The Waiting

I took this at Brazos Bend State Park on the weekend before my brother left Houston.  We decided to go on a bike ride through the park.  It was awesome!  Great fun.  In the early afternoon, we decided to try to complete all the trails since the morning had gone so well and we were gobbling up the trails very quickly.  However, the back trails that we hadn't yet ridden were long, straight, and relatively uninteresting.  Worse, the scattered rain had made them muddy and the clay-like mud clogged the gaps between the tires and the stays and brakes.   It made it tough to pedal and we had to stop periodically to unclog the works. Eventually it got so bad, we walked the bikes.  By that point, I was running on too little fuel, having only eaten breakfast.  I ran out of water for the last hour of the ride.  So by the time we got back to the car, I was bonking.  Took a good half hour after the ride (and into the drive home) before I started feeling somewhat normal.  Despite all that, it was a great and much-needed ride!  It was a good sort of exhaustion.  But next time, I will come better prepared!

The photo was of a dead tree in which a dozen or so turkey vultures had decided to roost.  I got several photos, but this is my favorite because of the leading lines and the simpler composition of having a single bird.  I really went to town processing these.  This photo was taken in broad daylight, but I used Silver Efex Pro to give it a low-key effect, like it was taken at sun down.

I think this one is also a pretty good demonstration of working within the limitations of your gear.  I used the Nikon 55-300mm lens for this shot, extended all the way out to 300mm.  The 55-300mm is a budget zoom and 300mm brings out it's worst performance in terms of image quality.  But shooting the photo as a silhouette hides a lot of deficiencies that would probably be apparent if I'd exposed for the bird and trees.  And with this subject, a silhouette just works.