Old building, Comal County, TX

For many years i have been photographing a couple old building located in between San Antonio and New Braunfels. When i was in college about 20 miles north of the buildings, they were function and the building on the left had (even then) an old fashion gas pump, the kind that has a glass bulb with a spinning wheel inside and the store was, more or less, your old country store.

This is the earliest photograph i have, June 2006. However, my memory is that i took many long before that and just can't locate them. Clicking on the image will give you a much better view of the buildings.

Four years later it didn't look too much different but ... i took the photograph in the afternoon and the sun was shinning on the front of the buildings.

The yellow realtor sign on the left building is gone but not much else had changed - the sunlight certainly made it look better.

In 2013, some of the bushes were removed from in front of the building on the right and this sign had been installed:

The building on the right was where the above sign was located

And all the realtor signs were gone and the front door of the left building was slightly open so i stuck my camera inside and took a few photographs without seeing what i was shooting until i withdrew my arm - this is what was inside:

Isn't that amazing ... just like old country stores that i grew up around in the 50's; the room next door, the one you can see thru the door, looked like this:

At that time the front of the left hand building looked like this:

'Nuff for now.

Geared Heads

These are 'geared heads', an adjusting via gears that i only learned about about 18 months ago.

Made by Manfrotto, a company i've never thought made very good products, these turn out to be quite good. When shooting macro items having to adjust the camera's placement by moving the tripod causes all kinds of necessary adjustments. I bought the smaller, on the right, geared head without doing much research to discovered the camera and rails i was using was too heavy for the head and when tilted downwards tended to literally fall forward, ie the gears didn't hold the tilt. Then i discovered they made different models for different weights and today i received the model that will, i hope, handle the weight of the camera, rails, lights, etc.. I was lucky and located a used one that was about 25% less then a new one. Over the next weeks i'll learn if i have finally bought the one that will work.

New Lens

Recently i purchased a new lens for the new Sony A7lll; 24-105mm ... sometimes called a 'walk around lens' as it covers the conventional usually shooting sizes. And its seems, at least initially, much sharper then the Canon lens of the same ilk - and that's what i was hoping. I used it for the first time today and here are a few of the images:

Carolina Titmouse and Wren

Probably the sign was put there to keep the mail person from 

overstuffing the mailbox

There were dozens of geese flying overhead as we went for a walk

Yum!

Back of House

Blue Jay

and sometimes the big birds use it

I'm pretty pleased with the first use of the lens ... what do you think?

Wisteria

Love 'em:

HDR, fence in Albany, CA

Same fence, different view

and a few blocks away

This area had a lot of wisteria growing everywhere - never could get enough of them, either their sight or their aroma.

Orchids

I have been photographing Susan's orchards as they are about to go away for this season. I've always been enthralled by the intensity of their purple and bought a, mostly white, velvet cloth for the backdrop. It didn't work out as it wasn't really white but off-white or cream-white - so these have been cut out of the background and plain white substituted ... they came out pretty well.

I like the color of the bottom photograph but prefer the layout of the top photograph. The color difference is the lighting used. Its a good start to getting the depth of the color my eyes see ... learning to reproduce what the eyes sees is the challenge of photographing.

Apples

This is apple season in the mountains and just outside of Hendersonville are dozens of apple orchards ... and as we visited Stepp's last year - we returned to the same place AND they have fresh backed Apple Cider Donuts! Yum!

Although i take my camera with me i've found i'm not so interested in taking photographs of apple trees, etc. This is about all there is.

Mt Pisgah Trail hike

We have been trying to make a hike on one of the mountain trails in the general area: within 40 miles or so. Yesterday we hike up the Mt Pisgah Trail.

We found the trail 'demanding' as one hiker that was on the way down said; "the last half mile is pretty demanding, but you have your sticks so you should be fine." We were fine and the last half was challenging for us older hikers. It started off looking like this and was equally beautiful all the way to the top.

And not only was it steep— 

it was. almost, all rocks:

I had the idea that at the top there would be a cleared space (and a porta potty) but nothing was cleared and only a 20' octantal was standing up in the brush. 

The view was specular and we sat for a bit, and a bite, and headed back down. I didn't take any photos from the top because, well, the ones i've taken from the top of other peaks never pleased me ... there is usually too much haze (yes i know LR can handle haze) and the view so vast, my little sensor just laughs at me trying to put that much territory onto an inch size piece of technology. So, no photographs of the top!

To add excitement to the journey back down, it began raining about half way down and we increased our pace. Thankfully, it stopped and waited until we were a few hundred yards from the car and then the skies opened up raining as hard as it often does in the mountains.

It was a good hike and about the outer limits of our abilities although we are noticing those abilities are increasing with the more we hike such trails.

More from the Porch

We are having an unusual amount of rain this August, or so i think as this is only my second August here ... still, its rained almost everyday for the past 10 days (i love it!) but its causing problems for those living along rivers' edges. Its raining as i write.

Season's end, for the Sunflower

And these were growing in the flower pot yesterday but are already gone.

From the Table

I was sitting at our dining room table earlier today, cleaning the sensor (actually, the cover of the sensor) and just as i put everything back together, a Goldfinch landed on the, mostly dead, sunflower on the back porch which i was facing.

The motivation for putting up the bird feeders, seen earlier in this blog, was the neighbors up the street have dozens of very large sunflowers in the yard and when we walk past there is often half a dozen Goldfinches eating ... so i put up bird feeders not really thinking about the Goldfinches but hoping for a variety of birds.

So when i looked up and there was a Goldfinch on the sunflower i picked up the camera, which had a 100mm lens on it which was o.k. at the distance i was from the sunflower, and took two photographs before it flew away. It is a delight that i know have a photograph of a Goldfinch on the sunflower:

So i thought i'd just photograph a few more items from where i sat —

The water under the tomatoes is from rain that rain on the sill 'fore we could get the window closed which was only 45 minutes earlier. I didn't notice we'd miss that water until i was about the photograph the tomatoes.

Also, the above photographs are files that are twice the size of the photographs i post; an experiment to see if that makes any difference in viewing them. When you click on them, are they any larger then the earlier photographs in this blog?

More Feedings

I have moved all the feeders to the front of the house and now have 2 seed feeders, a hummer feeder and one suet.

While most of the birds are finches or sparrows, there is a mixture of other small and medium sized birds, most of which i look up on my handy bird books. Here are some of those birds:

Tufted Titmouse

Humming bird: Anna??

Female Juvie Cardinal

Carolina Chickadee

My favorite:

Goldfinch

There are at least two smallish birds that have flitted to and away from the feeders that i've not been able to photograph; if they don't sit for at least 10 sec, i'm not able to take a photograph. I'm hoping that over time i'll be able to photograph them.

And a final family photo:

Top, Tufted Titmouse, Mid: House Wren, Bot: Hairy Woodpecker 

Mt. Airy - Mayberry, NC

During our travels from the coast to the mountains on our vacation, we stopped by a small town to get something to drink. Image our surprise when we discovered it was the home of the TV series Mayberry.

And the soda fountain where we bought an ice cream cone was called 'Barney's Cafe'. Sorry i didn't get a photograph of it. At that time we were sitting on a bench in front of the store rather puzzled at the old police car that kept circulating up and down the street ... so we began to look closer and discovered, yes we asked someone, that Mountain Airy was the shooting location of many of the Mayberry TV scenes. Surprises in the mountains on a hot July summer day!