When I write about places that I have been,  sometimes I think I give too little attention to Big Bend N.P. http://www.nps.gov/bibe/index.htm in Texas.   I spent one day from dawn until dusk at Big Bend in February of 2006.  I had a fairly difficult day of locating landscapes and then fulfilling my vision.   I still managed to get a handful of landscapes that at least said a little about this southwest Texas desert/mountain park.  Mid-day shooting did result in Greater Roadrunner, Javelina and Canyon Lizard photos.

There have been 405 bird species, 75 mammals and 67 herps spotted here.  Mountain Lion spottings are fairly common.

There is an iconic photographic location at Big Bend where a wonderful rock wall splits open along the Rio Grande River.   Many great photographers have captured this famous spot.  When I arrived there the river was mostly dry, with only a small bit of water showing through the rock split on the Mexico side.  I was never much about photographing those often used spots anyway so I decided to look for lesser photographed places.

This was a day where I certainly did not create any pictures that would become “stand alone” stars.   I do think however that I was able to make a group of pictures that worked nicely as a collection.

The pictures below begin with an image made right after sunrise.

Let’s move on from Texas to Wisconsin.  A while back I was in central Wisconsin’s Sandhill State Wildlife Area in search of wildlife and passed this field of blue flowers.   I stopped and made a few close-ups of the blossoms, but I knew I would need to make an attempt at showing just how many flowers inhabited this one field.  The light was less than spectacular but I marched onward just the same.  Shooting verticals allowed me to better search for patterns and rhythms.  That was okay but shooting nothing but flowers tended to leave the viewer without any frame of reference.  I settled on a horizontal image with a small view of the distant row of trees.  This was in fact a rectangular meadow surrounded on all four side by trees. The flowers lived on a small hill which allowed me to use the necessary angle to fill the picture frame with blossoms.   I did first try verticals with the tree line showing but that diminished the trees as a counter balance for the field.  Landscapes can be art, but they can also occasionally be a somewhat clinical exercise.  Whatever works.

The last shot is a landscape of the Badlands of South Dakota.  I have worked more spectacular locations but the Badlands send you home with winners every time.  They do so in a wide variety of light conditions.