With the arrival of new (used) equipment at my house, the itch to take a photo of something… anything became overwhelming and I decided not to wait until today and the Rosenberg Holidays Gazebo Lighting. Since the weather was nice, absolutely clear thanks to a cold front, I packed up and headed to Brazos Bent State Park. Thanks to the short days, the sun was already at the horizon, but that didn’t stop me and thanks to the strong and consistent north wind, the atmosphere had plenty of dust in it, which makes for a great orange glow.

Thousands of birds fill the air near dusk.

Photographs taken on a recent evening jaunt through the mosquito zone of Brazos Bend State Park south of Houston.

All great blue herons are named George.

I don’t normally go for HDR images, but I decided to give it a shot and here are some of the results.

A colony of banana spiders (Nephila clavipes) like to build their webs across the path leading around 40 acre lake at Brazos Bend State Park. One of them was kind enough to be hanging out at eye level, which made getting macro shots of her relatively easy, that is if you don’t mind having a two inch spider six inches from your face (which I don’t).

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Fun Facts:

• The banana’s spider’s official common name is “golden silk orb-weavers”
• A banana spider’s bite is essentially harmless. It is no worse than a wasp sting.
• Female banana spiders sometimes but not always eat their mates.
• Female banana spiders can reach 2 inches across.
• Males are considerably smaller than female, reaching only 1″ and are brown, not yellow.
• Banana spiders like to build their webs across open spaces, such as walk ways.
• Their webs generally span space 6 feet or more across.

September is thunderstorm time in south east Texas, which means great sunsets. This is a 7 image panorama from Brazos Bend State Park that is otherwise exactly as it came off the camera. Click on the image to view a larger version.

I headed out to Brazos Bend State Park last Thursday to view the Perseid meteor show near its peak. Most people appeared to be headed to the observatory, so I headed out to 40 acre lake and had the place to myself. While taking long exposures of the sky with film, I saw this scene across the lake back towards Houston. Click on the image to view it larger.