Texas is famous for its spring wildflower season. It starts in the south in March and progresses northward as the weather warms. Here in northeastern Texas, the season usually arrives in April with flowers peaking around the middle of April.
This spring has been warmer than normal (if normal is even a thing anymore, due to climate change) and the wildflowers began to show up in late March and peaked well before the middle of April.
Some years, my schedule causes me to miss the best portion of the wildflower season here, but this year, I took time to get out on several occasions to view and photograph the wildflowers.
The Bluebonnet is the Texas state wildflower and these abound in the spring in fields and along highway medians and borders. There are many other wildflower varieties, with the Indian Paintbrush, being maybe the second most prevalent in many locations. I’m more partial to the paintbrush for its color and shape. So even in masses of bluebonnets, I am drawn to the paintbrush.
The mass of tall yellow wildflowers (mostly cropped out of this image) at the top of the image above is an invasive Mediterranean species that is threatening to crowd out native wildflowers.
As I’ve said many times, early morning landscape photography is the best for a number of reason, but especially for being alone on location. Most casual tourists and visitors to a popular location, seldom get out and about in the early morning hours, so we seldom have to worry about people popping into our shots.
Shooting from the rounded rocks in front of the arch, made using a tripod very difficult for getting down low, so I ended up shooting hand held, using a higher ISO to get my shutter speed high enough to counter my hand shake.
I shot many images at this location today and could include more, but these are representative of the morning’s scene. Having those magnificent, early morning clouds was a bonus for shooting today.
This arch is so named because it is supposed to look like a boot. Maybe the base looks a little like a boot, but I’m not quite seeing this strongly enough to have it so named.
I can partly see the naming of this arch, but I’m thinking another name like “Lobster” or “Crayfish” might be more suitable, especially when other view points are considered.
Upon arriving at the Mobius Arch, we began to work around it checking out various photographic compositions. I suspect every possible view point of this arch has been photographed many times in all sorts of weather conditions, so the prospect of achieving any unique photo here is remote at best.
Note: After migration of my blog site to another hosting provider, there are ongoing problems with the migration. I am finding (hopefully) temporary work arounds, so that I can resume posting, until a permanent fix for the website problems are found.
I began to realize early in this scouting outing that photographing the scenes here would be more challenging than I had anticipated. The scenery was spectacular, but the foreground tended to be so immense and dominant as to become a distraction for letting the eye get past it into the rest of the photo. And those mountains! The Sierra Nevada mountains were domineering as background, seemingly demanding to be included in every shot. As a result, I’m not overly pleased with many of my photos, even those that I choose to present here.
The images in this post have embedded links that will take the reader to that image in my WordPress Image Library. The photo captions are links that will take the reader to that photo on my Flickr page.
This spring’s photography trip was to Alabama Hills, California. This was a long trip and some thought was given to flying into Las Vegas, renting a 4 wheel drive vehicle and driving from there; but in the end, my oldest son and I, felt more comfortable with one of our own 4 WD vehicles, which meant a long road trip, especially for me since I first had to drive from Texas to Colorado by myself, then we would travel together to California.
March weather is always uncertain and can be a challenge for travel and planning. This year was no exception. Prior to my departure from Texas, a strong spring storm was forecast, so I left Texas a day earlier than planned to avoid the worst of the expected storm. Still, in portions of Colorado, I drove through intermittent rain, sleet and snow.
That first night in Colorado the storm dumped heavy snows across Colorado, especially in the mountains. I-70, our route over the mountains was closed and we were not at all sure that we would be able to keep our scheduled departure date; but we got lucky, I-70 opened to all but commercial truck traffic just in time. There was heavy, slow traffic along long sections of I-70 and slushy, snow packed intervals, sometimes with only one lane open.
The Western Slope of the Rockies was clear and we were able to drive much faster into Utah. Still we kept seeing warnings of an expected storm along our route and we did drive through some heavy snow before reaching our first stop over destination.
Even though, I’ve traveled portions of I-70 and I-15 west of Grand Junction, Colorado numerous times, I always seem to forget how beautiful and varied the scenery is along this route. This is another reason, I prefer highway travel to air travel. So much is missed in route, when in an airplane.
Our route to Alabama Hills took us through a portion of Death Valley, which is another of our favorite places. In one of the broad valleys between mountain ranges the land was covered in yellow flowers, no doubt due to the heavy rains in this area this year.
We had motel reservations in Lone Pine, California and would stay there for a number of days. Lone Pine sits between two portions of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. There was snow on the mountains and those mountains are beautiful.
We went into Alabama Hills, which is a few miles outside Lone Pine, and did mostly scouting the first morning here, since we did not know the area and had no fixed destination in mind for early morning photography.
Alabama Hills, California, March 17, 2024
The Sierra Nevada mountains dominate the background here and it seemed impelling to include those mountains in our photos.
Alabama Hills and Sierra Nevada Mountains, California, March 17, 2024
Perhaps, one of the most interesting and most photographed rock features here is the Mobius Arch. So we parked in the parking space at the loop trail to that arch and set out to explore the area.
Heart Arch, Alabama Hills, California, March 17, 2024
The Heart Arch is visible from some distance and the Mobius Arch Trail goes past it.
Alabama Hills, -Shadows, Light, Mountains and Clouds – California, March 17, 2024
For those of us old enough, these scenes might jar some early childhood memories of early western movies and TV series. Over 400 movies have been filmed in this area, beginning with the silent movie era and continuing into recent times. I well remember some of those early westerns, like Hop along Cassidy, The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Gene Autry, Have Gun Will Travel, The Rifleman, Wanted – Dead or Alive and many others. More recent movies include Django Unchained and The Gladiator.
The movie museum in Lone Pine is well worth a visit for anyone passing through.
More information about Alabama Hills and how it became known as “Alabama Hills” is found here
This is the second part of my post on abstract images of fall trees via ICM (intentional camera movement).
Fall Trees Abstract, Indiana, November 2, 2023Fall Trees Abstract, Indiana, November 2, 2023
These two images (above and below) are the same but with different editing applied. These are not realistic natural images, so I’m not bothered by artistic renditions via edits.
Fall Trees Abstract, Indiana, November 2, 2023Fall Trees Abstract, Indiana, November 2, 2023
The same scene can yield very different results, depending upon the camera movement.
Autumn Abstract 2, Indiana, November 2, 2023Autumn Woods Abstract 5, Indiana, November 2, 2023Autumn Woods Abstract 6, Indiana, November 2, 2023
I must admit that I had fun creating these abstracts. Maybe I should do this more often and I like the vertical motion abstracts of trees much more than those created via horizontal camera movement.
One day at the cabin, I went out into the area around the cabin to shoot some scenes that had caught my eye due to the lighting on another day. However, today the light was not the same and the shots of those previously interesting looking scenes were not interesting.
My stroll around the area eventually led me into a wooded area behind the cabin and I still was not getting any interesting images. So I decided to try getting abstract images via intentional camera movement (ICM), a technique that I seldom use.
Autumn Woods Abstract 1, Indiana, November 2, 2023Autumn Woods Abstract 2, Indiana, November 2, 2023Autumn Woods Abstract 3, Indiana, November 2, 2023
Usually, the most interesting images can be obtained via vertical camera movement with trees as the subjects. But I did manage to get a few interesting images by panning the camera horizontally.
Tree-Light Weave, Monochrome, Indiana, November 2, 2023Tree-Light Weave, Original Color Version, Indiana, November 2, 2023
I think the monochrome version works best for this horizontal panning motion.
Autumn Woods Abstract 4, Indiana, November 2, 2023Autumn Abstract, Indiana, November 2, 2023
Prior to any road trip, I always check the weather forecast for my destination, so that I know how to prepare for the expected weather. I’ve also learned to heed the season and expect the unexpected change in the weather.
This fall, the first few days of our visit to Indiana, the weather was much as forecast, then an unexpected cold front came across most of the U.S., dropping temperatures well below my allowance for cold outings. I had brought my typical normal cold weather gear and even a few chemical hand warmers, since my fingers tend to get cold even in mild winter weather. And once my fingers get numb with cold, I can’t easily operate my camera controls.
I knew I would still want to get out in the cold weather, so I purchased additional cold weather clothing and more hand and foot warmers in a local store.
Halloween morning was the first below freezing weather we had during this trip. I knew the cold front coming in over the warmer landscape and warmer bodies of water would result in early morning water vapor condensing into mist or fog. So I went out again to Ogle Lake in Brown County State Park early in the morning of October 31.
It was, indeed, a heavy frost morning and mist was rising from the lake surface.
Frosty Morning 1, Ogle Lake, Brown County State Park, Indiana, October 31, 2023Frosty Morning 2, Ogle Lake, Brown County State Park, Indiana, October 31, 2023Frosty Morning 3, Ogle Lake, Brown County State Park, Indiana, October 31, 2023Frosty Morning, Ogle Lake, Brown County State Park, Indiana, October 31, 2023Frosty Morning, Ogle Lake, Brown County State Park, Indiana, October 31, 2023Frosty Morning 4, Ogle Lake, Brown County State Park, Indiana, October 31, 2023Frosty Morning, Ogle Lake, Brown County State Park, Indiana, October 31, 2023Frosty Morning 5, Ogle Lake, Brown County State Park, Indiana, October 31, 2023
By the time I had obtained these few images, my fingers, even with the hand warmers in my fleece mittens with the exposable thumb and finger tips, were so numb that I had to give up shooting. I retreated to my vehicle, started the engine and sat there until my fingers were warm enough to drive away.
I really would have liked to spend more time photographing frosty scenes around the park this morning, but I knew I could only shoot for a few minutes at a time due to the cold weather effect upon my fingers. I settled for getting one shot at an overlook in the park, before heading back to the cabin.
Scenic Overlook, Ogle Lake, Brown County State Park, Indiana, October 31, 2023
Even on days when I did not venture out for photography, my wife and I often drove through scenic Brown County State Park on our way to or from some other destination.
Scenic Overlook 1, Brown County State Park
Occasionally, we might stop at
Scenic Overlook 2, Brown County State Park
an overlook and sometimes I took time to get a photo.
