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.