Texas Trees and a Visit to a Camera Store.

Our son lives in a development area that has 'greenspaces' nearby and as part of the development. The photo above is of a large area around Walnut Creek where I went walking one day. It is mostly covered by scrub cedar like those in the photo above and the trails are popular with mountain bikers (non-motorized). The creek, what I saw of it, was barely existent. I have been to Texas 3-4 times now and my overall impression is that it is a dry place.

The development had some more prosperous trees, some of which looked like they would have predated the housing that now takes up most of the area. The tall tree in the photo below attracted me but I was unable to find an angle that did not include the powerlines. I shot it anyway and included the small flood control dam as well, man's intrusion on nature.

A number of other attractive trees were scattered about the groomed areas of the green space. The "moss balls" on the trees are similar to Spanish Moss in that they are not parasites. They are air plants that only use the trees for support. Nor are they truly moss.

The predominant autumn leaf color is yellow but there is occasionally a tree with red leaves, the result of some non-native planting around homes, this one by a home at the edge of the park.

One rare treat was a visit to Precision Camera where I got to check out the new EOS R camera. Camera stores in NNY are history. If it isn't something Walmart would carry, I need to drive many hours to reach a 'real' camera store. I was curious about the EOS R because I have been watching for an upgrade to the EOS M3 hoping that they would produce one that had a fully articulated LCD. So far the successors to the M3, which was used for all these photos and is now my primary camera, have had only a tilt screen. I prefer a fully articulated screen because it allows portrait format shooting both above my head and low down. I have problems doing that with a screen that tilts only in the landscape format. Unfortunately, while the EOS R has the screen I would like, it is significantly larger/heavier than the M3, nearly the same as my EOS 7D, and priced well above my budget. It would not be a good camera for me to backpack with because of the weight and size. Had I thought about it while at the store, I should have checked out the Panasonic GX-8 if they had any in stock. It had the screen I would like and a tilting viewfinder. Ah well. A new camera isn't in the budget right now anyway. It is nice to be able to handle them though when pondering what you really would like and you can't do that on the internet. ;-)