Nice Afternoon for a Hike

Sunday afternoon was good for hiking, and the clouds gave the possibility of a nice sunset. I also wanted to shoot some photos with my old film camera that I recently got fixed up. I don’t have any photos from the film camera yet as I am still working on this roll of film. But I did go hiking with my 35mm Nikomat film camera with a 50mm lens and my DSLR with a 50mm lens. I shot a lot of the same photos for comparison and I can’t wait to see the results, but that will have to be in a future post. Having the DSLR also helped me sanity check the exposure settings on the film camera because this is the first time I have shot it and am quite new at this.

So, after waiting out a brief rain I wandered around Balcones Canyonlands and took a lot of photos that I’ll probably post more of when I get my film developed. The below panorama is from an overlook on the Indian Grass trail. I have tried to take this pano before but have never been happy with the results. Maybe I should hang around here at about sunset when there are some clouds out there to get lit up; that would involve a lot of luck. But below is a panorama stitch of 4 images shot at 50mm.

Panorama at Balcones Canyonland National Wildlife Refuge
Panorama at Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge

 

There is another overlook at the top of the ridge on the Rimrock trail. This overlook faces west and is a nice spot for a sunset and there is even a nice bench there for you to sit and look down into the valley. I planned to be here as the sun was setting as I have never been able to get a good sunset from this spot. I took this photo from behind the bench as I thought that it would make a nice photo with the bench for the foreground.

A Bench at an Overlook at Balcones Canyonlands
A Bench at an Overlook at Balcones Canyonlands

I had a lot of difficulty getting the colors right in this image. I think it is a white balance issue between the sky and the shaded bench. I ended up putting a filter over the bottom area and cooling down and desaturating that part of the image. I was also very limited in where I could stand as there are a lot of branches and plants behind this bench.

After the sun set the high clouds lit up nicely and went from bright orange to dark orange and then faded. Below is my favorite image with the colorful clouds above the the hiking trail leading away below.

Sunset at Balcones Canyonlands
Sunset at Balcones Canyonlands

I might have moved over to the left a little to get more of the hiking trail, but there is a tree there that limits my positioning.

Then it was down the trail and back to the car. I will have the film from the old Nikomat developed and scanned in a week or two. Hopefully my first roll of film won’t be a total mess.

23 thoughts on “Nice Afternoon for a Hike”

            2. Yes! I should avoid them for the sake of my head, but I have this natural curiosity. Plus I kind of have to read comments when any of the stooges are involved. Due to the tiimes that I have caught my name in the exchanges. Times when I am innocently not doing anything, just being my sweet self. 🙂

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      1. Well you have the Real thing to compare it too. We don’t. So for us its a great picture!
        Kind of like when I took pictures of the Grand Canyon. They just couldn’t compare to the real thing! Have you been there?

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