Spending a Saturday at Port Aransas, Texas

I just got back from a little road trip to Port Aransas for the day and to spend the night. It was really nice spending the time with my fiance’ and getting to photograph and swim in the gulf. I’ve never seen blue water in the Gulf of Mexico quite like this. Schools of minnow’s swam around our feet, and a few small sand sharks and trout made their way around us. Some fish jumped out of the waves, and we had fun watching the action. We even saw a few jellyfish.

After swimming for a while we took a walk up to a large fishing pier and watched the people fishing and hanging out.

All in all, it was an awesome trip and I can’t wait to go back.

Cheers!

Port Aransas on Dwellable

Wildfires scorch the Hill Country

The hills of central Texas have been blazing with smoke and flames for the past few days. Wildfires have destroyed hundreds of homes standing on this dehydrated ground. I have been fortunate that my home (or apartment rather) has not been in the path of the hot beast. I went out and photographed some of the areas surrounding Marble Falls for the paper I work for, and these are the images mostly from the Spicewood area. Luckily the fires had been contained when I shot these.

Shooting bovine

I tried to find longhorn cattle to photograph twice within the last two days. I don’t know if because the weather has been hotter this weekend than any other this summer or if they were just grazing in fields away from me. These are the only cows I saw and none of them had horns of any length.

This flood gauge I found a little humorous because we are in the middle of a long drought here in central Texas.

Mi motocicleta

My baby, the Black Mamba.

Laura’s Shoot

Laura, my fiance’s good friend and my pal too, needed a few new head shots for her portfolio and asked me to photograph her this past weekend. We went out on Sunday morning and hit a few different locations and these turned out really nice. Plus, she was a good model to work with and her personality was easily captured.

2011 Marble Falls Drag Boat Races

Wow, do these boats move! And I mean fast! This is LakeFest at Marble Falls, Texas.

I’d never had the chance to shoot something like this before, and I wanted to take full advantage of this unique opportunity. I had press credentials from the paper I work for to get a closer view than the rest of the crowd and was able to get right on the edge of the water.

This is just like drag racing on an asphalt track (which I have never been to either), but instead is on an open body of water. This event marked the 20th year for the races to fall upon the city of Marble Falls in central Texas. The boats are put in separate classes and race each other accordingly with the “Top Fuel” class leading the excitement with speeds above 250 mph.

A world record was set while I was there shooting and I got a few nice shots of it happening. The boat “Problem Child” driven by Daryl Ehrlich set the record of going 1,000 feet in 3.39 seconds at a speed of 261mph. Damn.

Here are the images:

Not only does everyone have an interest in fast boats at this event, everyone drives a truck. This is Texas after all.

This is the boat and driver that beat the previous record to make the world record in Top Hydro Fuel category. Daryl Erlich driving “Problem Child.”

Perfect Saturday

The entire week before this weekend has been a long one at work. I just wanted to go for a long ride on the motorcycle and take some pictures. I’ve been working on these ads at work for local home construction and building companies for an upcoming tab, and some of them have very nice photography. It gave me the itch to go out and shoot more than usual to get something good.

I have heard that RM 1431 is a nice ride to take a motorcycle down, and it turns out this is a GREAT road for a motorcycle. There are tons of twists, turns and hills. My camera, bike and myself saddled up and off we went into the Texas countryside. I found this dried creek bed, Cow Creek, and got down into it. These images are all from there.

Just before I started my hike, these bikers took off out of side road where I had parked.

Hole in one

This is a shot from a shoot I did for the newspaper I work for. It was the cover of a weekend features tab we publish. I just like the picture.

It’s a nice morning

I’ve wanted to make some pictures from this area before, but I haven’t had the chance until this morning. This is the Pennybacker bridge or aka the Austin 360 bridge, as it spans part of Lake Travis coming into town on highway 360. I want to go back and photograph it at night because there are no lights on the bridge and it looks very nice moonlight with the cars going across.

I was glad that I woke up early today on my day off and rode the motorcycle up to this cool spot. The tree image is from the viewpoint of the bridge photo as well.

And here it is at night:

No Mas Agua

The water is going away, and fast. For anybody living in central Texas, they can tell you first hand that there has been little to zero rainfall in weeks. Predictions are saying this might be the worst drought since the 1950’s.

Everyday I go to work I cross a large bridge covering the Perdenales River bed. It’s just the bed though, as all but a tiny amount of water trickles down the vast space. These images are from the top of the bridge along highway 71 between Austin and Marble Falls, Texas. It’s a sad sight to see the boat docks sitting in the dirt where they used to float proud in the water. There are large homes lining the river canyon walls that had a great view of a flowing river that now look over a dry bed of rocks and dirt.

It’s only the end of June, and the next few months prove only to expect more heat and dry weather. Hopefully rain will come and the fish and wildlife dependent on the water will have their normal lives returned soon.