I’m overdue to write up a trip report for my three days in Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Since I don’t see getting to that real soon, I have posted a set of photos on flickr that have 50 photos in chronological order across all three days. The set covers my hike to the Salt Basin Dunes, an all-day hike into McKittrick Canyon for the fall colors, and a wonderful hike of solitude on the El Capitan Trail from Pine Spring Canyon to Guadalupe Canyon.

In the mean time, here is a set of four shots that I like from a recent swim meet. (I spend more weekends attending my kids’ swim meets than I do on hiking and photography.) This series shows each of the four strokes that make up an individual medley. I performed some creative processing in Adobe LightRoom to make them near-black-and-white.

The first stroke is the butterfly.

The second stroke is the back stroke.

The third stroke is the breast stroke.

And finally, the freestyle. This last stroke is currently Jack’s best (especially at long distances like the 1000 yard and the mile).

I have a photography trip planned to Gudalupe Mountains National Park coming up soon, hoping to catch some great fall colors in the mountains and canyons. To update the blog in the meantime, here's a picture of Caroline in her Halloween costume.

Other than a swim meet a few weeks ago, the camping trip this past weekend was the first opportunity to use my new camera. I took the kids to Dinosaur Valley State Park from Friday to Sunday. The water level in the Paluxy river was much higher than I'd ever seen it. The camping in the state park is located on the inside of an acute bend in the river and almost all of the hiking trails are across the river, outside the bend. Normally, you can walk across the Paluxy and barely get your hiking shoes wet. On this trip, the trails were unreachable so we had to find other ways to occupy our time.

On Saturday, we toured the nearby Fossil Rim Wildlife Center near Glen Rose. This was my third visit. The two previous trips were on father/daughter and father/son campouts, respectively. This was the first time to be there with all three kids on the same visit. We took a guided tour in a safari vehicle and then repeated the route on our own in the Expedition. This zebra was one of the better shots. I'm still fumbling around this new camera, learning the different controls and more advanced features.

The San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site is not very far out of the way when going to/from Houston Hobby airport. I've decided to try to swing by as often as I can in hopes of catching the monument in interesting light and sky. On my most recent trip, I tried at sunrise (mostly a grey blanket of clouds with brief moments of sun on the monument) and in late afternoon (a bit too early to get really interesting light). This is certainly a case of being at the right place at the right time, so I will keep trying. I'm looking forward to future attempts during colder weather - fewer mosquitos!

There is a really impressive DeepZoom display produced by Microsoft Switzerland including 8 images, each consisting of Gigapixels of information. You can zoom very far into the top of the Matterhorn and see climbers. The largest of the 8 pictures was created from 440 individual shots taken from a Canon 5D MkII - each individual shot is 21 Mpixels.

I went to the Seattle area last week a few days on a business trip. On my last evening, I drove up to photograph scenic spots along the Skykomish River on the way to Stevens Pass. One of my last stops was in the historic area of the town of Skykomish. I stepped out into the river (very low water flow) below the steel bridge that leads from Hightway 2. There was just a small bit of light in the sky. I took this long exposure shot of the rocks in the river, appearing to be floating in space.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has launched a new web site showcasing the work of the Civillian Conservation Core in Texas State Parks. The web site is a virtual museum with photos and descriptions and a few videos.

There is a profile of each state park that contains structures built by the CCC. The profile includes the park location, the dates of the CCC activities, the CCC Company number(s), and it identifies each structure.

I frequently seek out the CCC structures in Texas State Parks (and other destinations). Some of my "current" flickr photos of CCC work include:

• Indian Lodge in the Davis Mountains State Park
• The huge swimming pool at Balmorhea State Park
• One of the rim cabins at Palo Duro State Park
• Longhorn Cavern State Park
• Other CCC structures in Arkansas
• Other CCC structures in Oklahoma

I look at these photographers for inspiration for exploring this part of the country. Both Laurence Parent and Tim Ernst have authored multiple hiking books that I use for planning trips.

• Texas : Laurence Parent
• Okahoma : Kim Baker
• Arkansas: Tim Ernst

I posted a trip report for the photos I took at Lake Mineral Wells State Park last Saturday morning. Look for the "Hiking/Photography Trip Reports" link on the right side under the "Pages" heading.

I'm preparing to apply a few recently acquired tools to create detailed descriptions of my landscape photography trips. The tools include a photo geotagger and a GPS mapping software package. The geotagger will allow me to pin point the location of each photo and I'll use the software to create annotated maps of the drives and hikes to get to each location.

GPS Data Logger/Photo Tracker

I purchased the AGL3080 GPS  device from AMOD last month and used it on a number of hikes during our vacation in Colorado in August. So far, I've used the device to embed coordinates in the EXIF headers for photos that I've uploaded to my flickr site. The photos that have the embedded latitude and longitude can be viewed through a map interface. This is especially effective when viewing a related set of photos on a map. See this map of photos from a hike on Spruce Creek Trail  near Breckenridge, Colorado.

Topographic Mapping Software

While the flickr map interface is useful, I want to create more information around a trip including timing, what went well (with regard to location, timing, light) and suggestions for repeat visits. For this I want to create maps (topographic and/or aerial) of the hikes to use in detailed trip reports. I checked into a number of options and decided yesterday to purchase a copy of TopoFusion. With this package, I can import the GPS tracks from the AGL3080 and create my own maps, elevation profiles, speed and distance profiles, and a bunch of things that I don't even know about yet.

Upcoming Reports

The first reports that I'm working on are for the two short trips last weekend. The first was an early Saturday morning trip to Lake Mineral Wells State Park. The second was a Sunday evening trip to the Blue River WMA in Oklahoma. I've already posted some of the photos from these trips on flickr: LMWSP and BRWMA.