I live out in the country in central Texas, surrounded by flat farmland. Directly 1 mile behind my house is the Brazos River. This river has a massive watershed that runs from New Mexico, diagonally across Texas, to the Gulf of Mexico. Due to all the dams that are on it, the flow is generally pretty low. But we have gotten so much rain, that the reservoirs are at capacity, and are having to dump water. Anyways, thought i would share some pics and videos with y'all.

Here is the NOAA river gauge just up the road from my place, you can see that their prediction was a little off

There is a barbed wire fence here, and about 20 foot of johnsongrass and tangled vines. Since i couldn't see the ground, i stayed on the pasture side of the fence and held the camera over my head.

Using the Canon EOS Remote app, I was able to view through and trigger the camera with my other hand.

I walked downstream a bit where i could see the water better and strung out a tape measure.


Keep an eye on that big cottonwood on the other side in this video, we'll come back to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsMTDxjfT1o

Further downstream is a ledge with a trail that you can drive down (when its dry), which leads to a pretty steep trail down to the river. I only walked halfway down the truck trail, b/c water was starting to trickle in about ankle deep.

This pic/video were taken at the water's level.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7XSZb2GD3o

Here is the spot that would have been at the end of the trail, had it not been under water. I took this pic back in February. I drew a red line along the approximate water height that I observed yesterday. You can see that tallest cottonwood from the first video on the right hand bank.

And Finally, here is a panoramic from the very first spot, taken while holding my tripod in the air. It's stitched together from ten vertical frames.

Damn. Here's hoping your home stays dry.

PS: Let's build the Great Texas --> California aqueduct! We need that rain badly over here on the left coast.

Good luck staying dry! And send some of that rain up here to the Northeast, we are about 4inches short for the year!

Also get back on Destiny, haven't seen you on in forever.

I live in England..

At least you get warm weather with your rain ...

I live in England..

At least you get warm weather with your rain ...

...and mosquitoes the size of tacos :(

Good luck staying dry! And send some of that rain up here to the Northeast, we are about 4inches short for the year!

Also get back on Destiny, haven't seen you on in forever.

i'd gladly send some up that way.

I haven't been on Destiny since early March. Got sidetracked with Borderlands: The Handsome Collection, and Assassin's Creed Unity (was on sale). I don't even really know what's going on now in game, I have a lot of catching up to do.

What lens did you have attached for that wide shot with the hand? Can we see the wide shot? All I can tell is that it was stopped down to probably F/11. What is it?

Taco-sized mosquitoes or mosquito-sized tacos?

Is anything worse than taco sized mosquitoes? Aside from larger-than-taco sized mosquitoes?

i didn't actually take a pic of my hand. That was a screen shot of the phone app that shows what my camera can see. I had my hand in front of the camera, which showed up on my phone, which i screenshotted.

That lens was a 14mm (rectilinear, not fisheye) Rokinon f2.8. It's a manual lens without a chip, so the camera doesn't record any EXIF data for it. I think i had it around f 10 or 11.

these pics were all taken with that lens:

Haystack Rock - Stars by texasaggie_02, on Flickr

Orchard by texasaggie_02, on Flickr

Eagle Creek Trail, OR by texasaggie_02, on Flickr

Weatherford Hall by texasaggie_02, on Flickr

Tree-Sun_Flare by texasaggie_02, on Flickr

Excellent photoing, too, of course. I like that you got colour out of the Orion Nebula in the night photo. Do you find having a wide angle like that helps your photos quite a bit, or does it not add much when you're out doing photography?

I find more and more I just have my fast normal pancake on and never really use a wider or longer lens. I've never really had one wider than 28mm though I've been wanting one for a long time. Though I guess I do have a 9mm body (18mm equivalent) fisheye lens from Olympus, I don't quite count it, since it's mostly to just have on the body while I'm not doing anything. It's also super soft in the corners.

Since I moved from Canon, my lens choices have gone way down, practically. In order to get a nice wide angle like that, I'd need to drop $700 and it still wouldn't be wide enough.

I could get a 7.5mm fisheye lens and just defisheye it in lightroom or something. Do you think that's a good choice? What would you do?

I'll always have you, Oneonta:

Note: Banana didn't take this photo and isn't a photographer.

Excellent photoing, too, of course. I like that you got colour out of the Orion Nebula in the night photo. Do you find having a wide angle like that helps your photos quite a bit, or does it not add much when you're out doing photography?

I find more and more I just have my fast normal pancake on and never really use a wider or longer lens. I've never really had one wider than 28mm though I've been wanting one for a long time. Though I guess I do have a 9mm body (18mm equivalent) fisheye lens from Olympus, I don't quite count it, since it's mostly to just have on the body while I'm not doing anything. It's also super soft in the corners.

Since I moved from Canon, my lens choices have gone way down, practically. In order to get a nice wide angle like that, I'd need to drop $700 and it still wouldn't be wide enough.

I could get a 7.5mm fisheye lens and just defisheye it in lightroom or something. Do you think that's a good choice? What would you do?

its a pretty niche lens, b/c its manual focus and manual aperture only. Last year, my wife and I planned trips to Oregon (i lived there for a few years) and Alaska; so i justified getting the lens for landscapes. It was only about $300.

I've only used it a handful of times for landscapes and astro-landscapes. Having an extremely wide lens gives you a lot more leeway on your depth of field. I mostly use a 28-75, and a 70-300 (i also have a cheap 50mm 1.8).

I find that a lot of the time, i just take overlapping shots with my 28-75 and stitch them together in photoshop. but for doing star photography, that's really not practical b/c you need longer exposure times, and the stars would move between adjacent photographs. So having the really wide lens is great for that.

Oh, and it's also great for indoor shots. I've used it to photograph the house at Christmas, or really nice hotel rooms while traveling, b/c i can fit everything into the lens.

I think getting a really wide fisheye would be even more niche. You'll get some neat looking photos from it, but you probably wouldn't use it very much, b/c it's not that practical.

You could always rent a lens from lensrentals.com, or borrowlenses.com and see if you like it or not.

I'll always have you, Oneonta:

Note: Banana didn't take this photo and isn't a photographer.

i never made it there. I love eagle creek. Lots of waterfalls along that trail. Wish I had spent more time in the gorge when i lived in Oregon. I spent most of my time way out in the Desert (which is beautiful too).

I'll always have you, Oneonta:

Note: Banana didn't take this photo and isn't a photographer.

i never made it there. I love eagle creek. Lots of waterfalls along that trail. Wish I had spent more time in the gorge when i lived in Oregon. I spent most of my time way out in the Desert (which is beautiful too).

I've been living here about 5 years now, and I only discovered Oneonta last spring. For being rather accessible, it's somewhat off the radar.

I've only ever made it to the touristier spots in Eastern Oregon. Joseph is pretty damn cool, though.