Clouds and Wildflowers

It has rained every day for about a week straight. That is May, and in a couple of months I’ll be pining for the rain. But it does make things muddy and interferes with my hiking and photography plans. Sunday I could no longer take it and I drove down to Tejas Park in the rain and sat in my car and waited for the worst of it to be over. I also brought my garden shoes in a plastic bag to change in to to avoid muddying up my regular shoes. I put the rain cover on my camera backpack and set out.

I got rained on quite a bit but being generally waterproof and it being a warm day, I was unharmed by the experience. Heck, at least once a day I deliberately stand in a shower of water anyway. There were breaks in the rain in which it got down to a weak drizzle and I did get to take a few, somewhat mediocre, photos. My camera and lens got a few drops on them but I wouldn’t have this equipment if it couldn’t take a little bit of weather. The sky was cloudy and gray so I decide to make that a feature.

There is currently a beautiful field of wildflowers that one of the hiking trails passes through. So I stood out in the rain and tried to take good photos of the flowers against the moody sky. I debated with the trail coming in from the left versus the right and you can decide for yourself below. It was raining slightly while these photos were taken, but the drops did not show up as these are very wide-angle photos.

I generally don’t like the warm tree and flower tones against a gray sky, but I worked with it anyway. I worked up the contrast in the sky to look a bit more like it would look to your eye. I desaturated the green a little as I found it to be too dominant. I dialed up the luminance a little on the yellows and oranges to make the flowers stand out little.

The muddy trail continues into an open field of intermittent wildflowers. I preferred the wide (14 – 24mm) picture of the trail leading into the trees above compared to the wide open expanse of grass. I did stop and shoot some close-ups at a much longer focal length (200mm). My goal was to feature a flower with its cousins blurred in the background. The photo below of a Black-eyed Susan is the best of these photos.

I hiked down to the river as well. I found an interesting place with an old stone wall and a field of flowers in the background, but I didn’t photograph it well. I need to be hovering about 10 feet off the ground and several feet back with a longer lens to get what I wanted. But I will come back to the place and think about it again some time.

Thanks for reading.

33 thoughts on “Clouds and Wildflowers”

  1. Oh, yes, I see what you mean about “mediocre” KIDDING! LOL! I just couldn’t resist. 😄
    The second pic is my favorite. You did a good job of making the color of the flowers stand out. The Black eyed Susan close up is nice too, but I like the mystery of the stormy sky and winding path of flowers. Thanks for going out in the rain for us, guess you didn’t need to stand in the shower at home that day. 🙂

    Liked by 2 people

      1. So I guess you needed 2 showers that day.
        Thanks again for sharing, I always enjoy your pictures. And I hope you can figure out a way to take the picture that you described at the end. Sounds like it would be nice. Maybe go up in a hot air balloon? 🙂

        Liked by 2 people

      2. The “stormy sky” could have described my daughter the other day. Why can daughter’s be sooo….and I am going to bite my tongue.
        But I got the silent treatment last night and it was …. peaceful! ( yeah, these words will probably come back to haunt me! Stop smiling) LOL!

        Liked by 2 people

  2. Once again, I am impressed by your commitment to photography and the outdoors. That kind of weather would have been the perfect excuse for me to stay inside all day.

    I prefer the second shot of the trail…

    Liked by 2 people

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