Highway 6 N

 

When I had a free afternoon, I wanted to take Highway 6 North.  I had heard that the town of Hico had some really interesting locations.  Along the way, I stopped a couple places for some pictures.

SONY DSC

This was an old tractor with two flags.  I tried to increase the exposure on the flags to brighten them up, but it started looking too manipulated.

SONY DSC

Blue Bonnets

Every Spring, there is a place on Highway 6 in Grimes Co. where there are always lots of cars parked because there are fields full of blue bonnets. This year,on the way home from Galveston, we pulled off the side of the road and got some good pictures.

SONY DSC

and

SONY DSC

More of Galveston

We were In Galveston again last weekend, and I seriously worked on getting a lot of HDR shots.The stacks of rocks like I photographed last year were back, but not as many.  This one had pretty good light, so I worked on it.  This picture was well received on Flickr and ViewBug.

SONY DSC

The shrimp boats in docked by the harbor seemed to me to be a good subject.

SONY DSC

Ft. Crockett’s white canvas shades impressed me as a good subject as well.

SONY DSC

And I wanted to get one of the Bishop’s Palace.

SONY DSC

Across Broadway from Bishop’s Palace was an old house that had cement flower boxes that were crusted with moss.

SONY DSC

HDR Landscapes – Hwy 31

Clarke’s workshop was in Tyler.  On the way back, I stopped several times on Hwy 31 and got some road side images.  Mostly around Corsicana. There was a place on the East side of Corsicana that had lots of old railroad wheel sets stacked up, making for interesting patterns.

SONY DSC

West of Corsicana there was this abandoned house with an old car in the front yard, and cattle grazing all around it.

SONY DSC

Railroad Bridge

There is a railroad bridge on I-35W north of Itasca that I have always thought would be a great picture.  I have tried several times over the years, and never gotten anything good.  I finally got a 10 – 20 mm lens and thought maybe that lens would be what I needed.

SONY DSC

Although I still was no able to get the image I really wanted this one was pretty good.  Right there, I found an old, rusted machine used for planting, and got some pictures of that as well.

SONY DSC

HDR Landscapes – Hwy 36

The TMCA Spring Workshop was in Abilene.  So, we took Hwy 36 up through Hamilton.  Along the way, we stopped a couple places and got some nice images.

SONY DSC

I am getting a little more comfortable with doing these HDR images, but I would really like a better understanding of the various adjustments in Photomatix. These had very mild HDR effects applied to them.

SONY DSC

Galveston HDR Images

We went to GalI decided it might be good to take a series of HDR image around Galveston.  So, over the weekend, I went to a variety of places.

SONY DSC

For some of them, I used a very light HDR application, but for other, much more intense.

SONY DSC

This made me really start to consider these kinds of images in a different way.  I am wondering if there would be any commercial value to these either as individual images or as a book.

SONY DSC