Hagerman NWR - Reflections II, originally uploaded by daveham.

I made a trip to Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge early Saturday morning. It lies on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, near Sherman, Texas. It was a beautiful morning with a few rain showers just finishing as the sun came up. I picked up some information at the visitor center so I can plan a return trip with my kayak. I'm looking forward to the fall bird migration.

Information about the refuge can be found at the Hagerman page on the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service site. Also, there is an excellent site run by the Friends of Hagerman. More of my photos from this trip can be viewed through one of my photo galleries.

2009 Texas Open, originally uploaded by daveham.

Two of my kids competed in a swim meet in Austin Texas over the 4th of July weekend. I've posted quite a few pictures from the meet and the other activities of the weekend - including a fireworks show over Town Lake. They can be viewed as a flicker slide show.

Welcome to Honey Grove Texas, originally uploaded by daveham.

Honey Grove is in Fannin county, near Bonham. 100 years ago there was a nearby quarry (Floyd Quarry) which produced stone used for many of the buildings in downtown. Honey Grove has a large number of old stone buildings for a town its size. Well worth the 1.5 hour trip from Dallas for early morning photography.

Banana Spider with Young, originally uploaded by daveham.

When in the Houston area, I like to go to Brazos Bend State Park for some evening photography. On my latest trip, I did some hiking on the trails on the back side of the park away from Elm Lake and 40 Acre Lake where most of the Alligator siting occurs. I had heard/read that Banana Spiders were common on these trails. I can now confirm that these critters are easily found here - and if you don't watch out for them, they will find you!

If Only I Had a Train, originally uploaded by daveham.

The kids had a swim meet in Tyler, Texas. They swam in the afternoons, so I went out in the mornings of both Saturday and Sunday for a little photography fun. I spent most of my shooting time at the edge of downtown near this historic train depot.

Kids on Paddle Boat, originally uploaded by daveham.

Caroline, Katie and Jack sit on the back of a paddleboat on Lake Daingerfield. I was in our kayak to take this shot. We had crossed the lake to find this patch of shade. The kids were able to move back and forth between the extra seat in the kayak and the paddleboat.

Water Lily on Lake Daingerfield, originally uploaded by daveham.

Another photo from last weekend's camping trip. I took a number of these from our kayak.

Cypress Trees on Caddo Lake, originally uploaded by daveham.

I posted a number of photos from last weekend's camping trip to east texas. I took Jack, Katie and Caroline to Daingerfield state park for two nights of tent camping. Most of the time we spent in and around Daingerfield lake. On Saturday, we took an afternoon trip to Caddo Lake and Caddo Lake State Park.

Sitting Pretty, originally uploaded by daveham.

This is my first try to create a blog entry from my flickr photo stream. This picture was taken this week while I was down in Houston on a work trip. In the evening, I went down to Brazos Bend State Park, about 50 miles south west of Houston. I found this park to be a terrific photography destination. I should have many repeat visits to Houston for this project - which means many repeat visits to this park.

I tried out PhotoZoom on Microsoft Live Labs tonight. I created an album for some of my outdoor photographs taken in Texas. I've loaded only one so far, a shot of Blue Mountain during a storm in the Davis Mountains. PhotoZoom uses the deep zoom technology built into Silverlight allowing a smooth zooming and panning experience on very large photo files. I uploaded the file at nearly the top resolution of my 10.1 megapixel DSLR. PhotoZoom post-processes and stores the file. The photo can be browsed at PhotoZoom, but the site also produces a snippet of HTML to embed within any web page. I had originally posted this photo on my flickr site with a much smaller resolution. Here's what can be done with PhotoZoom:

The deep zoom capability in Silverlight is based on some work done by Microsoft Research called Seadragon. (Seadragon Software was acquired by Microsoft in early 2006.) They have embedded the technology in Silverlight and have recently released an AJAX control. Seadragon Mobile was also used in the iPhone application that was released this week.