also add enough "hot lights" to help with autofocus on such a small aquarium, and even then the particular fish you're after will have moved by the time your shutter/flash trips so focus is lost. It's a depth-of-field / arrangement-of-furniture / never enough light nightmare that's based on lots of experimentation ruined by bad luck and twitchy fishies.
Don't even get me started on the problems of reflections inside a glass fish tank.
Literally hundreds and hundreds and even more hundreds of shots over the last 2 years and this is the only one that even comes close to showing what's happened in my little ecosystem, but it doesn't really measure-up to the portrait quality I'm after.
And it's only worthwhile to try again when the tank is truly clean, which is a condition that's never even seasonal.

I haven't given up entirely, but it may take two more years to solve this problem in a satisfactory (cheap) manner.
On the plus side, my stock of unusual female guppies get better looking every time I try.

Autumnal Imagery

It was a long, hot and dry summer.
Despite the hurricanes and flooding on all sides of us, San Antonio went into year two of the latest drought.
And so "Fall" was late.

Our bougainvillea finally bloomed--most of the ones around here have purple or pink or orange flowers: we like the red just to be different.

Sycamore leaves turning.

Sex parts of the same tree.

Our lemon tree has a few little fruits with zero chance at maturity before a freeze kills them.

A neighbor's whatchacallit.


All photos were taken within a few minutes of each other two weeks ago when I got a sudden bug up my ass to record how odd the autumn here has turned out.
Absolutely nothing has changed since then, besides the odd pepper maturing enough to eat and the temperature dropping.
It's like we're stuck in the slow lane of life and everyone else is passing us by, getting snow and rain and life and death while we struggle to detect whether or not the grass is any browner than last month...