Lake Mineral Wells
The Hike
Our first real time outdoors since February-March time. It felt great being outside and with some good friends. David and Sarah are two genuine, fun people that Kelly and I just jive with. They just looove Darcy, so that makes things even better since the wild child tends to go almost everywhere we go right now.
The park was a great day trip and offered some pretty cool experiences. One area in particular was the sport where rock climbers can be found on most days. In between all the rock walls are trees growing all the way past the top of the cliff. Some of the trees had unique root systems growing around the rocks.
We left that area to sit on some cool stone picnic tables to chat and enjoy a cold beer. It was a perfect cap to an even better day out in nature with friends.
The Texas Welcome
We took a midday break underneath a lone tree by the lake to cool off, refuel, and see if Darcy could swim. All of the above were successes…although I think Darcy drank about half the lake. She is close to a natural swimmer, and I was a pretty proud dog dad.
As we packed things up to hit the trails for the rest of the afternoon, David energetically calls attention to his foot. A tarantula had crawled up on his shoe and was hanging out, maybe trying to catch a ride to the woods. For some reason, he gave me a minute to capture the moment. My clothes would have been stripped and burned if I were in his shoes.
David kindly asked the tarantula to go on and get, so we could be on our way. Of course, I spent a few minutes grabbing some shots “in the wild”. I think this was the first wild tarantula any of us had seen.
The Shot
This picture is nothing special to most. To me, it was confirmation that I am starting to see light in ways I haven’t before. This was taken midday, about three feet off the main trail. Edits are very minimal with most of it being small tweaks to exposure as I shot it a little bright to make sure I got the details in the iris.
What I love about this photo is how the sun lit the flower up so much while composing the shot with a dark, natural background. My focal plane is right where it should be, and the depth of field is what I was going after. I could have maybe done for a little wider depth of field, but it might have taken away from the separation of the pedals to everything else. It also would have been nice if the leaves on the stem were separated from the pedals, but beggars can’t be choosers.
