I returned to Balcones Canyonlands on Friday afternoon to go hiking, but mostly to get out of the house. It was a very cloudy day and I wanted to see what the long grasses up on top of the ridge looked like anyway. So, I hiked up the trail and found the long grasses fading from yellow to brown.

I have an idea about these grasses and maybe this idea isn’t really any good, but I want to capture them on a windy, sunny afternoon just before sunset. My idea is that the grasses will blur into a sea of gold and the boulders or pieces of wood or whatever will look surreal among the grass. So far, I have either had the wind or the sunlight but not really both. Friday afternoon there was wind so I took some practice shots but I didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about a foreground subject.

The above is a 20 second exposure using an ND filter. The grass does get a lot of motion blur and I didn’t adjust the colors in the above photo even though it looks like I did. Maybe it is the overcast sky, but I am not really getting anything close to what I imagine. The grass mostly looks brown in this light instead of gold. I will probably try this again if I can find a sunny afternoon with a strong wind. What do you think? Am I wasting my time with a crazy idea?

At least I got to hike around and enjoy the warm, muggy mid-December afternoon. I talked to another photographer for a bit and then continued my hike back to the parking lot ready to head home. As I got down to the creek crossing, there were some rather serious looking clouds in the western sky, so I decided to see what kind of moody shots I could get.

I decided that to get the shot I had to go set up in the middle of the creek looking back at the crossing. The creek had about 2 inches of water in it and my waterproof hiking boots held. I am also happy to report that I did not slip and fall on the hard stone creek bed. The high winds were really pushing the clouds around and I didn’t have very much time to get my moody shot.

In editing I reduced the color saturation quite a bit and increased the micro-contrast to enhance the mood. I found that the green in those trees really overwhelmed the original image and I had to desaturate it a lot.

According to the time information in the above photo, the sun had set about 9 minutes earlier behind all of those clouds. Turning around, I found the full moon rising in the east. It is really difficult to capture the moon above a landscape as it appears very small in the image. But I found that all the thin clouds were picking up the moonlight and the effect was pleasing so I took some photos.

The image below looks back from the other side of the stepping stone path and also features a small waterfall. I positioned my tripod as far to the right as possible to get the moonlight reflected across the water in the creek in front of the stepping stones.

I have two edits of this photo. My first edit was more heavily saturated than what you see above and I think it looks good, but I think that scenes lit by moonlight look good with muted colors so I created a copy and produced this alternate edit and I think I like it better. This was about 20 minutes after sunset so there was still light in the sky from the sun as well.

It was getting dark and I was ready to go, but then I noticed a large water snake down in the water just hanging out. I actually couldn’t see it very well in the dark and wasn’t sure whether it was a harmless water snake or a venomous water moccasin. I put a longer lens on the camera, shined my phone light on it to get some light, and took a long exposure to see if I could get a decent photo of it. Below is an 8 second exposure lit mostly by the moon. The snake was kind enough to remain still.

This was shot through about one and a half feet of water and the water was moving, but it is clear enough and I think that this is probably a harmless diamond-backed water snake, which I see all the time around here. It wasn’t interested in coming out of the water either way.

That was it for this evening. Thanks for reading.