I decided to take a short day trip just to get out of town for a bit. I headed to Palo Duro Canyon and hiked one of the many trails. The sky was completely overcast and the wind was blowing hard, so I made a creative decision to focus on more abstract compositions and emphasize all the interesting textures that I was seeing.

The first thing I came across was a dead fallen tree. My immediate instinct was to get in close to it to take advantage of all the lines of the woodgrain and its subtle folds. After taking my first shot I moved around a bit and decided to use the details of where the tree broke as one of the side edges of the composition.

A little further down the trail I was in the canyon, and focusing on the walls I started looking for interesting patterns and features. A section caught my eye that had vertical fissures that looked like huge claw marks had been dug into it.

I kept hiking and kept my eyes peeled. I came across an incline with lots of rocks sticking out of the dirt. In black and white those rocks reminded me of bubbles floating down a stream. This was the one and only image that I took with my wide-angle lens because in this shot I wanted to take advantage of the warpy distance that lens creates. Right behind me was another feature, and up close it reminded me of a collapsing staircase. I took a picture of it, but I don’t feel like I captured what I saw and wanted to convey.

It was starting to get late and the idea of hiking back to my car in the dark didn’t excite me. Before I turned back, though, I was able to find a branch of the trail that lead right to the canyon wall. As soon as I saw it I went in that direction so that I could get a shot that showed off the blocky texture of the wall itself.

After shooting in black and white all day, I wanted to get something with a little splash of color. Getting as close as my 85mm lens could focus, I framed up something that portrayed the off-white striations in the wall and accentuated the textures I had been trying to emphasize.

I have to say that this was a welcome reprieve from the “go go go” of life in town, and since I had been stuck at home from being sick before this I needed to get out. If you’d like to watch me battle my way through the wind to get these shots, then you should watch the video below. Until next time, bye for now.