A Few Shots from July and August

Here are a few photos from the past two months that I haven't shared yet; I very easily get swallowed up in big projects and start to neglect all my social media stuff, which I've been really bad about this summer.

One of my favorite shots in July came when I captured the moon transiting the capitol dome. The clouds were perfect and I managed to get just the image composition I was looking for.

The Moon transiting the Texas State Capitol dome

Earlier this week I was doing some traffic shots in south Austin, from which I noticed the UT tower's lighting was going on and off and had a bizarre non-tungsten color balance.

Evening Mopac traffic

When I got closer I saw that they'd brought in a special lighting system and were running through various test programs on their equipment. I realized this must be preparation for the 2015 Gone to Texas ceremony scheduled for the following night. Gone to Texas is a UT ceremony to welcome incoming freshman to the university and is so named because legend has it families that pulled up roots to move to Texas before it became a republic would write "GTT" on the door of their vacated homes, short for "Gone to Texas."

University staff ran through every color of the rainbow in varying combinations on different sections of the building and were even projecting animations and video onto the south facade of the tower. I have more photos from that night posted on my Instagram page.

Gone to Texas Class of 2019 UT tower lighting test

Spring Is Finally Here

The grass is green, the flowers are in bloom, and the clouds are neatly distributed across the sky. Fluffy, yet well defined. Not all spring days look like this, but in my mind, they should.

This shot was taken last Friday at the Texas State Capitol.

Print Shop and Site Facelift

After getting a few requests that compelled me to work out some technical issues, I finally got around to adding a Shop page where I can sell prints of some of the still photos I've posted. Taking me back to my days restoring my often-missed Datsun 240Z, I had a case of "while I'm at it" syndrome -- one thing led to another and I wound up spending all night overhauling the entire site interface!

I think I've worked out all the major bugs, but there are likely to be a one or two that will slip through the cracks. If you have any issues with the Shop page, please let me know via the Contact form on the About page.

In the meantime, here's a photo I shot two months ago of the Texas State Capitol on a night of below freezing temperatures. I realized I'd posted this to Reddit at the time, but forgot to write a blog entry about it. The fog emanates from the massive HVAC system that heats and cools all the above- and underground facilities of the capitol complex. Usually it's invisible, but the low temperature that night caused the humid air to immediately condense into fog.

A print of this photo is available for purchase on the Shop page.