This morning at the Veterans Memorial at the Oklahoma State Capitol.
Spent Sunday kayaking the Canadian River through the Stinchcomb Wildlife Preserve in west Oklahoma City with my friend Laurie, who is now sold on buying her own kayak. The river passes through the preserve on its way to Lake Overholser downstream.
The river current provides a nice float a couple of miles upstream from the put in at the 39th Street (Old Route 66) bridge in Bethany. At that point you’re away from the sounds of traffic and you feel as if you’re in wilderness.
Only downside I experienced was the fact I was dumb and didn’t liberally adminster the sun screen. Well, that and we did this in the heat of the day. That zapped the strength from my old body and left me with a nice farmer’s tan (sunburn).
The water was clean and cool. There were probably a dozen or more kayakers and one canoe group on the river. Most were floating downstream from Yukon. It’s hard to imagine such a fairly remote place lies within the borders of Oklahoma City.
A few years ago drove out to Taos to shoot tumbleweeds, torqoise jewelry and the Rio Grande Gorge. For some reason that now escapes me I photographed this contemplative photographer on the edge of the gorge as the summer clouds billowed overhead. Well, I needed something in the foreground.
He was also driving so I wasn’t going anywhere until his meditation ended.
The image was shot on good ol’ Kodak Ektachrome slide film. I received my new Epson V600 scanner today and have been testing out its slide scanning capabilities. Not bad.
Spent the morning at the American College Rowing Association’s national championship at the river downtown and took a few photographs. Crew teams from coast to coast have converged on Oklahoma City to compete. The pic above is of one of the Univ. of Minnesota team members catching the spray of the Oklahoma River.
Some more pics (click to enlarge):
I didn’t have a good perspective of the extent of last Sunday’s hail storm in OKC until watching this video on Youtube. Never seen anything like this before.
Tonight’s severe weather in central Oklahoma. Top, the setting sun lights up eastern stormy sky near Purcell. Thumbnails, click to enlarge, (l-r), up to golfball-sized hail near Goldsby, storm brews nearby, and earlier evening storm that triggered tornado warnings over Norman.
I have hiked most of the good trails in Oklahoma and occasionally come across rattle snakes and other unfriendly characters. But none comes close to being as hostile as this species of snake. The water moccasin isn’t afraid of anybody, which means they’ll come right up to you for their photograph.
Edit: A closer look:
Today’s hail storm as it passed through southeast Oklahoma City over Lake Stanley Draper. View is from the National Weather Center’s radar station in Norman.
There are some things that just make you think. This is one of them:
Every Life Has A Story – Chick-fil-A from Dan T. Cathy on Vimeo.
Shot this last weekend on an early morning walk through the woods at Robbers Cave State Park.
I took in a little ASA adult softball Thursday night at Reaves Park in Norman. They call it slow pitch, but in reality it’s a fast game, with short base paths, fast throws, quick hits and some weird rules that create a game that can be over before you know it. In other words, not much time to see what I shot in the LCD screen between plays before the next batter is already on first base.
But, I got a few action shots for the evening and the ump’s face is priceless.
Sunrise in the Wichitas. That’s Mt. Scott, often incorrectly labeled the tallest peak in Oklahoma (it’s not even close), but still a formidable pile of granite in the top photo taken at sunrise last Saturday.
I was 9 years old when I climbed Mt. Scott with my dad, uncle Jack and cousin Tony. It was my first real outdoors experience in the Refuge. The place has been very special to me ever since.
The last thumbnail photo is taken from the parking area at the top of the mountain.
