A smaller waterfall

On April 8th, after photographing Bull Creek’s wide falls, I moved half a mile downstream and dealt with a waterfall that’s narrower and not as tall but that was still forceful after the weekend’s rain. Where I showed you pictures of the other falls at cotton-inducing speeds of 1/10th and 1/8th of a second, this time you’re getting the stop-action look of 1/1250th and 1/1600th of a second. The second photograph, taken from farther to the right but zoomed in more, gives you a closer view of the falling and churning water. And speaking of falling, the wet rocks were pretty slippery, so prudent me didn’t risk getting any closer to the edge, even for the sake of what might have been a better picture.

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman 

Advertisements

We had rain on Saturday and Sunday

We had rain on Saturday and Sunday, so Monday morning I went over to Bull Creek to check out its wiiiiiiiide waterfall. No one had moved it, as these two pictures confirm. Notice the switchgrass in the upper left of the second photo.

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman

Not an April Fool’s joke

The color of the phlox (Phlox spp.) we saw on March 27th in various places southeast of San Antonio really was as vibrant as shown here. (Contrast that with the normal colors of the foliage.) You’re looking slightly uphill at one part of the large wildflower meadow in the V between FM 775 and FM 321 not far outside the town of La Vernia. By getting low to the ground I took advantage of the slope to conceal two buildings and leave nothing but wildflowers, trees, sky, and clouds showing.

When I faced in the opposite direction, toward the sun, I photographed the phlox colony sloping gently down into at least as dense a colony of Indian paintbrushes (Castilleja indivisa) that looked more orange than usual. The blue flowers interspersed in both colonies were sandyland bluebonnets (Lupinus subcarnosus).

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman

Can you say colors?

Along TX 123 south of Seguin on March 18th.

Magenta = Phlox spp.
Yellow = Texas groundsel (Senecio ampullaceus)
Blue = Bluebonnets (probably Lupinus subcarnosus)

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman

February 26–27, 2015

Late in the afternoon four years ago today I walked down to Little Manly Beach, which lies on the south side of a peninsula that juts into the Hauraki Gulf north of Auckland.

You can see that the nearer sea-eroded cliffs and shore already lay in shadow. That didn’t stop me from taking some pictures of fascinating formations, a few of which I showed here after I got back to Texas. Nevertheless, I went back the next morning—my last in New Zealand on that first trip—when the light came from the opposite direction, so I could have another crack at the interesting patterns. Below are several.

Green algae

Rock swirls

Barnacles

I planned to go back at the end of our 2017 visit but unfortunately heavy rains caused mudslides that blocked both roads that would have let us leave the Coromandel Peninsula. We lost a day and made it back to Auckland only a few hours before we had to go to the airport for our return flight to Texas.

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman

Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day in 2017 found us taking a long round trip from Paihia to two places even farther north in New Zealand. The first was the Te Paki dunes, where among the many pictures I took was one of cloud shadows moving across the sand.

Then we continued to the northernmost easily accessible point in the country, Cape Reinga. Below is a coastal view looking back south from there. The long leaves of the flax plants, Phormium tenax, point out (literally) which way the wind was blowing.

New Zealanders will have finished Valentine’s Day by now, so retroactive good wishes to you.

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman

Falls and gulls

Neither shortly after returning from our 2017 New Zealand trip nor during the one-year retrospective did I show you a picture of Haruru Falls in the Bay of Islands just minutes away from where we were staying in Paihia. Here, then, are a couple of photographs I took at the falls two years ago today. In the first picture, notice at least a dozen gulls in the background. I got much closer to one to make the second photograph.

But the most dynamic (because of wings being raised) portrait of a gull that day came from the Puheke Reserve on the Karikari Peninsula. The bird had been eating some of the little orange fruits you see close by it, and one second after I took this picture (thanks, metadata) it had spun 180° around to eat more.

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman