High flying

On October 10th I turned in at 4800 Manor Rd., a place where I’d never taken pictures. It used to be a part of Austin’s Mueller Airport, which shut down in 1999, and I discovered that I could drive out onto sections of the old airport’s parking lot. The paving was mostly still there but plants had reclaimed portions of ground in various places. One recolonizer was poverty weed, Baccharis neglecta, which you see at the lower right. My primary subject here was a luscious stand of goldenrod (Solidago spp.) that I got down beneath to play it off against the day’s wonderfully wispy clouds. I attribute those great clouds to dissipating airplane contrails, a fitting background for a portrait made at a former airport.

© 2016 Steven Schwartzman