Palo Duro Wednesday

Up early again.  I thought it might be fun to go up to the visitor center area to watch the sunrise...well, think I'll stick with Pepaw picking where we need to set up for that! It was a pretty sunrise, just the place we were at wasn't the best for it...Oh well, I still got this pretty cool shot!

Loved the reflections on the car, and you can even see Pepaw down the road getting his shots for the morning.  Then we drove down into the valley.  I walked up one of the closed off road to get this shot of one of the bluffs on the other side of the valley lighting up.

After we finished with the sunrise pictures we drove back down to low water crossing #2 so I could get another reflection picture of Capital Peak.  The water was so still it was like a mirror!

We decided to hike the Capital Peak trail and see if we could find any more "hidden" trails.  As we walked along the trail we saw this buck working his way through the brush.

You'll want to double click this one so you can actually see him!

We moved along and came across this formation, so I took a couple of pictures from each side.

Pepaw was off taking his pictures and I had done about all I could see, (I always finish first!), so I thought I'd play around with the camera a little and see what it could do.  First I tried a sepia tone shot.

WOW! That was cool...let's try some black and white!

Same shot in color

Another black and white,

Well, THAT was fun!  I REALLY liked what I was seeing.  We walked back to the car and traveled back up the road again.



Another panarama shot. Love how this one came out!



Now I was ready to play with the HDR Paint functionality.

Isn't that cool looking!

We went back to the campsite for a while and decided we would go around the bend to the cabins and see what we could see from there.

Another HDR painted picture

Then I got this shot of the sun going behind the clouds.

And the cactus growing on the rock over the valley.

We drove back to the trailhead for The Lighthouse and Capital Peak.  We weren't going to walk the trails, but just wanted to get a few more pictures of the area.  I got this one in Black and White and the same shot in color.

My final shot of the day was this sepia toned capture of the windmill.  I thought the sepia made it look really "old - time".  You can even see the moon right there by the windmill if you look really close!

I liked my new camera before today - but after this - well, I think I fell in love with it!  So great that you can look through the lens and see what the shot will look like when you do these.  Love, love, love it!

Thanksgiving day would be our last in the park and I was looking forward to it!