Balmy, Then A 30 Degree Drop With More Cold On The Way

More Pollen For the Allergiers

The T&P Train Trestle with new Bridge over the historic trestle

The  Katy Trail Extension about to join the White Rock Trail shortly after it crosses W. Lawther in the back ground

After clicking on the seat belt, the next  button was to open the moon roof. It was balmy, and the humidity could be cut with a knife. By three-thirty, the temp had dropped to 48 F and the wind that was driving the cold front had arrived. Luckily, I was just getting ready to pull into the driveway, having worn two coats and was ready to head inside the house. Timing is everything and my timing today was right on target. It's going to be about 5 days before we get the sun back and the temps reach normals for this time of year, which is 63 plus or minus a degree here and there. This past 15-months has been relentless with low hanging clouds, heat lasting longer than normal, short fall, colder than normal for winter and although the flowering trees and tulips are up and blooming, the cold has returned. At this point, I don't even know what to think about the heat for the summer. But, right on target, March 1 and flowering trees are swaying in that cold breeze.

Albert E

Albert Einstein once said that, " Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions." Over the years, it comes to me little by little that the mundane and the magical come together blending a mix to bring balance in life. Of course, looking for that balance is an individual experience to some degree. What might be in balance for me may not always be the balance for anyone else. Yet, the law of physics kind of hold the thought on an equal playing field generally.

The American Coot in a rare display of their water dance of mating feather displays.

One of the more unusual use of textures to make a new home really become an eye catcher.

Beauty in a single flower.

Before I retired, I was fully aware of the power of imagination. After retirement, I began to see more examples of it every day. The more that I recognized it, the more that I came to see that Albert was correct. "Imagination is everything." I'm in my second reading of the book, Einstein. It is a rather slow read and a big book, but that is part of the experience of the read. It gives that imagination a chance to brew while in the read. In other words, it gives you practice if you don't have a strong imagination to begin with but if you have a vivid imagination already, it's like a hundred experiments all going off at the same time. Practice makes perfect my piano teacher would tell me at the conclusion of every weekly lesson. That creative imagination was born and I use it every single day as it flows over into photography.  

It's Been An Uneasy Stay For The Visiting Waterfowl.

We had record rains for three months this past year. This year started out with two floods at the lake that displaced the logs that the pelicans like to hang out upon. The high water levels have also brought in shifting sandbars that split Sunset Bay into another world for the Coots and Ducks, Cormorants and seagulls. It became readily visible to those of us that visit the lake almost on a daily schedule that the pelicans were uneasy and were seen in areas of the lake where they normally do not go. Pelicans up White Rock Creek beyond Flag Pole Hill on Goforth is not a good place for them. Especially if they roost that far up. The Cormorants are up in the trees there because their big log was dislodged by the high water levels and floated down  the lake shore several hundred feet.  But pelicans roost on the ground and bob cats and coyotes do feast upon waterfowl as we all know.

And, if that is not enough, there are more kayaks on the lake. More fishing boats. More motor boats for the sailing clubs and the rowing clubs. Even beyond that, there have been drownings there this year and just today, a father and son participating in a sailing event capsized and needed a high water rescue because of the thermal factors with colder than normal water. And some humans just can't get it into their heads that the birds notice things like that more than we give them credit..

Last year the number of mallards that were seen with their young broods was down to only a couple of pairs of mallards. Even the old gal on the east side of the lake that usually raises 8-10 ducklings, when seen, only had 5. It's almost a give me that the happy balance will always be in favor of people before it is wildlife in a dense urban setting. I know this. I  can accept this with reservations, but that is why there are state wild life preserves where the game wardens protect wildlife more than in city parks.  It isn't something that I enjoy agreeing with, of course, but the realization is that we are lucky to have such a vast diversity of wildlife so close to the heart of the city. Still, it behooves all of us to keep an eye more in tune to the nature that is around us and to have parks and lakes like White Rock where we can come and enjoy the wild as it was once upon a time. 

A little treasure for the  birders at the lake.

This old guy has one of the big old style bands on his leg. There were some with the newer wing bangs this year but they have already taken flight back north for breeding season. The big snow storms that are still coming down up there will not last long now.

Here is one of the washed up sandbars that runs for many, many yards in an arch around Sunset Bay

British Airways Flight 192 is called by ATC Speedbird.

Watching  a cam a  DFW last night, I saw the British Airways flight 192 on a taxiway using a Boeing 777 rather than the B-747 they usually use. This got me to thinking that with the bigger twin-engine plane and the overhead jet stream still running at  130-150 Miles Per Hour, I logged on to see what the flight had filed as a flight plan for speed and altitude. Every thing checked out as a normal flight---except for the factor of the overhead jet stream's tail wind.

Just as I had expected, the flight was into the tail wind almost before it had reached half of it's flight altitude. Quickly, the flight had reached it's planned speed of 555 mph and the speed just kept climbing. When it hit 700 MPH, it was pretty close to Mach .9 plus.. Of course, the speed of sound has no set number because of temperature, pressure and basic weather conditions like humidity and dew point---kind of like the basic when we check our blood pressure. Never-the-less, the excitement began to build as the plane hit its cruising altitude of 37,000 and the speed kept inching up beyond 700 to 710;715;720. Then, the altitude changed to 36,500. Finally, the speed slowly hit 721.Then 722,then 723,724 and 725 balanced it off. Ironically, the ATC(air traffic control) nickname for BAC192 is 'speedbird'.

Here is a flight headed for London from Dallas and before it is out of Texas into Arkansas, the flight is booking at 725 MPH (living up to it's name of speedbird, for sure.). That caused me to look at the estimated arrival time. It had already picked up 23 minutes early status. Before the flight made it into Illinois it had settled down to just under 700 mph but continued to book toward Maine, staying inside USA air space until it left Maine's borders.

I went to bed thinking that the jet stream was more close to 155 mph at the altitude and that the flight would most likely land in London early rather than late. I have never seen a commercial flight hit 725 mph, but in the 50s I can remember that boom caused my breaking the sound barrier. There were thunderstorms under the flight as it moved across Arkansas, into Missouri and across southern Illinois, Indiana and into Cleveland Center Airspace. It might have hit the sound barrier and the thunderstorms would have been a pretty good cover.  The flight had made that 887 miles in a little over an hour from Dallas departure.

While drinking my coffee this morning, I checked to see just how early it did land in London. 8 hours, 43 minutes with 10 minutes early. The graphs did show the drop in altitue and an increase in the air speed to match that 725 mph speed.  Who said that a jet stream tail wind isn't that much of a factor for travel? It was fun to just watch that flight slicing through the air at 725 mph. Sheer excitement.

Winds at the surface were 40 mph today with higher gust. They blew in dust from west Texas and DFW had a ground stop for a bit.

Gates at Tenison Memorial

The Twin Gates to Tenison Memorial Park, a park of the larger W.W. Samuell Park, part of the City Parks Division. Tenison is two -18 hole courses,one of the best city courses anywhere! The architecture is one of my favorites. I could look at these gates all day because they are first class all the way. Bernie. This one's for you, partner!!

The stratus melted away quickly today with a 120 MPH  jet stream overhead. The sun popped out early and away I went a -picture-taking! Being out in the field less than an hour and the sun was strong enough to pull up the temps into the 50s before noon. In short, it was a perfect late winter's day.

The red bud, dogwoods, and some flowering trees are already in bloom. So, I went looking for them in park lands and golf courses. One of the best places for that in Dallas is The W.W. Samuell Park and it's adjacent 2-18-hole courses, the lower course and the favorite of many, The Highlands.There are wild fields of daffodils, red buds, flowering trees and before the rose blight wiped out the rose garden in the park, that was also an early spring visiting place..Now, for a good public rose garden, I have to make it out to Farmer's Branch.

But the golf course was full and the driving range was full so parking was less than perfect for the will dafs that I could see from the road. The walk would have been more than I was prepared to do today. It's a rolling hillside, to boot. That meant I had a good shot at the Gates. They are an outstanding architectural achievement. It's to bad that more people don't know about them. But, they are on the back side of the park albeit the gates are the formal entry with winding uphill driveway to the trail head of both golf courses. The putting green was loaded and people were parking in the main lot and walking across the drive to the putting green with irons and putters in hand. They didn't even bother dragging out the bags from the ones that I saw. I've been there. I know the drill. And I would have--I have--done the same thing. I played one season on a Federal Golf League. I still think about my old partner, Bernie. The guy had the patience of a Saint.I can still hear his voice in my head saying, "take your time, now". Trying to remember what branch Bernie was in. My thinking after all those years seems to me that he was  IRS,U.S.Customs or Postal Inspector. Frankly, my memory card on that just didn't bring up many details of Bernie's job function. Frankly, remembering Bernie and those soft spoken words far outweighed his job function many, many times more. I liked that guy as a partner.

It's Practice Time Again. Just a little Putting and Chipping Practice.

From the last flood, this log washing up into an alcove with a fishing lure bobber entangled.

Walking The Chalk Cliffs but Finding Real Cement

There are chalk veins that run through this part of North Texas. They break off and fall into the streams along the way, thus widening the opening distance between banks. Such a major fall happening about this time last year and the work has just been finished to where that part of the trail can be opened again.

Each fall and spring, I walk the length of the two separate soccer fields that are bordering the White Rock Creek and the soccer fields. Although it was rather a raw type of cold, it wasn't that bad walking. For a long time, I have wanted to go down the high bank to the creek bed and shoot the amazing cliffs. I have not done so because I am afraid of falling. The path down is about a 40foot drop.Today, I noticed that some one had driven a piece of #3 rebar into the ground and tied a rope to it so you had something to hold on to as you either went down or came back up. That is rather dangerous on two fronts. First, the rebar sticking out of the ground would impale anyone that fell on the bar regardless of which way that the party was going. On the second front, driving the rebar into the ground at the top would normally work, except, these are chalk cliffs and weight put on the bar either going down or coming up could cause a hugh hunk of chalk to break away and a fall would be a major life threatening event. However, today was not that day for me just yet, so I stuck to the line of scrub bush where the wildlife and plants thrive. In this section, I was hoping to get some good shots of a cardinal or two. I saw them. They were singing and moving around in the brush, but catching one out on a limb for a good shot just didn't happen for the red birds today. I didn't even see one of the horned lizards that hang out around fallen branches.

The part of the  trail that collapsed had large blocks of sandstone covered in wire mesh and stacked in pyramid fashion.  The trail along the creek from that point also had new iron fence rather than the wood simulated plastic made from recycled bottles.

Following the trail a bit more and ending at Flag Pole Hill, the cold and the gusty winds had the big waterfowl finding cover except for a hand full of the old birds. Since seeing the coyote at Flag Pole Hill a few weeks ago, I have continued to look for it. Time is running out when that leg of my cycle will change the week before St. Patrick's Day  when the local festivals of  Dragon Boat Races, Deep Ellm  Arts Festival, Plano Balloon Fest, St. Patty's Day Parade and the Dallas Blooms at the Arboretum will fill out the travel calendar until after Memorial Day.

The trail now has an upgrade of steel railing after the repair where the the chalk cliffs collapsed up ahead .

A home made tent frame padlocked to a tree in the dense brush. Things like this were not to be found anywhere along this part of the trail last year. There are more homeless this year that refuse to go to a homeless shelter.

And, just as I headed to the grocery store for fill ins for the rest of the month, I found a group of cement workers that took a moment out of their day to have a bit of fun. You guys were alright!! I didn't get every one in the picture. I was at a stop sign and they were working in the lane next to me.

Drove Through The Old Neighborhood Today

Mom has been gone, now, more than a decade and a half and my son has been gone over two decades already. My son lived with my mom in that period when he was uncertain and before he graduated from that big ten school up north. Ever so often, I will drive through the old neighborhood and note the changes since we all had seen it as a part of our lives over a period of three generations. Yes, I had tears in my eyes at time. As long as I breathe and draw a breath, those tears will come again. I am sure of that. That's a pain that eventually fades, but never totally goes away... especially of a child that goes on before you.. That just isn't meant to be that way, although I believe that things happen for a reason as part of our living on this earth. I try not to remember much of the bad and to focus on all the good times that the three of us all shared together under the same roof at various times in our lives. And there were some pretty awesome times at that.

 Me under mom's roof  twice, and my son under her roof once and one more time under mine. So there was an overlap that bound us all together. Even my younger brother lived on the same street at one time, just down the street from mom's.So the old neighborhood, even today, continues to be relevant and closely connected to the core of making the drive down memory lane.

My brother had bought his first house in University Park in the Park Cities, sold it and today, it's gone with a Ronnie house squeezed on the lot. That was also part of my journey today to not only see how the old neighborhood has changed but to also see how much has been replaced by the Ronnie houses. The quick answer to that question is, "A Lot". It isn't just our old neighborhood, though. It has wiped out beautiful ranch homes of the 50s with two and three story manses of stone using up every square inch of dirt for house. While I have written about this process before and I understand the process that tips the scale on both ends of the equation, there are pros and cons on both ends before, during and after construction.

I also saw that Hillcrest High School is getting one mammoth addition to the front of the school. To me, that is a result of the old neighborhood undergoing a re-birth of new families moving back into the old neighborhood with younger families because of the Ronnie house effect, and desirability of being in that  neighborhood, a well developed area that has been established for a period of time. Then, suddenly, larger, more modern new homes replace the old and instead of waiting 30 years for the trees to grow, you have them the day the house is ready for  you to move into. Magic? Kind of.

Sill, it is always nice to be back in the old neighborhood from time to time, especially when I need to have the tears flow down my cheeks in an emotional bath of love for that part of my family that put their heads down and dreamt under the same roof for a period of time.

 

These are not Ronnie Houses but part of the end results of land purchased that was to small for development of the same number of Ronnie houses or some zoning issues. These are north of North Park and SMU and west of North Central Expressway. This is the third set of these that I have seen being built in the larger scale block of neighborhoods around my old neighborhood. I had to chuckle to hear a realtor talking about 50 lots. Only in Texas is it 50 feet wide and 50 foot deep that might give you 4, maybe 5 feet of back yard. My first house was 50 x 150 and for a first house, that was small, to me. It's all about the land value. Land is precious, indeed.

 

 

Willie's Playing Deep Ellum's Bomb Factory Tonight.

Willie Nelson is at the Bomb Factory Tonight. There is not a ticket to be had. Sold Out Performance and the Buses just hit the parking lot. It's cold today and the streets in Deep Ellum were packed. The lines at Pecans was out the door, down the street and around the corner.Tower Cranes are taking the Ellum to new heights! Twenty Years ago when I was doing marketing studies for a Fortune 100, things were quiet the difference than today, but it was apparent  even then, that  Deep Ellum was coming to what is happening now, then. It's nice to know that I was on target then and have been able to watch the development  rise to the top.

Willie Nelson Plays The Bomb Factory Tonight

This Sky Crane is getting engine work done. It's been flying over my house for a couple of months, now. Out of sight is two massive HVAC systems that seem to be heading to the rooftop. That is---when the three workers are done. There were some 20 workers in neon yellow vest and hard hats in the parking lot huddled in  a tight group---waiting for some kind of signal  that the work was complete.

This is the Canton Street Side of the Bomb Factory. The busses are on the other side of this view.

Mother Nature Put The Breaks On Spring.

Spring is popping out all over. Trees are blooming, daffodils are blooming, flowers are blooming and tree buds are popping, some with full green leaves open already. Yesterday was in the 80s; today was in the mid 70s. A cold front finally decided which way it was going to have forward motion after it stalled then moved south a few miles then stalled. When I came in around mid afternoon, it was warm. By dinner time it was cold with nearly a thirty degree spread in temps.That kind of spring should be expected with the off-the-wall weather we have been having this year.


It's going to slow down spring for sure but it's not enough to stop it all together. There are more spring issues to deal with. For one, towns and cities around the metroplex are in their annual  rush to shoo-off the great white egrets before the big birds nest. If communities can't get rid of the birds before they do nest, then the birds are off limits completely while they nest and cover yards, sidewalks, rooftops and streets with their smelly droppings. You see, the big birds are Federally protected once they do settle into their nest. So neighborhoods are blowing horns, whistles, watering them down when they are in the trees ( I think that one is somewhat comical because the birds are "waterfowl" folks, they fish in water, waterfalls, stand on one leg and sleep in rain storms. A water hose isn't going to get the job done.). The pelicans will soon be getting ready to leave for their nesting sites from Salt Lake all across the northern states that border with Canada. It will be interesting to see when they leave this year because the snow pack on both sides of the Rockies is massive this year.

Today, I added another new item seen at White Rock. There is always something new at the lake. That just amplifies the mystic of the lake. This Hookah was being worked on by a man who have just  had the pipe come to him from a friend that was visiting family in Iran. The glass base is absolutely awesome in craftmanship as is the woodworking on the pieces that rise above the top of the glass base. I love both glass work and hand carvings of wood, so when I saw this, I had to have an image. The man was kind to afford me the opportunity to shoot the piece.

The Pelicans Dominate the Waterfowl at the lake for a variety of reasons, the least of which is that they have the second largest wing spand at 8 feet.

The ground cover in the wetlands were totally under water two weeks ago.

Park Cities In The Spotlight This Week.

We published a couple of articles about the coyotes that were at White Rock Lake and Flag Pole Hill that were being aggressive. I spoke to a resident that neighbors the lot where one coyote was stalking a couple of horses that were grazing. She said to me that she sees them all the time and that one had even tried to attack her daughter but they thought it was because of the chickens that they were raising in their back yard.

Most of the experts have long noted that the coyotes and bob cats were on the move south after the work to expand both the Dallas North Tollway and the 121 additions to McKinney. It cut off a rather large pack of coyotes forcing them to come south. The bob cats were using the utility right-of-ways to bypass traffic and people as they moved along the greenbelts.

The Katy Trail Extension at White Rock had become a coyote highway at night because of the ducks and small pets that were allowed to be out unattended.  It was funneling them toward Fair Park and into South Dallas with the ultimate being the Great Trinity Forest, a 6,000 acre lowland hardwood forest. Movement on the Katy Trail  through Uptown and the Park Cities was basically cut of by US75 Central Expressway-- cut off that is until the city built  a multi-million dollar way for coyotes and bob cats to cross Central Expressway right into the Park Cities, Uptown and into South Dallas along the Trinity.

Two women in the Park Cities are excited. They seem to thing that the three coyotes that they have seen is something new and they are trying to head it off early. The problem is, they really have been asleep at the wheel. This is not something new. This is not some great  reveal. This is reality that has been going on for the past 20 years or more.  There has been a lot of discussion about this for most of those 20 years. The photographers have noted it. The news has run stories about it. The naturalist have blogged about it. It ain't new!! In fact, it is rather old news.

Having that pointed out, yesterday, I made a trip to University Park to see the Robert Indiana "LOVE" sculpture that was presented to the city of University Park by a couple in celebration of their 25th wedding anniversary.  To me, it was a touching gesture by the couple to present LOVE to the University Park across from one of the most amazing pieces of architecture in the area, Highland Park Presbyterian Church. (yeah, Scotland!). I have long admired the detail and the massive size of the structure. It's my kind of architecture that I not only admire, but LOVE, so to have that piece of sculpture in the adjacent park to that wonderful architecture made the afternoon seem like heaven.

LOVE to the Third Power

This piece has been shown in New York and around the country.It's home is now University Park, Texas.

The island setting is a great placement. The sod is dormant at the time having been put down not long ago.

Another Week of E-Ticket Weather Rides

It's been so back and forth temperature-wise this winter in North Texas that even the  weather geeks are going back into the record books to justify why this is happening. One thing is for sure. While the buds have started to open and the flowering red bud trees and dogwood trees are blooming, these every-other day cold fronts will slow down the full arrival of spring a bit. Noticeable also is the green showing up in the woodlands where the tree canopies have held down the cold and frost from reaching the ground which allows the trees and scrub bushes  to stay a bit warmer than the open meadows.

With more down time than normal, it has allowed me to find problems with my camera settings and to experiment and to correct the issues that I have been having with the auto focus and other settings. So, it's not all being a bad thing. But, I am getting excited to be back out in warmer, sunnier, dryer and less windy days than what we have been experiencing here in North Texas.

Valentines Day will be mid 70s with a warm south wind. Since I have a doctor's appointment, that will get me out earlier. With being inside so much it had my schedule a bit out of whack.  Today, in an effort to catch up on some routes that have really fallen by the wayside of late, I headed out for the Trinity mid-way between Irving and downtown Dallas.

Much to my surprise, some of the areas that normally are closed off from high water were open. That shows right there that the new pumping stations are up and running and above all, working. When I hit the ramp going down into the old Trammel Crow Park on Sylvan, the sand was like two feet deep in parts of the parking lots and they had not been cleaned off from the flooding. Walking across the old Sylvan Bridge, which is now literally 30 feet below the new bridge, the amount of wood and plastic that had been collected was astonishing. There was evidence that the crews had done some
 work on the banks. There were also large 60 gallon trash bags full of plastic maybe. They had been neatly placed on the side of the bridge's west end waiting for a crew to pick them up. Large animal tracks from the river up onto the smooth riverbank's sides could have come for dogs, but they could have also come from   a pack of coyotes, too. A person walking their dog would only have left one, maybe two, sets of tracks at most. These covered the entire area and could only have been made by a pack of  many.

The purpose was to test the new settings on the camera that had been adjusted last night. I got my shots and headed back toward home with a quick stop at the grocery for dinner.  Generally, I play a little game with myself to guess my mileage reading when I pull into the driveway. Tonight, I was off by two tenths!! Now bad from being cross town and not including where I would stop for groceries. The old man is still got some sharpness to him.

Plastic flowing from the Northern Communities down the Trinity and collecting under the old Sylvan Avenue Bridge, now used as a crossover for the Skyline Bike Trail and its connections , old and new.

The western edge of Downtown as seen from the West back of the Trinity at Sylvan Avenue bridge (old).

Working Inside with Ceilings at 200 feet!

A wild life camera. Nothing unusual there. What is unusual is that it is in a cemetery

Sunshine rules in  my book, and over time, days when the clouds roll in tend to really give me a good case of the downers. I don't get depressed, but I do get down with weather like we have have the past several days. In short, I discovered today that it isn't so much the clouds as it is the level of the ceilings. Today, the National Weather Servcie's web site, indicated on an hourly basis that the clouds were hanging at 400 feet, 200 feet, 400-300 feet most of the day. It really wasn't raining much, the total rain fall has been reported at less than .07 of an inch or less several hourly reports showed. With a total of less and .22 of an inch total since yesterday, that is measuring drizzle and with low clouds.  That is a downer of a sprinkle kind that I just as soon see move on out tomorrow and welcome the cold front in it's place. That should clear things out nicely.


With that kind of misery from weather, it gave me a change to look back over the past two weeks of images in more detail and find all the unusual things. And I did find one. A very interesting one at that. In fact, I debated whether to post it or not for several reasons. Yet,  it's got editorial value and those are the ones that hold the most interest for editors and brokers of editorial stock images the most. And... open my mouth and insert foot again... the hawks have positioned themselves in better locations where details highlight their beauty even more after I post that this blog isn't turning into a bird blog. I should have know that Murphy's law would come back to haunt my words on that topic.

Beautiful Red Shoulder on a Wire. This is the second time I have seen him on the wire in the past 4 weeks. Usually, he likes trees over the roadway. (Click on the image to enlarge)

The Year of the Pig

The lunar new year in the Chinese calendar is the year of the pig. We went looking for that in the various Chinese Asian Communities in Dallas. We found big proof that the Year of the Pig is, in fact, underway.

The Chinese Lunar New Year is The Year of the Pig

Happy New Year to our Chinese friends, readers and stock image customers.

We Mourn With You, Flamengo and our Brasilian Readers

It is with sadness that we mourn with you, Flamengo, in both the lost of property and in the lives of so many players lives. May God give you all peace and understanding in this terrible loss and my all of their souls rest in peace, both now and forever more.

Might Have Scooped The Big Boys Yesterday.

Some of you might be wondering why I start out with a less than interesting detail about the weather in my blog. When you learn a lesson that makes you money, you tend not to forget that important little bit of information. In fact, I have explained that lesson here on this very blog more than just once. In short, weather makes a big difference in what people are doing. When you are making calls to a state that is snowed in and with power outages, you start calling you customer base in Florida or California The key to making sales is, of course, delivering info to your customer base that is useful to them as well.  Simply put, that's why I do it.The showed-in guys are not interested in buying any thing at the moment. They just want their power back on and resume life as normal. 

Anyway---knowing that the day was going to be cloudy and lighting would be an issue, I set out for the lake after picking up my prescription at Walgreen's from a text that I had on my phone this morning. I entered the lake area from a different spot today---almost in reverse order to what I normally do. Almost immediately it was obvious that people count was down. And that left birds and  many more than just a few construction workers that park on one end of the lake that is making a large addition to an assisted living community. Further down the east side of the lake three new homes are going up in the estate section. Still, to cover the lake, you  have to make the round from what ever point of entry you make until you finish the loop and end up back where you entered originally.

Thankfully, being a photographer where the art .actually trains your eyes to pick up things that most people miss---some, not even knowing that anything was going on at all. It actually gives you a leg up in the creative process and you can react if not by instinct, by muscle train to move a camera here or there almost before others who might still have their cameras hanging around their neck. I carry my camera from the pistol grip on the right side of the camera just for that reason. It is a bit more risky, however.You see, there are some methods to all the madness floating around you out there.

Just as I was departing the lake, a helicopter ( I call them egg beaters) began to buzz the lake. Now, there is a heliport not many miles from the lake where the local news organizations either hanger their egg beaters or rent them from a service with pilots. They fly across the lake all the time and from Dreyfuss Club, standing in the right spot, you can see planes landing at Love Field and yes, even at DFW when they are using a north flow landing pattern. The ATC controls flips and when the ATC flips one like Love Filed, they flip DFW at the same time as the runway headings are near the same and are the same for a couple of the runways. And when any of the blimps are in town for the Cowboys games or the Mavs or the Stars, they hanger their blimp at Redbird in south Dallas along I-30 and they need to refuel, you can watch them heading toward the airport. If you are covering blimps, they you know you can take a short break, too! Others who don't know that, are standing and watching, then, they have to leave when the blimps come back because they didn't take their potty breaks or get something to eat. There again, you get the point. The right info in hand is a game changer.

Why am I telling you this? Well being observant is a key factor when you shoot editorial photos or that 'picture of the day' for the live news feeds for stills and because editors follow certain photographers for various reasons over other ones. Some recognize that shots sometime are still submitted because of the topic or nature rather than total technique. Still, you want the best shot that you can get but I never delete an image--good or bad---because I have used images even as much as a year or so later where an image was used by an attorney in a court case and even a year or two later would use an image of lesser quality to back up an original image. So, don't delete your images that you feel are bad. It's called,'' when making soup and you run out of milk, you can always use water.''

Tonight on the news, the report of a missing couple was the reason for the egg beaters over the lake today. But, that was directly related to and answered the question from my post yesterday about the blood hound and the police cars at the lake. By being observant yesterday and posting, I had actually scooped a story sooner than later had I been a reporter. All those little things add up with editors and they start going to one photographer over others because they know that this photographer is out there every day while the other one only shoots on weekends or holidays. You get the point. Editors are just like us---they are creatures of habit and go first where they know they can get what they need in images and move on to their next project.

There wasn't much going on today even with that said. Here are some different shots

Tall Prairie Grasses with the Downtown Dallas Skyline some 8-miles away.

A fisherman with "man's best friend aboard" The cormorants get a bit nervous when boats get to close to their log and tree dry docks where they dry their wings after diving.Boat motors over 10.5 HP are not permitted on the lake. This guy has a little electric motor on the front of the boat that allows him to move legally on the water and its great for fishing around logs and shorelines.

Unsettling Sights Today

It's a pelican.What else can I say. Pelicans rule!!

The sun broke out and that was the signal to get the heck out of the house. By the time that I got to the lake, police were all over the lake. That's not a problem.  Usually it is comforting to see the men in blue, but today was different and it could be felt emotionally

By the time that I made it around to the old T&P trestle that was replaced into the new trail bridge, I saw three officers with open frame shoulder butt firearms.  One lead the pack with the most amazing blood hound that I have ever seen. Seeing the dog working was amazing and while I can't say what was going on officially, as I got around to the curve where the Katy Trail Extension comes under the T&P right -a-way police cars had the entry to the parking lot on the curve blocked off.

Another policeman and his car were parked and he was talking to some visitors. It did seem at that point that the previous scene on the back side of the curve was some kind of training exercise. Whether a real training mission or an actual search makes no difference. Things like that just don't happen at the lake and when you see it in action first hand with guns drawn and in arms, it is upsetting visually. It's a city park. There are other places where it would not be so visible for a training exercise.

Be that as it may, if it were something that would be a public safety issue, then I can see that in a city park...there would be no other place to hold it because it would have  to be an actual investigation.

This house is off the beaten path, but I pass it because there are other things going on around it. It's still one of my most favorite architectures. I love big veranda porches. The second deck open turret. There are a lot of people that have never seen this lovely place. So, editorially, this is a fine example of Southern Architecture in old Charleston, old Savannah , Pawleys Island.

This shows how choppy the lake really was today and the gentleman at times, was loosing more ground than he had just gained. Tiring Labor for sure.

It Was Eighty Degrees Today!!

We missed a record by two-degrees today. The sun was out. It was bright. Warm. Spring-Like and I saw the first red-bud tree up the street from me in full bloom. When that happens, it's time to make a cemetery run. A local cemetery has a very large section of flowering trees  that line a road that are just out of this world. So, before coming in today, I made a cemetery run. The trees have just started getting buds on the branches. With the cold weather coming in the next few days, it will slow down the process some, but they are hardy trees and the cold doesn't usually bother them once they start budding. With that fact under my hat, I'll not be going back for about a week to ten days. The low clouds return overnight and will be 'hanging around' into next week Sorry for the poor pun, but there was a piece on the news tonight about global warming and that Dallas, because we are in such a mixing bowl, is expected to join Phoenix and Louisville (don't get the Louisville connection) as the fastest warming cities in the US.

So here is a bit of images with captions. Enjoy..

This sign has been struck about  six times over as many months. It's down for the count again!!

Blue Sky with a bit of architecture trim.

Fall and Winter Embrace Spring. The landscape companies are already out cutting grass for this season.

Super Bowl LIII Day Gives Off Some Intereting Views

Mockingbird Station's Angelika  Theater  will soon being showing this years Film Fest Films

Signs on the SB Service Road of US75 North Central Expressway. At the light, turn right into SMU campus. Parking for the library is on the right after turning off the service road. This station serves the Blue, Red, Orange Lines. The Green can be made as a transfer at tne first station after the trains come up from the tunnels. The orange line is the line that goes to  DFW Terminal A

A rare site to see a windsurfer on the water at White Rock Lake. The gentlemen on the board is closer in age to me than any of the boaters or kayaks save a hand full. It's great to see the more mature sports men  like this gentleman. Here, he has a great wind and moving rather fast. He's steering toward the boat ramp and take a plunge right at the ramp. Perfect!! Nice man to talk with, also.

The sun came out briefly. At kick-off time, the cloud deck had returned. Listening to the Pre-Game Show, A  couple of pictures from earlier in the day. The temp hit 71 officially at DFW just before 3 P.M. Originally, the men with the magic ball were calling for 80 F. Clouds messed that up for sure.