The Rest of the Day. . .

As a rule of thumb, you don't really want to go out taking pictures in the middle of the day. There are exceptions, of course, and often you don't have a choice when you're out shooting some "event". I can go out whenever I want for the most part, but my circadian rhythms have been a bit out of whack for awhile now and I thought it more important just to get out of the house than to plan a good time to take pictures. The biggest problem at mid-day is typically the lighting, and Friday was true to form.

What happens then, of course, is that you get home with a bunch of shots that are marginal at best and you have to work through the pack and see what you can come up with. I think of it as a "salvage process" made possible by digital image processing. Anyway, these are the remaining shots that might be of interest; there were an awful lot of misses. . .

One last shot from the koi ponds at Mayfield Park. The tranquility of the place makes it special in its own right, but it's one of the places Mom really liked me to bring her.

From Mayfield Park, I drove up the hill to Mount Bonnell and found the crowds from the week before had dissipated as expected. This shot of the 360 Bridge is similar to the two shots last week, but a little more telephoto. There are some offices just above and to the right of the arches; I checked Google Maps to ID the "castle" on the horizon. Those pics were taken while it was still under construction. It appears to be a private residence in an "Italianate" style, much favored here in the Hill Country.

This shot "over the edge" of Mount Bonnell gives you a good idea of what it's like to live on the lake shore. I control my envy by remembering that "Lake Austin" is really just our Colorado River. Then I remember the old pictures I've seen of the river. . . old, like in 1935.

Newcomers to Austin love it; we old fogies love it. But I think some of the newcomers place an awful lot of faith in the Hill Country dams. . . Mansfield Dam, built in 1937, when Landslide Lyndon was in Congress. . . by Brown and Root. . . I'm just sayin'. . . Maybe they figure Lake Travis is empty. . . still, you never know. . .

This is the first picture I worked on when I got home Friday, because it was the only one with a decent sky. I've got no problem with the lighting in this shot.

Next stop, Redbud Isle. Just past the first picnic table on the right. This was a tough lighting problem. The rock and the light green foliage in the foreground appeared, as I approached it, as though spotlit against a black background. Eventually, with my eyes shaded, I could see the far bank in deep shadow. But bringing it out in the picture was a real chore. Clearly, more practice won't hurt. And I couldn't get rid of the lens flare, so. . . I enhanced it.

This flowering tree was on the opposite bank, taken from the same place as the preceding shot. I wanted to get at least one of them to suggest that first impression I had of the spot.