I went out early Saturday morning to Lake Mineral Wells State Park, about 1.5 hours west of my home. On Sunday night, I went up to the Blue River WMA in Oklahoma, about 2 hours north of my home. I have posted some photos from Mineral Wells on my flickr site. Tonight, I should get around to adding entries here from both outings.

With three kids in competitive swimming, we go to many swim meets - which translates into a lot of swimming photos.

I finally got around to adding a photo gallery for all of the swim meets we go to. As I adjust the tags on the photos on flickr, they should start appearing on the COR Swimming gallery page.

It's time to put another picture at the top of the blog. This is Kira, our 3+ year old German Shepherd. I have a number of photos of her on Flickr. When I get a chance, I'll add a photo gallery link dedicated to her photos.

I took Kira to Arbor Hills today for a walk on the trails. Since we spent a lot of time this weekend at Caroline's swim meet, Kira was in need of her own time and attention. When we got to the back part of the preserve, I let her off the leash to run. There is often no one else in the back, which was the case today given the 95 degree temperature.

I didn't take my camera on today's visit, just a big bottle of water (I shared with Kira, of course). This photo was taken back in June when we had a house full of 9 year old girls for Caroline's birthday party. Kira is great with kids and here was "asking" to play ball.

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.

I've added dedicated pages to view topical photo galleries. They are all linked from one top-level photo gallery "menu" page listed on the right in the "Pages" collection.

I'm trying out the slide show URL available on flickr that allows me to create an embedded slide show with content specified by a list of tags. Here are a subset of images from the 4th of July weekend in Austin for the kids' swim meet. This slide show only contains images I've tagged on flickr with "South Congress Avenue" and "Dave Hamilton Photography".

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.

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.

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!

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.