As it must happen, the first cloudless morning was the morning I was leaving.

Luckily, I awoke early enough to finish packing the car and shoot some stars. No real luck with the stars, but I did make this panorama of the front—or side, I guess, though this is where I entered and exited—and I like it. And I think this is the first panorama in the 365, maybe. Fun.

Both shots (left side and right side) were shot at Incandescent white balance, because the mixed lighting created some interesting results when left on auto WB, with the D7000 and Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 ai. ISO100, 10 seconds, f/8.

And peep the rocking sunstars. Nice.

I enjoyed my first good night’s sleep since last Thursday (the last night I slept in my own apartment, in my own bed), and woke up at my usual—if wildly unreasonable—time: 4am. I did doze a bit, but was up and atom by 5, tripod grabbed from the trunk and remote release forgotten in the room and off on an early morning Marfawalk by 5:15.

In a town of ~600 people, the streets are virtually deserted at this time of the morning, but the few cars that passed seemed nonplussed by the 6’2″ 250lb jerk  walking down the middle of the street with a tripod-mounted camera resting on his shoulder. Go figure.

When I got back to the hotel, downloaded and saw this picture, I knew it would be the best one I made all day, and it was, even though Momma and I took a long figure-8 drive around the scenic loop around Fort Davis (BEAUTIFUL), up to Balmorhea, across to Kent, back down to Fort Davis, and then back to Marfa, stopping to shoot all along the way, and this is straight out of the camera!

I’m very pleased with this, even though it probably could’ve been made anywhere, and has no direct tie to Marfa, and the bottom left corner and left side are a bit funky, compositionally speaking (the tripod was at half-mast, and I just sorta pointed the camera up, but didn’t bother to lie down or squat to frame it properly. Oh for a swing-out screen!)

D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 ai. ISO100, 30 seconds, f/2.8.

After an early morning photowalk around town and a nice breakfast with Momma, I pulled out of Marfa around 9am and drove north to Balmorhea (and the wildly underwhelming Balmorhea State Park, with its artesian spring-fed swimming pool that was ‘closed until further notice’ and RV-friendly campsites), then back south through Fort Davis and the Davis Mountains State Park (quite pleasant, with lots of hiking & biking trails, plus dedicated sunrise and sunset observation posts that may be worth a trip later this evening or tomorrow) and back to Marfa in time for a pleasant afternoon nap and some minimal photo-culling/editing.

If you ever have a chance to make that drive, DO IT. It’s beautiful: You start out in the high plains of the Chihuahua Desert, wind your way through the Davis Mountains and end up in the southern part of the vast plains of West TX… Believe me, it’s vastly more beautiful than it sounds.

Between the Marfawalk and shots from a moving car, and stopping at most of the scenic pull-offs and picnic benches that dot the highway, plus shots at both state parks, I took 380-odd pictures today.

I thought I was ‘making’ pictures: trying to take my time, concentrate on framing and composition, set exposures manually when the AP mode couldn’t get it, etc. But I also had designs on testing out the Kiron-made Vivitar 70-210 f/3.5 Series 1 and making some panoramas and HDRs, and these tended to take priority over the picture-making.

Oh well. I still learned some things, and the Kiron/Vivitar is a very fine—if heavy and rather unwieldy—lens.*

And I did get this shot, which was taken (and I stress ‘taken’ over ‘made’) near the apex of the scenic overlook in Fort Davis State Park, and it’s straight out of the camera, so I guess I did some things right…

There were several of these trees that looked like they had been struck by lightning in the recent past, but this was the only one that I could get fairly isolated and with the beautifully fluffy clouds behind. I quite like it.

D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 ai. ISO100, 1/1000 (AP mode), f/8.

*I’ll share some panoramas and 1:4 macros I made with it, and run some proper tests in the future.

I would likely have something more interesting than what is pretty much nothing more than a lens flare test shot to share, but I spent the day touring the Chinati Foundation, and after a whole day of minimalist art, and after a whole day spent running on minimalist sleep, not to mention the it’s-my-birthday-so-I’m-doing-some-self-criticism-and-have-lots-to-criticize, I’m rather worn out, and doubt I will be doing much more shooting today.

I hope to get out to The Big Bend tomorrow, and if I wake up in the middle of the night again tonight, I’m going to go try to shoot some stars instead of just laying there, for sure. So maybe tomorrow I’ll be able to share some more interesting stuff.

D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 ai. ISO100. 1/1250th (AP mode). f/8. Some rather extensive renovation via Aperture, but nothing too terribly out of bounds, I don’t think.

Well, I spent the day driving to Marfa, TX, with momma where we’ll spend the next 4 days wandering and shooting around town and various parts of The Big Bend.

It had just finished raining—a decidedly rare event for this part of the country, where average yearly rainfall is in the 5″ range—and the windshield was bug free for the first time in many hours. I had been admiring the clouds for quite some time when we came over a hill, the shimmering on the wet road, the sun shining through the fluffy and rather friendly looking clouds that had completely overtaken the ginormous sky.

It was probably a bit dangerous, perhaps, but couldn’t resist popping off a few shots, and this is one of them, probably the best.

(FYI, I shot Marfa for a couple of hours after I arrived, but I’m too wiped out to share any just now. I’ll try to dole out a few every day, but I intend to spend as much time as possible shooting, wandering around, shooting, shooting, wandering around, drinking lots of water, shooting, and maybe, just maybe, shooting even more.)

D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 AI. ISO100; 1/800th (AP Mode), f/11.