A few pictures from the A & B riders final test section at the Concho Enduro near Blackwell, Texas. Oliver and I entered the race in the C class, how did we do? …lets just say we finished.

Australian V8 Supercars came to Austin with the Pirreli World Challenge. I rented a 600mm f4 canon lens ($12k lens) for the weekend and got some great results. I love the smaller races down at COTA. Fewer grandstands and smaller crowds let you find lots of unique angles an F1 weekend wont.

MotoGP at Circuit of the Americas, what a good weekend. The MotoGP guys know how to put on a good event, someone is always on track, close racing. Watching the bikes at this circuit is great. Still wish they had more photo holes…

This was the first race at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas for Formula One. It turned out to be a neat track, I love watching them go through the esses, especially when you get behind them and watch them change directions. As photogenic as this track could be, with out a photo pass there just aren’t that many opportunities to get through the fence down low. I really wish they would put more photo holes for us amateurs, I feel the Indianapolis track did a much better job at this. Ah well, still a good time.

Freestone County Raceway is about an hour and a half south of Dallas and it holds one of the national AMA Motocross rounds. A friend and I went down there for race day and took a few pictures.

I “broke in” to the Swift Meat Packing Plant near the Fort Worth Stockyards with a friend and took some pictures. It’s a pretty cool area, lots of tags and interesting decay.

Autocross is driving around cones against the clock. Every year the UTA FSAE team invites other FSAE teams down to Texas to take part in a 2 day autocross extravaganza. I haven’t been on the team in a few years, but had been invited to drive after doing a few repairs. In between driving I snapped a few pictures.

Looking around this old house I’ve got there are lots of little interesting details. I decided to not watch TV for a night and take a few pictures. Nothing special, just some old bits with some character. It helps that I’m not one for the cold and it’s been pretty cold here the last few days.

2010 marks the end of the space shuttle program. I had never seen a launch and it is one of those things I told myself I’d see. So a buddy of mine and I, along with the help of his wife conspired to converge in Florida for the February 7th launch, which would also happen to be the last night launch. Oh joy!

Formula one has left the US for the time being, this leaves MotoGP as the only world class series to hold races in the US. Fortunately for us, they hold 2 races here, one in California at Laguna Seca (amazing place) and the other at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. California being a 24 hour drive and only 2 of us making it to the race this year- we chose Indy.

Holiday weekend camping with friends down at Enchanted Rock State park; fun. We left Fort Worth on a Friday and spent the 3 day weekend messing around at various state parks, camping, taking pictures, and camp fires at Enchanted Rock and Gorman Falls.

Possum Kingdom (i’ve never seen a possum there…) Lake is a pretty rad area west of the DFW metroplex. Lots of hills and shrubs. This trip was a blend of camping and motorcycling and hiking and general fun. I show you some of the artsy sorta shots I took this particular weekend. Also, take a gander at the ‘ride report’ I threw together for a broad understanding of the weekend.

Cedar Hill State Park is a decent state park placed on the only real ‘mountains’ in the area (hills really). Its generally quite pretty and very close to my residence at this point in time. The girlfriend and I made an afternoon hike here and found ourselves some pictures. I initially broke out my 16-35 when I decided I’d give the tilt shift a shot. I really enjoied being able to break the foreground away from the back ground in wide shots while in the trees. I very much plan on returning with a tripod and more time and more tilt shift fun.

While on a bike ride during some rather awesome March weather my girlfriend and I stopped for a breather on the side of the path in a fairly wooded area. Seconds after we’ve sat down Tiffany spots a rabbit sprinting across the path 50 feet away. Neat! A few seconds pass and a bobcat appears from the same direction at a very leisurely pace. I suspect it had been chasing that rabbit for a while and had just given up chase. It saunters across the path into the trees and plops down under a small treeish bush, I pull out my camera and clickity click a few.

Smooshy blast from the past batman! So my mom hands me a box she found in the house, post fire, and tells me that its mine. I have no clue what it is and ask, she tells me its got some kinda electronic something in it. Not enough to jog my memory… so I open it and what is in side? A frequency counter from the days of yore with marvolous wonderful vacuum display tubes! I absolutely love the look of these things. Enjoy some pictures as this magic box counts from one to forever!

“HORSES, DONKEYS!!!”, the girlfriend yells at me to stop the car. When we first stopped the animals were a pretty good distance from us but quickly came to the fence line to get some attention and some of that greener grass everyone’s always talking about. I’ve never seen any of those fancy big Clydesdale horses, but these guys were HUGE; biggest horses I’ve seen. They were sure friendly, to us anyways. They kept shooing away the donkeys, they never let them get close enough for some lovin.

These pictures were taken during a trip to Washington for a good friends wedding. These were my first real pictures taken with my 40D; I must admit, I did not get as many good pictures out of this trip as I would have liked. For some unknown reason, my user settings in the camera were on custom and the sharpness was pushed to the MAX. When viewed at full res the pictures are pretty harsh, and no, I wasn’t shooting RAW. I do now though, I do now. Good times though, new friends, and all that jazz.

Girlfriend and I took a quick drive down to Waxahachie, TX for a little photo fun. We mainly just walked around the little downtown square area and snapped pictures of things that caught our eyes. It didn’t take long for us to wonder off of the square and find older less taken care of objects with slightly more character. Fun!

Yet another trip to the botanical gardens under my belt. The animals were out this trip, for sure. I dunno what to say other than that. Maybe I can take this time to express how flippin neat it is to have a big white canon lens when all the soccer moms are wondering around with rebels and little kit lenses *snicker*

Every year, just about, my parents take a weekend trip over to Arkansas and the arbuckle mountains that live there. They pretty much go the same weekend every fall hoping to see some trees change colors. This particular year I tagged along with girlfriend and found the following things picture worthy:

Elkhart Lake, Wisconson; a long drive from Texas and home to Road America. A friend and I decided to take a road trip to the ALMS/Champ Car race there with our dirt bikes in tow. What an amazing track first of all. Tucked into the hills, its got a lot of charactor and lots of opertunity to get up close and personal with the track. If you can, I highly reccomend taking some sort of 2 wheeled off road transport to get around. It makes getting from corner to corner easy and FUN.

Yet another trip to the awesome area that is Glen Rose, Texas. I love going down there for general tom foolary, be it on my motorcycle or on a general drive. I think a camping trip is in order. Not much content here, just a few shots from a drive with my dad.

Another trip to Washington with a brief stop in Oregon. This particular trip was far to quick to come and go. Good times were had, camping was done, pictures were taken. Boomcow. Ever camped in a rainforest? It rains. Rad. It was pretty crazy driving in to the forest midday and being forced to turn on your headlights because the sun is so blocked out by zee trees.

Its that time again, I missed the previous year’s F1 race while in Spain unfortunately, but I made it to indy in 07 which sadly turned out to be the last year for USGP in the US, again. This year was a little different than the previous years as my friends and I got to go into the McLaren pits after the last practice session Saturday. Plus everyone actually raced, which was nice, since the last race I had been to all of the Michelin cars pulled off after the warm up lap.

Amon Tobin is a pretty rad fellow. He does electronic kinda music with tons of samples from tons of sources mixed together to jazzy kinda electronic noisy goodness. You’ve probably heard his music in a few comercials or in the background of just about every Top Gear episode. I attended a concert in Dallas, one of the few concerts I’ve ever been to and took way too many pictures. Playing with the various lighting was just fun. It would have been neat to have a tripod, oh well. I’m not sure any of these are really good concert pictures, I mostly just enjoied playing with the lighting.

BEAVERS! Oh no, no beavers were seen during this trip to Beavers Bend, Oklahoma. Lots of Turtles, lots of green, wonderful weather, awesome fire cooked stew… Camping is always good. No real animals were photographed on this trip. Most were during a canoe trip which I didn’t bring my camera on. Anyhow, nice times introducing Tiffany, the girlfriend, into camping.

What’s this? A closed down water treatment plant? Goodness me, how’d I get here? Hmm; well I guess I’ll take a few pictures. It actually didn’t smell too bad. From the looks of things it had been out of use for some time. We just tried our darnedest not to stir up more dust than we had to.

This was just a quick afternoon of photo taking with the ladygirlfriend. We found ourselves near the Fort Worth Stockyards at the clearly abandoned Swift Meatpacking plant. Why the city hasn’t torn this building down, I don’t know. I sure do love it though, nothing like a little time and lack of maintenance to make a building look bombed out.

On the few free weekends we had a fellow co-worker and I would head out to the country side of Spain hunting for castles. It was amazing what Spain simply had laying around its country side. In the middle of little towns would be amazing castles or ruins of castles just begging for exploration. These pictures were taken on those rare free weekends from castles or other sights found while searching for castles, plus a few extra.

After landing in Valencia, Spain it was a fellow co-worker and my duty to pick up a crate of tools and parts that had been shipped to our customer a few weeks earlier and tote it west across Spain to the wonderful little town of Salamanca. I would end up spending a few weeks in this awesome town wondering the streets during the free afternoons/evenings I had. I loved the mix of old and new everywhere. The narrow maze of alleys and streets were a dream to explore. I can’t say enough good things about this wonderful town. On with pictures.

Work in Spain for a few months? OK! In summer of 2006 myself and fellow co-workers headed all over Spain to perform many upgrades and system checks to some 50 Air Tractor 802 fire fighting aircraft. As a company we were there some 4 months driving all around performing upgrades, I was there about 2 months. Working mainly at night so the aircraft could be on call during the day.

Champ Car was pretty well dead at this point. All the big names from the golden days have long been gone, save Paul Tracy, and the field was pretty small. Fortunately though they were with the American Le Mans series, which is just swell. Unfortunately they were crammed into a little street circuit in Houston. It was a pretty bad layout for onsite spectators, especially for taking pictures with no press pass. Oh well, I played with what I could get, it was still a fun trip.

Nothing but a casual family camping trip here. These were taken off of Lake Ray Roberts north of Denton in Texas of course in the Johnson Branch campgrounds. Nothing too fancy, just a lazy couple of days with a camera. Yes, thats my dad airborne, awesome.

Walking down one particular street north of Fort Worth netted this group of images. The goal was to take pictures of a large set of grain silos, however they were too large to get a decent shot of from this particular road. A little further down and an old military base from WW2 popped up. More than anything I think this set of pictures goes to show, if you simply get out of the car and walk a ways, you’ll find plenty of things to take a picture of.

Motorcycles in the form of MotoGP returned to the United States in July of 2005 to quite possibly the best track in the country. Me and 3 other fellows set our sights on California and drove non stop from DFW to Montery for the race. If you’ve never been to Laguna Seca, GO, it is amazing the amount of elevation the track covers. The track simply does not come across on the TV or video games, it gains and looses elevation like no ones business. Couple that with beautiful bikes running around on the edge of traction, and you’ve got yourself an event.

United States Grand Prix!!! 2005 came and went and I made yet another trek to Indiana for the Formula One race. I played around with various crops this time around, after talking with my roommate, I think I need to put less stock in maintaining the original aspect ratio of the image. So let me know what you think there. There isn’t a whole lot to say except maybe… vroom vroom.

Pacific north west! These are some photos from my first venture north and west to Washington (state of course) and boy is it wonderful up there. Most of these were taken at a costal defence bunker built in WW1 expanded in WW2 and decommisioned sometime after that. This is one of many bunkers protecting the port of Seattle.

Heather was a classmate from high school. We some how reconnected online, probably through one of those fancy new fangled social networking websites and started talking. As luck would have it we had both sort of crushed on each other in high school, so based on that we decided we should meet up and hang out. Great idea; sure 2 friends that hadn’t seen each other in years who each proclaimed a forgotten crush on one another can meet up and have a perfectly normal time… well not in my world.

Ahhh the Botanical Gardens in good ole Fort Worth, Texas. I’m sure everyone in the DFW area has been here at least once. Its a pretty nice place generally; especially the Japanese garden area. All of these pictures are from the Japanese section of the Botanical Gardens. These were all taken in spring and really I’m pretty happy with them; especially the duck shot. The colors nature can produce are simply amazing, really.

This was a day spent by my Dad and I bouncing around Fort Worth. Our goal wasn’t to take pictures of trains, it just sort of happened thisaway. No complaints, trains are cool. On that note, my nose is very stopped up today and my ears need to pop.

Every year in the fall my parents make the journey to the Ozark mountains in Arkansas. The goal is to catch the leaves changing colors for photos and a general good time. They typically stay at Beavers Bend State Park in Arkansas and make an hour long drive to the Queen Wilamena Lodge. This is a state run lodge atop a long ridge line. This particular trip we actually stayed in a small camp ground next to this lodge.

England? Week long airshow? Ok! In the summer of 2004 I had the opportunity to tag along with my Dad to a little airshow/trade show in Farnborough, England. My Dad was doing on business and I got to tag along using his air miles. This event is held every year and switches between Paris and Farnborough, it is the biggest commercial aircraft show in the world. I got a huge kick out of seeing all kinds of aircraft you don’t normally get to see over in the states.

When my Dad and I set out to take pictures on any given weekend it goes with out saying; head west. I don’t care what we set out to take pictures of, 80% of the time we’ll find our self in the less populated areas west of the DFW area. These are pictures from one of those trips.

F1USGP! My first Formula One event ever. Me and a group of guys from the UTA FSAE team rented a van under the masquerade of a school trip and booked it non stop to Indianapolis Indiana. Its a great event, and pretty good for viewing the cars. Its not as scenic as some of the older tracks around the US, but as far as seeing cars go around as a spectator, its hard to beat. If you’ve never been to an F1 race, GO. Its a must see, the rate at which these things change direction is simply amazing, then there’s the noise, the beautiful noise.

These were taken at the UTA test track (read: parking lot) in late 2003 and at an autocross at Texas Motor Speedway later that weekend. The FSAE car is the 2003 model driven by Jon Huddleston. I was not part of the 2003 build/competition, 2004 was my first car. Though I did drive the 03 car a few times, its fast and with its full aero setup its a treat to drive on fast tracks.

Every year the air show comes to Fort Worth, Texas. It seems like most of the time its the good ole Blue Angles. This set was taken back in 2004 and was one of the first real outings with my then brand spanking new, Canon 10D. All of these shots were taken with a cheapish 300mm zoom lens.