Town Lake (a.k.a.Lady Bird Lake) at Sunset

Sometimes, a bump in the road is a good thing. For instance, as I travelled home from Fort Worth on the Amtrak Texas Eagle, I eagerly anticipated arriving in San Marcos. However, the train ride took so much longer than I expected. We should have passed through Austin and crossed Town Lake around 6 pm. Instead, due to construction on the lines, the train dawdled along at a mere 30 or 40 miles per hour from Temple to Taylor, instead of its usual speed of upwards of 80 miles per hour. We were just crawling home, I thought.

Praise the Lord for his unexpected kindnesses and treats. Because we were so far behind schedule, we crossed the Lower Colorado River at Town Lake right when the sun was setting. In fact, it seemed like the sun hit the glass on the high rises and turned them into molten gold, reflecting in the water with a stunning display of clarity and color.

Don't you love it when a bump in the road leads to something wonderful?

Dance Recital Moments To Be Cherished

Once in a while, a parent comes across a moment which takes there breath away, a moment they wish they could immortalize so that they will never forget how special that instance was. I saw some moments like that while watching the annual dance recital at Jackson Auditorium, last Saturday. These are not my children. But I recognized some special moments and tried to capture them with my camera, anyway.

A little ballerina's first bouquet of roses....

A moment in the spotlight after a sweet performance.....

A perfect pose....

Leaving the stage with pride....

Incredible grace and elegance...

A great solo routine....

I look forward to next year's performance!

A Typical Texas Dance Recital...Glitter, Glitz and Lots of Fun

There are many opportunities for young boys to participate in group sports, and lots of opportunities to perform for family and friends. There is Little League baseball, Pop Warner football, early morning soccer games, karate, basketball, hunting, fishing, and so the list continues. Although little girls are now able to participate in most of these sports, and some do, most little girls tend to gravitate towards gymnastic and dance classes.

Here in Seguin, the big event of the year for the girls (and the occassional boy or two) who have gone to their once a week dance lessons for the past year is the annual dance recital.

We have a five year old granddaughter who has been taking dance lessons for two years, now. That means we are invited to attend the two hour long recital. Since I was sitting on the very first row, stage left, I had an excellent vantage point for photography. Now, my camera takes very good images without a flash, in low light, so I did not disturb the dancers as far as I could tell.  

Let me give you a little glimpse into a typical dance recital, as it happens in a small Texas town.

First of all, the girls (once again, there were a couple of boys, two that I could tell, but mostly the dancers were all girls) each had at least a couple of dance numbers to perform. They had wonderfully colorful and sparkly costumes, which is a big draw for dance class, I suspect. 

My granddaughter stood on the steps during intermission, all dressed up, and she just looked dreamily at the dark stage. I wonder if she was fantasizing about a future dance solo she might perform when she is a little older.

As you can see, the venue is quite large for a small town. This is Jackson Auditorium, which is located on the campus of Texas Lutheran University. It is one of two sites in town which is large enough to host a recital of this size. Parents and family who purchased reserved seating were able to sit downstairs. Most others sat in the balcony.

One mother still had her daughter's costume on a hanger as we waited for the time to pass before the recital. That means her daughter was still not dressed and ready. Well, there were still a few minutes left before it was scheduled to begin, so I am sure she got her daughter dressed in time.

 The cutest dance routines were the two that featured the very youngest dancers. In the little bunny dance, one precious little girl got overwhelmed with emotion about halfway through the dance. She finally stopped dancing and just covered her face and cried. She did live through her dance, and hopefully, next year will be less of a stress for her.

By the time girls have been taking lessons for a few years, they move up from dancing in groups to performing a solo dance routine. This young lady was marvelous.

 The youngest dancers are the funnest to watch, though because there is so much more than dancing going on. For the most part, they are focused on their steps, but they also get distracted easily.

The older girls perform much more polished routines. This ballerina was so graceful and elegant.

Here is a group of girls who are not the "babies" though still very young. I am sure they loved wearing their beautiful tutus and having their hair put up in a grown-up bun.

 I know I did not include this dancer's face and feet, but I still liked this shot. The only drawback to my location was that I could not see the stage floor unless I stood up. I have no qualms about moving about discreetly to get shots, most of the time, but I felt like these children were under enough stress without being distracted even a little by a photographer going about her business. So, I sat the whole performance....no feet in any photos unless the dancer was jumping or extending their legs upward.

There is a special moment for the girls when their routine is almost over. They have finished all their dance steps, and now, they are frozen in a final pose, and the applause starts. That is what they have worked for and anticipated for a whole year. It must feel great.

Because I took quite a few photos of the different dancers, solo and groups, I want to blog about the dance recital again. Come back to see more of the glitter and glitz of a typical Texas dance recital.

Watching the Sun Set Along the Texas Eagle Amtrak Route

For just a few minutes, after the sun has fallen below the horizon, if there are no clouds in the sky, and if there are not many hazy dust particles in the lower atmosphere, the skies display a beautiful gradient that goes from deep, dark blue to fiery orange-red at the horizon. 

Any object that is between the camera and the horizon is silhouetted sharply, the crisp black lines providing a sharp contrast with the glowing sky in the background.

Ordinary and mundane objects take on a graceful beauty for a brief few minutes. Everything is all about lines and curves highlighted by the rich and glorious color of the evening sky.

 Even a single microwave tower exhibits drama as it juts up into the sky from the blackness of the Texas dirt.

Scrub trees and brush reveal details which are normally not noticed as they break the plane of the flat terrain.

For just a few moments, the drama unfolds. Then it is gone and all is black. The wonder of it all is that you get to witness it again, when the sky is cloudless and the haze is gone, when the sun sets like a fireball at the end of another day.

Speed Photography Odds and Ends...Fort Worth to San Marcos

Texas is a very big state, larger than many countries. So, it makes sense that what you can find all kind of weird, wacky and wonderful sights as you travel from one end of the state to the other. When I visit my daughter, who lives in Fort Worth, I get on the train at the San Marcos station, a very, very tiny little stop along the rails. Then, I get to travel through the core of the state of Texas for several hours. Rather than read a book or nap, I get my camera out and play a photographer's game called speed photography. Actually, I invented the game myself, but I am sure other photographers have done the same thing. I look out the window and try to take as many interesting shots as possible as the train speeds on its route.

Today, I am featuring a series of shots that have no rhyme or reason...they are just some of the quirky and/or interesting things I spied and was able to catch with my camera as I travelled back home to Seguin.

Many times, when someone owns a property that has train tracks for one of its boundry lines, the area adjacent to the tracks is at the back end of the property. So, I get to see a lot of things which the owners have shoved to the back of their land for storage purposes. I like this old boat with the bicylce propped up against it.

Here are nine blue porta-potties lined up between a road and the tracks. I snapped a picture, but it wasn't until I got home and enlarged the shot that I realized the name on the blue portable bathrooms was such a hoot....

 Take a look!

 Here's a trailer for THE GANG. I don't know who the gang is, you understand. I just know they have their own trailer.

 I have seen quite a few old, rusted cars which have literally been "put out to pasture". They sit in little hidey-holes in the back forty, only visible to those who sit high up on a train, those who happen to look out the window at just the right moment. Isn't this car a gem? I love it!

 I think the most interesting stop along the northern Amtrak route is the Temple train station. It has a collection of vintage engines and cars which folks can admire as they pass through the station.

 I like this picture because I like the old telephone sign hanging at little of an angle. It sits in the middle of a lumber yard.

Here's a small camper sitting in a farm yard. I wouldn't mind having a camper this size, myself. Not too big, not too small....in fact, just right.

 Sometimes, I come across evidence that someone has a sense of humor. This metal man stands at a drunken angle facing the train (you can see the train's shadow as we pass by) with one arm waving to the passengers. No one else can see him, for he sits at the back of a field. He's just there to make the train passengers smile.

 Here's another boat. One thing you can see in this shot, if you look close, are the wild flowers that are in bloom at this time of the year. We did not have a stupendous wild flower display in Texas this year, even though we had good rains, but we did have some flowers to enjoy.

Here's another old vehicle which has been parked in the back of beyond. I enlarged this for you so you can see that even in it's retirement, it is serving a useful purpose. It is a makeshift storage shed for lots of bits and pieces of rusty stuff.

The Amtrak Texas Eagle travels north from San Antonio to Fort Worth, stopping at San Marcos, Austin, Taylor, Temple, McGreggor, and Cleburne every day. It arrives in Fort Worth around 2 pm. Then, you can catch the southbound Texas Eagle, every day around 2:10 as it travels back to San Antonio. Here, for a little while, we follow Highway 95 around Taylor.

 Here's some more metal art...I am not sure what the purpose of this creation is, though.

 The train passed two dogs....one little fella watched the train, one did not.

We did not take this detour, haha.

 Somewhere in Texas, folks are trying to go green....here's a good-sized solar field.

Some things, like the solar panels, I have noticed on quite a few of my trips. I still take a picture of them, because it is part of the game. Also, it helps pass the time as I travel. Some things, like the two dogs, are just serendipitous happenings that are a once in a life-time occurance. I never know what is coming next as I stare out the train window. It's better than tv or a movie, any day!

Speed Photography...From Fort Worth to San Marcos

Once again, I have engaged in a massive session of speed photography. You know, this is where I take the Amtrak train across the middle of the state of Texas with my camera ready to take pictures of anything of interest that flashes by at 60 miles per hour.  At times, the train gets up to 80 miles per hour, so just imagine what a split second opportunity there is to catch anything at all!

Today I am featuring shots of farm life. Here is a montage of photos showing what's happening on Texas farms during the first part of May. By the way, I love red buildings!

 I also adore dirt roads that curve around fields.

This looks like a field seeded with experimental crops. Note all the red, blue and yellow flags tied to stakes, marking individual plots?

 And of course, you have to have horses in Texas!

 Here's a road that bisects two fields, with furrows wiggling into the distance.

I passed many fields that had been mowed earlier, and the hay bales were still sitting topsy-turvy, waiting to be stacked neatly in a row.

Water is soooooo important to the farmers. We are still recovering from the worst drought in my lifetime. Here, a tank (which is what Texans call ponds) could use quite a bit of rain to get the water level up to the dock.

Another red barn....

Another field with rolls and rolls of hay....

It looks like this farmer is heading left to right, but look closer. He is facing the left, sitting backwards in his tractor cab. See the cows? They have plenty of grass for grazing, since we have been blessed with good rain in the last few months. Also, there are three water towers in the background, hoarding precious water for rural residents.

 This tank is surrounded by several different fields. It does not look as low as the previous tank, does it?

This prosperous-looking farm has it's hay already gathered and moved into rows.

Finally, here is my favorite farm shot. I think this boy looks like he's totally relaxed, no cares in the world.