Bookmark - Old Style Bathtub

Taken on the 2008 Girl Scout trip to Galveston, on a tour of one of the mansions.  This was in August of that year, before Ike hit...

Bookmark - Water Beads on Emerald Boa

Captured at the Houston Zoo on my first trip there with the Bigger Cahoona.  Guess they have a nozzle somewhere in the cage that squirts water now and then.

Of all the boas this one is my favorite.  I'd love to have owned one as a younger lad, but they were too expensive, and a bit cranky.  Sure are beautiful, though...

Bookmark - Water Beads on Banana Leaf

There's something about water beads.  Photographers will actually bring misting bottles on shoots to create this effect on various objects, such as flowers and spider webs.  Can't say I'll go that far, but feel fortunate whenever I chance upon the opportunity to get a shot like this.  More water beads tomorrow on something else that's green...

Bookmark - Pool Water Background

Continuing with the randomness...

This one barely made the cut for a bookmark, but I decided to keep it in because its abstract nature makes up for its technical deficits.  It was shot with my first digital, the 3MP Fujifilm Finepix 3800, and fairly cropped in.  Having seen this I'll be looking for opportunities to duplicate with either the Big or Bigger Cahoona some day.

Bookmark - Rustic Fenceline / The Rural Roads of East Texas

Being totally random here...

I was out doing site visits in Austin County here in Texas during winter (my favorite time to shoot) and saw this weathered fence as an opportunity.

This is the reason that since childhood one of my favorite things to do is aimlessly drive country roads to take in the beautiful rustic scenery of rural America.  I guess that the family Sunday afternoon drive is a ritual for the same reason.  It's just fun going to as-yet-undiscovered places and enjoying scenes like this.

I went crazy my second year of college at SFA, when I owned my first car, a 1968 Rambler American named Old Blue.  Many hours were spent meandering through the red dirt roads of East Texas, stopping now and then to look at a shed or moo at a cow.  And, though the road was paved, my best time in Nacogdoches was while living out on a farm-to-market road (1275) because it was windy and rural, and any detour took me (or us, if with a friend) down some of those dirt roads.  Some days, just to explore, I would drive outbound until 1275 evolved into a logging road full of ruts and vegetation.  This was out in the sticks enough to do a little target shooting with my .22 revolver.

Then there are the people that live way out there.  Occasionally I'd have the opportunity to interact with someone living in a big house or mansion with acreage out in the boonies.  Other times I'd end up discovering a small community occupying a crossroad or river bottom flat.  All of it beautiful in its own way.

Bookmark - Cloud-to-Cloud Rain (maybe)

Caught this on our way to church one day with the Fuji 7000; a silhouette of the tree in the foreground with the unusual phenomenon of one rain cloud appearing to rain onto another. (though I'm not sure that's actually the case)

Clouds are and do very, very interesting things.  First is their weight...many, many tons of water floating around up there in the sky.  Then the behavior.  With the Big Cahoona, my Nikon D300s, a scene was captured in which rivulets of clouds came flowing off a distant mountain range as if a waterfall (look to the right of the pic posted here).

Then one time, from an airplane, I saw two types of clouds interacting in a similar way.  We were above an overcast of cumulus clouds, and a layer of some wispier clouds was flowing through the valleys in between their tops.  I learned that some pilots carry a DSLR in their cockpits, capturing these kinds of things from their front-row seats.

Bookmark - Oranges

Food probably will one day end up being a category of its own as well.  This was captured at a friend's house with the Fuji 7000 as we were celebrating the Chinese New Year.

Bookmark - Galveston Dockside Shops

While in Galveston may as well post this dockside scene, perfectly manicured for the tourist trade.  This photo was unique in that I was able to actually get a series of three bookmarks from it; the other two are below, in order of how they appear in the picture:

 

Some lettering opportunities in this last one.  Once I figure out exactly what kind of messages I'm going to include, will copy bookmarks like these in a separate folder as a category of its own to work on as time permits.

Bookmark - Galveston Dock Reflection

Don't think this one ended up being posted earlier, so am glad to have the opportunity to make a bookmark out of it.  Smooth water, nice reflection with angles, etc...ticks several boxes this one.

My dad kept boats most of my growing-up years, and scenes like this remind me of the time we spent on the water and walking up and down docks.  When I was five years old I fell off of a dock, and some very interesting things happened on my way to the depths, as I was yet unable to swim.  Then someone plucked me out of the water and that was that.

Bookmark - Coca-Cola Sign

Took this one in Galveston...2008.