Week 22 – Working At the Limits of My Equipment – Handheld, Low Light, Too Far
Great Horned Owl in Palo Pinto Hills
I saw the great horned owl fly over from a nearby hill and land about 30 yards northeast of my elevated stand. He saw me and wasn’t concerned in the least. I am sure he sees himself as the meanest thing the area, and he might be right. This bird is beautiful and huge. I was again using the Nikon D300 and the Nikkor 300 AF-S f/4. This was hand-held and out of the 8 images I took this is one of perhaps tow that were of marginal value.
This is heavily cropped and processed. It won’t be featured on a magazine cover but I think it shows how impressive these birds are. It was fun seeing him in the wild and being just close enough to get some kind of image.
Great Horned Owl In Palo Pinto Hills
Week 18 – Autumn Color in the Palo Pinto Hills
Taken about 30 minutes before sunset on the first evening of deer season west of Mineral Wells Texas. You can see we are in enjoying our two weeks of autumn in north central Texas.
On this outing my camera was better equipped for wildlife than landscapes, but the wildlife were uncooperative. This scene was several hundred yards away from me. I was using a Nikon D300 with Nikkor 300mm f/4.0. As the sun dropped lower on the horizon it illuminated the stone amongst the cedar and elm trees.
Palo Pinto County Hillside View
This is the general area where men such as Charles Goodnight established ranches and drove cattle before moving his operation to the Texas panhandle. This area saw a lot of conflict between Texas settlers and Comanche and Kiowa raiders. The original road to Fort Belknap went right through the area shown in this photo. Fort Belknap was the northernmost fort among a series of frontier forts intended to protect Texas settlers from Comanche and Kiowa raiders. The forts ran from near the Red River down to near the Rio Grande.
In the past few years drought and wild fires have hit this region hard. The grey areas on the far hillsides show the aftermath of the 2011 wild fires which burned much of the red cedar and oaks that cover these hills.
Palo Pinto Hills
David Ferrie Photography
Life Of Brian
The Vital Church
Wade Burleson
With All I Am
Country Oaks Images 