Since it's the first weekend of the college football season, here's a shot I took at one of the UT games (UT vs. Kansas) last year.

The stadium has a policy of not allowing cameras with "professional, detachable long lenses" so I gave up on the frustrating business of trying to get a decent shot with the 17-105mm kit lens and opted for an ultra-wide that night and tried to convey the sheer enormity of the stadium.

The official capacity of the stadium is currently 100,119 which is about 10% of the population of Greater Austin. It's always completely packed on game day and the atmosphere is amazing.]]>

I love shiny stuff in HDR! This was a handheld image shot at the Austin Kite Festival earlier this year.

We stopped at the famous Balmorhea State Park in west Texas on the first day of our recently-completed road trip and had a wonderful time swimming in the huge, spring-fed pool there.

The pool is fed by a spring which flows at a rate of over 1 million gallons per hour and has a maximum depth of around 25 feet in places. The bottom is extremely slippery as I discovered when I didn't take the sign quite seriously enough when I walked down the steps for the first time and ended up entering the water rather quicker than I had intended. Thankfully I narrowly avoided breaking any limbs in the process.

It turns out that the pool was constructed by the Civilian Construction Corps as part of the post-depression New Deal. I was extremely surprised by the number of Texas State Parks and National Parks we visited during our trip whose infrastructure was developed as part of that stimulus package. I guess every cloud does have a silver lining.]]>

236 years ago today, the people of the 13 American colonies decided to call it quits and exit the British Empire. It may have seemed a poor idea to many across the pond back then but, in hindsight, the upstarts have done pretty well for themselves rising to the dizzying height of Most Powerful Nation status.

I guess us Brits should be happy. Had the decision gone the other way there would be a lot less medals available for UK athletes in the Commonwealth Games :-)

Happy birthday America!]]>

Here’s another image from last week’s trip to Disney World. This is a single exposure since I’ve not had time yet to do any fancy Photoshoppery with the firework images I shot.

One lesson I learned was that trying to shoot the firework display from the bridge over the river next to the castle is a bad idea. Most of the fireworks went off behind a large tree blocking the view to my left. If and when I go back, I’ll position myself on the opposite side of the castle (the right side as you walk towards the castle on Main Street USA) and get there at least 30 minutes early to find a good tripod spot without folks in the way.