Marksville, LA

Posted on December 4, 2013 by Rick

I have been attending meetings in Marksville, LA for the past few days. Before going, I looked at a map and found there are two wildlife refuges on either side of Marksville. Yesterday, I took some time to visit Gand Cote NWR. It didn’t have a great deal to offer, but I think it is rather early for migratory waterfowl. Anyway, I got a couple of good landscapes.

There was a rather substantial wetlands area. The nature trail led up to it, and then a bridge led to an observation platform over the water. These are two images taken from the bridge.

Tamron Lenses’ “Countryside” Contest

Posted on December 1, 2013 by Rick

Tamron lenses sponsored a photography contest for “Countryside” images. I entered two of my photographs. All together, they received close to 14,000 entries. There are two components to the judging. Anyone can go to the contest entires and vote for the one they like best. Then, professional judges will evaluate the images and the final winners will be chosen. The public voting period has ended, and I was notified that this images was in the top 50 vote getters.

As they say on TV, But, Wait. There’s more. This image was in the top 10 vote getters.

Thursday is Photography Day

Posted on November 1, 2013 by Rick

My Thursday afternoon schedule is rather flexible, and the last couple weeks, I have taken Thursday afternoons to take pictures around town. Yesterday, I concentrated on the Southeast are of downtown and then went to the courthouse.

Pink is normally an inviting color. To have a wall and a door painted pink and then putting a big Keep Out sign on it seemed to me to be a contradiction. This was a vacant building on the corner of Eighth and Jackson.

When is the last time you saw a building with a cistern for collecting rain on the roof? This is the Texas Fireproof Storage building on Eleventh and Mary.

The Dr. Pepper Museum

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Rick

Another Waco landmark is the Dr. Pepper museum.

While photographing the museum, I noticed about a block away, across the street from First Baptist Church were these two structures. I believe they are grain silos, but I am not sure. They appear to be long-ago abandoned, But, they are still interesting.

Texas Ranger Hall and Museum

Posted on October 21, 2013 by Rick

One of the most popular spots in Waco is the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum.

McLennan County Courthouse

Posted on October 19, 2013 by Rick

On Thursday I got a couple shots of the county courthouse.

Pier 21

Posted on September 3, 2013 by Rick

An add in local Galveston publications features a picture of Pier 21 at dusk. It struck me as an interesting picture, but an HDR treatment might add to its effect. Debbie and I went to a concert Saturday night, and after it was over, we went down to Pier 21 and tried to get some pictures. I ended up with two versions, and I can’t quite decide which one I like better.

The statue on the left adds a strong foreground element to the composition of this version, but, I wonder if it is not also a distraction compared to the second version.

Galveston Historic Houses

Posted on July 6, 2013 by Rick

Galveston has a huge number of large historic houses. I have wanted to get HDR images of many of them to add to my Galveston images. A few months ago, I got some of the Bishop’s Palace and a house across from it on Broadway, but didn’t have time to get more of other places. I started today with the ones that the Galveston Historic Foundation lists on their web site.

This was the Samuel May Williams house.

This was the Michael B. Menard House. Note the bird on the porch. Those looked like herons. They were walking around the front lawn. I don’t know if they were in some way domesticated, but they didn’t seem very concerned with me taking pictures.

This was Ashton Villa.

This was Moody Mansion.

Landscape Contest

Posted on June 22, 2013 by Rick

SONY DSC

I am not sure where I found out about ViewBug, but it is a site that has photo contests. You can join for free, but that limits you to 10 uploads per week. Some of the contests are free to enter. Others cost. You can also have a paid membership. With that, you can upload as many photos as you want, and you do not have to pay for any of the contests.

I was looking at their contests, and one was a free contest for landscapes. It was sponsored by a weekly photography news web site. So, I entered two of my HDR photos. The idea is that anyone on the site can view the pictures and vote on them, and after the submission deadline, judges will decide the winner.

This is kind of like American Idol. I could have gone on Facebook and told everyone to go to the site and vote for my picture, but then it is no longer about photographic quality, it is about how many people you can get to vote for you.

The deadline for the contest was June 1. I was just notified that this picture was “ranked in the top 20 most voted percentile.” I am not exactly sure what that means. There were 8900 pictures entered in the contest. If mine received enough votes to be in the top 20%, then it was one of the 1800 best. So, it is kind of hard to get all that worked up, but all in all, I still think that was pretty good.

Galveston – The Elissa

Posted on June 8, 2013 by Rick

I have been doing quite a bit of HDR imagery using Galveston locations. We were down there the weekend of the 8th. I didn’t really feel in the mood on Saturday morning but then remembered we joined the Galveston Historical Society. That meant we could get into The Elissa for free. So, I decided to go down to the harbor and shoot a little and go on The Elissa and shoot.

In looking at one of the magazines, I saw a picture take roughly in the same place as this. Only, it was a night photograph, and all the winds glowed brightly. It was an effective picture, and I would like to try a similar thing at some point, but this was just take from behind Willie G’s looking back at it.

While we were in the harbor, this fishing boat came in. It made an interesting subject for an HDR image. Then I noticed that a woman on the boat was quite busy dealing with the catch and got a nice picture of her.

We then went over to The Elissa and walked around the ship.

RED Imagery Photography

Dynamic Photography in and around Waco, Texas

Category Archives: Landscapes