The city skyline of Austin, Texas

It is amazing to think that we have been in Texas now for almost five months and whilst the initial months were full of unpacking boxes, building shelves and a murphy bed and just generally sorting things out around the house, I still managed to get out from time to time to photograph the area. In retrospect I wish I had done more outings. I read in various discussion groups that fall colors around Texas are nothing special, especially coming from the dramatic scenery and colors that I was used to in West Virginia. When I saw some interesting colors in the trees around Georgetown, I thought – those look pretty, but I don’t think I took a single photo of them. Big mistake! I’ve since been reading books about the Hill Country and have been amazed at some of the great fall photos that have been taken in previous years. Lesson learned – don’t believe what you read on the internet!

Early views of Austin

During our house hunting visits we often stayed in the Wyndham timeshare hotel in downtown Austin and one evening I noticed an amazing sunset developing over in the West. I couldn’t lean out of the balcony far enough to take a picture of the sunset itself, but just looking into the city around me, I saw this reflection in the glass windows of the brand-new building known as 6th and Guadalupe, which is now the tallest building in Austin with a height of 865 feet and 66 floors.

Downtown Austin is growing rapidly and so there are numerous buildings vying with each other for the title of the highest building, and so capturing the skyline is an ever-changing activity. It seems to me to be a very walkable city and although I cannot claim to have walked more than a fraction of the available trails the one along the side of the Colorado River and the Lady Bird Lake is one of my favorites so far. I plan to get my bike fastened to the back of the car and do a longer ride along some of these trails as the spring weather approaches and capture some less well-known scenes of this city.

Lakeside Views of Austin

Here are a few images from one of those walks in the summer and then a couple of additional ones taken in late December on a beautiful warm day in the afternoon.

Turning just a few degrees to the right, I noticed the juxtaposition of the bronze facade of 100 Congress building against the much taller Austonian building behind it. Calls for a closer look!

Views from Zilker Park

I’ve been trying to find interesting views of the city and came across some images from another photographer of the Christmas tree in Zilker Park. This was completely new to me, and I only realized it was there very late in December and the only time I could go down to visit it was on New Year’s Eve! Not unsurprisingly, there were not many people there on the last day of the illumination cycle for 2024.

It was even more of a surprise to me that there was a swimming pool built in the river at Barton Springs that even on New Year’s Eve had swimmers diving and relaxing in the water. I later found that this comes from an underground spring and the temperature is always somewhere around 70 degrees Fahrenheit which to me sounds to be very cold, but I’m sure it was better than the evening air that day.

I also tried to take a photograph of the Zilker Christmas tree with the skyline of Austin in the distance.

I like this picture, but the photographer in me saw a deficiency of the drone that I have had for five years now. The problem that I saw was that in order to get the Christmas tree in the center of the frame the city skyline was just too far away and nothing like as dominant as I would have liked to have seen. My drone has a good wide-angle camera, but what I really needed was a longer focal length on the camera to alter the perspective so that the Christmas tree and the skyline would be of a similar scale in the resultant photograph.

And so that gave me an idea for a present for myself for my birthday in January, a new drone with three lenses this time. couple of weeks later I visited the same park again to take some images of the skyline over the river as the sun set. The sunset behind me was perfect dramatic colors lighting up the clouds but of course the view from this park of the Austin skyline is in the opposite direction and so the colors are much more muted but still interesting especially as the light level went down and the lights in the building buildings started to twinkle.

I’ve also tried my hand at digital painting with some of these scenes – this one is a pastel version of an earlier shot.

Finally, I’m experimenting with different presentations of my work to suit different settings. There is a big market for travel type posters and so I have created a couple so far for my Etsy store.

I’m sure there will be more in 2025!