Thank You To Those That Ride As Patriot Guards

It was my maternal grandmother who taught me many,many years ago to never judge a book by it's cover. At first, my thinking was that she meant a book cover literally. Over a couple more decades, she expanded on that definition. The bottom line is that I got the full meaning literally and figuratively and have always remembered the basics and fundamental principals behind those lessons.

Today, I had an opportunity to shoot some really amazing images at another funeral for the first fallen police officer in North Texas in 2017. As it evolved with hours of waiting with mounted units, color guard units and the like, two hours later, I spot the procession coming  down the street at a distance. As I am moving toward my car to re position off cemetery property, an operations manager whistled me down and made a point that they had photographers and the  family had requested no pictures. While he was making his point, I made mine that I would never shot pictures at a funeral that had been listed as private. My intent was to stop shooting just as soon as the family entered the grounds.
There were other issues apparent and were not worth factoring in here. In as much as I am a background shooter and like the back story generally.

As it turned out, images that were to honor the fallen officer would also have honored previous policemen and firemen with another massive display of motorcycles. But the moment had been lost forever and that's alright.

A distinguished Arson Investigator from Richland Hills.

In lost moments, there is always that cloud with the silver lining. As it turned out, the book I learned never to judge is one of the most experienced Arson Investigators and he rides as a Patriot Guard. Thank You!! Thank You for allowing me to capture a moment in time that balances out and smooths out the chafe of life's wheat.

Only The Second Time On Antibiotics

Special Note: My HTTPS settings have changed. All visitors are now able to view my blog over an encrypted connection by visiting https://dallasdigitalphotos.blogspot.com. Existing links and bookmarks to your blog will continue to work.

Well, I'm sicker than a old dog and that's two days in with the antibiotics which is only the second

Red Shoulder Hawk dead center

Same

Moved but still dead center

time that I have ever taken antibiotics. My thinking is that since I have not taken them on a regular or routine agenda they should attack this little bacteria like no one's business.

The weather here is totally miserable. Before I sat down to write this post, I heard this racket outside then a clap of thunder and then lightening and thunder again. I walked over to the window and at first sight all that I could see was clear sky, then I look out on the sidewalk and it is covered in hail (hence the racket). It's been a roller coaster of temperatures since Christmas. One day it's 40 then its 75 the next day. We have been getting these upper air disturbances every other day regularly. Oh, and then, there is the wind with 5-10 MPH today, 40 MPH gust the next. I cannot remember a winter like this in the past 15 years.

Looking at my shoot log, this crazy weather is beginning to show up there too, which shows up later in sales down the road not just a month but for as much as a quarter since buyers buy on a quarter cycle ahead of the season. The editorial  images are needed to augment those gaps but even that has been rather sporadic at best.  If it wasn't for the love of the photography in the first place it would be the time to be making some  decisions like: it's time to retire from retiring. Which I know I will not do until the lights go out.

I've been watching a couple of trees at White Rock where a pair of Red Shoulder Hawks claim as their hunting grounds. A couple of days ago when I was feeling pretty lousy, I spotted the male squirrel hunting. I stopped the car and shot from the car, which I seldom do, but I just didn't feel like getting out and chasing down a bird that can fly faster than I can walk and that's after I back-up and park. You will need to click on the image so that it opens up larger to get a better view, otherwise all you are going to see is trees and branches. But, it opens up pretty well when enlarged. I can't get better than 100 percent since I lost the use of my high power lens on the Nikon camera. Olympus keeps telling me that they are bringing to market a ring that will allow my Nikon lens to be used on the Olympus camera. That will give me an added 50mm of power to get that 150 to 200 coverage that I lost.

This Is Pure Bull and Last Night's Storms Were Very Real.

Somethings in life are straight up bull. That's right. I'm not sticking out my chest here. I'm simply stating fact.

And this isn't just any bull. It's A real live Texas Longhorn that is a five minute drive from the heart of downtown Dallas. He's cat napping in the warm sun that has heated the surrounding air to 68 degrees F. If you look, he's got his eyes closed and I sure would not want to be the one to disturb his cat nap. Know what I mean?

It's a funny thing about gas prices. They are headed to prices we have not seen for a while. It's been obvious that the move upward is now in on the march. This past week the prices have gone from $1.90 to $2.22 per gallon almost over night. The best price in the metroplex generally is always at Fuel City. And the best car wash ever is there as well. And, if you are hungry.....oh my! The food is awesome.

Today, every gas station I passed was a few cents higher---and higher---and higher. I reached a point of no return. Continue on and hope for the best---or bite the bullet and pay the highest price. My gas tank is 14 gallons with a 2 gallon reserve and seldom do I ever wait to see the light come on. So if you do the calculations, a two or three cent price per gallon is not even worth the bother. Say you figure three cents per gallon, and at a quarter of a tank, that's ten gallons at three cents--or a whopping $0.30 should you bite the bullet of the higher price. You see where I'm going with this. Even being a penny-pincher, thirty cents isn't going to break the bank. But, the weighted factor today was the car wash. I really needed a car wash and Fuel City allows you to purchase your car wash right at the pump when you are paying for your gas. You can't beat the price or the convenience. While there, and before going down on the river to see the Trinity's flooding from the overnight storms, I visited the bulls and the donkeys there on the grounds.

As I was in line for the car wash (and the lines move F-A-S-T at Fuel City, The herd was at optimum viewing distance. Normally, they are down range a bit and it's not worth it, but it's like the posting in the National Parks that advise that the buffalo herds are within sight or not. In this case, if the bulls are within sight, that's good.

The storms last night generated officially four confirmed tornadoes that were of  EF-0 to EF-1s in strength. One blew out windows in a high rise office building that sits on LBJ Expressway just south of Carrollton near Midway. The weather service is  still investigating more damage in Collin County (which is Frisco and Plano).

It's  early  for Spring Tornadoes it seems, but in Texas---it's never to early. This little mixing bowl that we live in here blends warm fronts, cold fronts, moisture, dryness into a weather shake that can be totally unreal. It was one year ago this past Christmas that the Rockwall

Trinity overflowing and filling up with more runoff. Looking South from the Sylvan Avenue Bridge toward Las Colinas and Irving.

tornadoes took lives and left people still trying to re-build their homes and their lives. As it is, we get two tornado seasons as it is. One comes in the spring and the other comes in the fall, thanks to our mixing bowl effect. 

The Long Night's Moon

The first full moon of the new year was on January 10th. It's name is the Long Night's Moon. It represents new light.

First Full Moon of 2017

Light Beams over Downtown's Far East and Triangle Section

More Inline Skaters are seen at the lake in the past 5 years. The trails have been a big part of that happening.

Discoveries Are Delicious For Me and German Prisoners at Winfrey Point.

It might not seem like much to some, but when you  make a discovery that has been staring you in the face for years, it is  mountain peak success. Being an old man like I am, it gets harder to get down on the ground and even harder to get up if you accomplish the original goal of getting down in the first place. So why would you want to get down if it is hard to get up again, you ask? Well, in photography it is all about changing the angle of view. If you shoot from a tripod all the time, your pictures have above level, level or that below level look which is not the same as being down seeing things from say, the eyes of a dog for better understanding of my point.

White Rock is not on level ground. It's on the edge of the  chalk cliffs but still has a rock base underlying. The roadways rise and sink depending on what side of the lake you are on. Officially, the highest point is  Winfrey Point, the barracks the government used to house German prisoners of war that had served in Rommel's little army c.1943 in Africa. The layout of the lake puts most of the higher elevations on the East side of the lake, although there are some hills on the West side along the Estate section especially.

 Last year when the city rearranged some sections of the trail along the Big Thicket side, they ran the trail from the foot bridge up through the tall prairie grass section and into the Big Thicket. That elevation is much higher than the road and does present a more scenic view of the lake while walking the trail or bike riding alone the trail. At the same time, the city installed new drainage tiles under the new trail and constructed a concrete spillway down to the tile that goes under the roadway and into the lake.

Yesterday, I got an e-mail from one of my editors seeking images of persons walking down a trail through a grove-like stand of trees. Instantly I knew where to go to get those shots. As it turned out, it was 78-degrees and people were in shorts and short sleeved shirts--or no shirts at all. Quite a contrast to bare trees and brown vegetation for the most part and tons of leaves still falling from the trees.

I had been standing up on the trail above where the culverts go under the trail leaning on the railing on the uphill side of the trail. All the shots looked the same. "What can I do to change it?",I thought. So I started to look around to find some place where I could sit down on the trail, then I remembered that while the culverts and stone work was being done last spring, I had shot (as in photograph) the the two guys that were putting in the stone work and that I was down in the trenches---so to speak--- while I got the shots of them working their crafts. The only difference was that there was this nice concrete runway to stand on now that put me about 5 feet below the trail on the up side and about 4 feet below the roadway on the downhill side. Perfect! It's funny how you think sometimes. It had been slapping me in the face for years, and even after it was made better, it still took a year to figure out that those kind of shots would be great. So I spent the rest of the afternoon experimenting with the new-found angle and it turned out very well.

Sometimes, I get so excited when I discover something that I forget to check my settings like I should and I end up with some foiled images, but you learn from those mistakes and carry on for another day. As it turned out, while reviewing images today, I discovered one that while it is somewhat blurry and the stock approvers don't like blur at all, the image did something that I had been trying to figure out for years. So, while the approvers will reject the image and give a stock cookie-cutter answer why they don't want the image, and some go a bit further to try to put you down under the cover of technical problems,  it is the type of image that could win an award. It's a strange business--this business of image creator vs. photography for stock business.

So, you are going to see one image in three different settings from one point on this planet of ours. All because I went down into a drainage ditch and liked it there!! Stay tuned as I will post more shots from that ditch later. Ditch. I said Ditch!! And who is in the gutter now?

No hurry, just an enjoyable ride from here to there.

Any other time I would have ask the guy to stop and play a tune on that stringed instrument he has riding on his back.

No shirt, no leaves, brown grass. It must be drought time in Texas.

Humor Can Be Found Anywhere

Founder's Plaza at DFW

Airbus A-319 flown by Virgin American on final to 13R at Love Field in a strong cross wind.

One of the last MD-11s UPS still flies. That's a lot of package deliveries there, bubba!

Wind today at DFW was steady at 29 MPH Gusting to 40 MPH. A wind advisory went into effect at 10 A.M. CST. At about 6 A.M. this morning, with a setting full moon, the flow of Gulf moisture was streaming by the moon. It was awesome.

We set another  record today, too. 80-degrees at the 2:54 P.M. update at the National Weather Service at DFW, our official reporting station. Even the feathered birds were having a difficult time navigating. Yet, one overly friendly grackle got me to laugh.

The angle of the sun this time of year in mid morning to a bit after noon the glare on the planes is not the best. Plus, I hate changing settings this time of year, too. Even with memory Fn settings. By the time I got to Love Field, the winds had not let up much (Gust to 35 MPH) but the light was much more favorable.

Drag Races Between Two SD-70 Locomotives

Actually, if I had this image when I posted the 12/22/2016 post, "Perseption Is Everything, But..." this would have been a perfect image. It is impossible to show the reason why here in this image, but behind the Union Pacific engine are two more BNSG engines. The way I understand it is that the railroad that owns the tracks pulls a rerouted engine and cars for a train that is using those tracks for some reason. In short, they need an escort while on Union Pacific tracks. But, a case at first sight sure could be made that these two trains were racing.

We set another record today. While checking out the lake, and talking with  another lake goer, we pretty much decided that any scene at the lake today could be anywhere. Anywhere in the world. As Ali said, "we call it White Rock Lake". And I do believe that he captured the moment completely with that statement. He later said, we could use that as a tag line. We sure could, Ali. We now have it for the record and should we want to use it again....we are the only ones that can claim it from here on out.

"Look at that. It could be any place in the world. We call it White Rock Lake". copyright Ali and dallaspaparazzo, Tuesday, 10th January 2017.All rights reserved for us both!

"Look at that. It could be anyplace in the world. We call it White Rock Lake."

Train Drag Racing?

A beautiful little wren.