Prairie Hills Autumn

One of the areas I have visited a couple of times this autumn has been one of our local parks that with prairie hills.  It has been kept in an undeveloped state and still has some of the prairie grass and a few trees along the creek beds at the base of the hills.  The trees are a mix of cedar and oaks.  Luckily there are some red oaks among them and that helps bring out the fall color.  They put on a great display this year and combing them with some of the fall grasses and broomweed and the setting was right for some good fall photography.

This is a great area to walk around in but it is a little more difficult to photograph since just about every horizon has buildings of some type.  So here I had to be careful with how I framed the sky or if I even put it in the image at all.    Usually I opted to leave it out.  Partly because I am not a big fan of huge radio antennas in the image but also since it keeps your eye in the image.

Here are some images from a couple of different days in the hills.

Conditions varied and we had fog one morning, dense clouds the next trip, and then mostly sunny.  With the constantly changing light and leaves it made each visit different and led me to making different images each trip.

 That is really a neat thing when you think about it.  Photographing the same place in the same conditions is something that rarely happens.  The place might be the same but the conditions are always changing.  The light, the clouds, the color in the trees.  Over time even the size of the trees change.  Nature has a way of not keeping things the same.

One of my favorite trees that we photograph down by an old church was a perfectly shaped live oak.  I have photographed that tree for several years, but a wind storm took several large branches.  The tree is now different.  I photographed a balanced rock in the Guadalupe Mountains that has fallen and is no more.  Even Ansel Adams for all those years of living there only got the light for clearing winter storm once.  It is always different.

Enjoy it for what it is because it will be different the next time.

Already the leaves are almost gone and we are almost to winter, my next walk through these hills will be different.  No telling what it will be like.