Every so often it's nice to unplug, pack a camera and some water and go out to revel in the endless fractals of nature. A day trip to Enchanted Rock...

 

This was my last photo of the day. I'd finished climbing the "rock" and I'd done the

five or six mile periphery loop around the park (some of which is described by the park service as "difficult" other parts, "challenging"). I was walking back to my car when I saw all of these people in red t-shirts coming up the trail. They had just climbed the rock. They were an ROTC group. I chatted with their leader for a minute. I said, "Now that the young folks are all warmed up it would be a good time to run the loop trail." He looked at me like I was crazy. I walked away thinking there are some things old 69 year olds do that young people don't.

I know it sounds impossible but I was getting a bit bored with life in Austin and needed a quick getaway. I decided it was time to go back to Enchanted Rock Wilderness Area and climb the rock. Maybe get in a long trail hike. Eat trail mix. Drink coffee on the summit. Get hot. Cool down. Get exhausted and then get a second wind when you realize you're halfway out and you need to get all the way back to where you started the hike. And the trip to the wilderness area is just a little over 1.75 hours from Austin.

Planning is good. Sometimes you can plan too much. I thought it was going to be hot yesterday so I packed three liters of water, an extra pair of socks, my trusty, small first aid kit, pocket knife, and even tossed a pair of Birkenstocks in the trunk of the car for aprés walk. We had a big storm overnight as a cool front blew in across the hill country and when I started out it was 68°. I thought I was in heaven.

It was dark outside at 5:30 but that's when my brain woke me up. I ate some breakfast and drank some coffee and then I followed my own pattern of being too prepared and meticulously checked and optimized the tire pressure in each tire of my car before setting out. I sometimes think that makes me special but then I realize that all of you have an electric tire pump in the trunks of your cars. Right?

Everything packed down into a Gitzo backpack that had been modified by taking out all of the Velcro, padded dividers. I thought about making a hat decision before leaving the HQ compound but looking in the back seat of the car revealed a dozen or so different hat choices so I decided to wait until I arrived. 

There was a stop in Fredericksburg for additional coffee and one of the most sublime almond croissants I have ever had. Amazing. And the drip coffee was in the top ten of cups I have had in the last year. A great way to greet the sunrise.

The road from Fredericksburg to the Rock is a twisty, wind-y, two lane road with lots and lots of nicely banked curves. I rarely get out of town with the (relatively) new car but seeing as how there was zero traffic on that 14 mile stretch I got to drive my car silly fast and feel the turbo-charger push me back into the driver's seat. Exhilarating to drive faster than you should. But best to do it when nobody is around. 

The park just opened when I got there so I hit the big rock first. It's the steepest climb and it's a treat to hit it on a morning with some cloud cover and 68° in the middle of June. As a photographer I have to say that it's anticlimactic to spend the half hour of steep grade climbing only to realize that the thing you want to photograph is actually the thing you are standing on, which limits good photographic options of the very thing you thought to photograph. 

So I hiked back down, took a look at the park map and headed for the trail head for the Loop trail. It goes around the big rock and also a giant secondary rock called Buzzard's Roost. The actual loop trail is "only" five miles but I like to add on Turkey Pass trail for another mile and a half because when you hit the summit of that trail you get great views of Enchanted Rock on one side and then Turkey Peak and Freshman Mountain on the other. These hikes are not for casual walkers or beginners, especially in the heat of Summer because they have lots of quick, steep elevations, the trails sometimes get lost in flood water, and they are not navigable by any sort of vehicle so if you get into dire trouble you'll either have to get yourself out or hope that you are light enough that the park rangers can extract you --- by hand. 

Add in various poisonous snakes, coyotes (watch your small children at all times) and plenty of skunks of you'll need to be vigilant while you huff and puff. Makes it all the more exciting!!! 

Add to the perils of wilderness hiking the fact that there is NO (zero, zilch) cellphone service in the park and you'll probably layer on an extra amount of caution. Oh, and no place to refill a water bottle either.

The rewards? The positive benefit of nature's never ending fractal show, some great exercise, interesting and beautiful views, and a chance to tell your friends that you survived. While the trail up and down the rock was crowded by the middle of the morning (a climb also rated by the rangers as "challenging") I ran into only five people on the entire loop trail ( which is labeled by the rangers as "difficult"). It's nice to be alone in nature but hiking experts would be quick to tell you NOT to hike alone and to always tell someone where you are going and when you expect to get back.

The soft cloud cover stayed over me for about half of my time there. I spent an hour on and around the big rock and three+ hours on the various trails and by the time I got back to the VSL all terrain vehicle I was properly knackered. Ready for a fun 14 mile drive to Fredericksburg, and just lackadaisical about the rest of the return trip home. 

It was nice to be totally unplugged for the whole time out. I guess if I had an iPhone 16 Pro and was faced with an emergency I could have used the satellite feature to call for help but...what is the fun or challenge in that? 

Also, interestingly, trail mix tastes better when consumed on an actual trail. Just an FYI. 

I meant to use my new(ish) Leica DLUX8 for the hike and I packed it into the backpack but at the last minute I decided to take along the Leica M240 M-E, the one with the gray metal finish, and the 50mm APO lens for it and I ended up using that combination for everything. The DLUX never got out of the backpack. 

When I got back to the city I got a call from the dermatologist's office to schedule my upcoming surgery. I'll probably be out of the pool from July 1st to the 15th so the sutures can mend and do their thing. It will be torture to be sidelined for so long but perhaps larding in a couple more big hikes near the rock will take the sting out of the enforced swim break. We'll see. 

Captions below for bits and pieces.

Lesser hills. The "rock" itself has an elevation gain of 423 feet and sits about 1,850 feet above sea level.

near mid-frame, that's not a dust spot, it's a buzzard, just looking for unprepared hikers....

In all the years I've come to hike in Enchanted Rock I've never seen it as green.

There have been three major storms rolling through in the last three weeks. 

One storm during the early morning yesterday left behind two plus inches of rain and flooded the trail completely in a couple of locations. Crossing meant wading through knee high rapids. The water rises quickly. And wading through stuff? That's where the extra socks come in handy...

Buzzard's Roost.

This was where the trail should continue. It does, if you are ready to wade across at three different points. Be sure not to drop your Leica....

I added a third trail at the end and it had a nice crossing area that the others lacked...

Granite as far as the eye can see. 

I like this little cave in the rocks. When I got here, about a third the way into the loop trail, there were two hikers standing back fifty feet or so and watching the entrance. They had just seen two coyotes slink in to hide out from...us. Lots of deer tracks around as well but I didn't see any, in person. 

They hide well.

A nice, comfortable trail to scramble over. 

Since I started early I was able to get back to Austin before the late afternoon rush hour reached its daily, fevered pitch. I love being out in the wilderness. I love using all those walking muscles and I love the way my car drives when I push it. Now I'm back just moving money around and trying to figure out when to apply for Social Security. I'll be 70 in the Fall. I think it's about time to get it worked out.

The fresh, dry Birkenstocks were a treat. Couldn't wait to get out of the wet hiking shoes and the socks. Planning ahead can provide benefits.

Hope you had a fun, happy day. Can't wait to get back to the Rock. 

After a weekend of pulling out stacks of paper, moving filing cabinets, rolling up carpets and other prep work for house upgrades there was a lot of pent up desire to be outside with a fun camera.

 

I've been shooting in Jpeg+Raw lately with the M 240, mostly to give myself a choice, when I review files, between black and white and color. The image above looked much better to me in black and white while most of the files below seemed to depend on color to carry the day. 

The Leica M 240 and the 50mm Voigtlander lens seem to be a perfect match. When I use wider lenses on that body, especially the 28mm, you have to move your eye around the finder to really see the frame lines with any degree of accuracy. And that's presuming that the framelines are accurate in the first place. A big assumption given parallax and the changing magnification as the lens focuses toward the minimum focusing distance. The 35mm focal length is the last stop before the inconvenience of wider angle lenses seeps in. I was going to go through the process of finding just the right diopter attachment so I would not have to wear my glasses with the wider angle lenses but I've pretty much decided that in the same way the Q2 is a camera with a fixed 28mm lens and the Fuji X100V is a fixed 35mm lens, the M240 might most comfortably be considered a camera with a fixed 50mm lens. At least the way I use it.

At some point, if I ever warm up to using the 28mm on the rangefinder I'll hunt down a very nice 28mm bright line finder to put into the accessory shoe of the camera. Then I'll focus through the regular finder and then compose with the bright line accessory finder. But for now? I'll keep sticking the 28mm on the front of the SL2 and be happy with it. Or, alternately, I'll stop worrying about where the edges of the frame lines are in the M 240 finder and just merrily shoot without making a big deal out of it. It's not like I'm using this particular lens and camera combination for client work, after all.

I could lie and chalk up the performance here to the fantastic dynamic range of a decade old sensor or I could be honest and admit that I started with a dark file, used an A.I. filter to accentuate the color and contrast of the sky, then made another layer in Lightroom and used the brush tool to select the area under the eaves and on the wall adjacent to the eaves and in shadow. Once selected I color corrected the underlying area (it was too blue), warmed up the white on the sign with the hand, and opened up the exposure on the underlying area as well. I finished it off by adding some clarity slider to the selection but not to the global frame since I wanted the sky to go out of focus. Lightroom makes area by area corrections much easier to do now and I rarely have to go into PhotoShop to get what I want.

Why am I happy with the frame above? Well, I screwed up the exposure by one stop. I forgot about the 1/4000th of a second limit and, using ISO 500 and f4.0, I overexposed and subsequently got into an argument with my camera. But I was able to pull back the details in the file by reducing the exposure in post. I'd read that the sensor in this camera and earlier M digital cameras had limited dynamic range but I think this is a repudiation of some of that reporting. Sure, if you are off by two stops I'm betting your file is screwed but one half or even one stop? Worth a try every time. Or....you could just take the time to get the exposure correct. (Red-faced with shame....). 

the City of Austin likes murals. They'll commission people to paint them on just about anything. 

Above and below= Two versions of the same frame. Color and "Monochrome" AKA: black and white. 

I went back and forth but after looking at them for a while I decided that I like the black and white version better. Not sure why. Retro charm?

Great idea but I'm pretty sure Willie doesn't want the job and wouldn't like the salary....

On this image and several below I used the Lightroom feature: Lens Blur to selectively blur the background. You'll note that because it analyzes the original frame to determine it's "depth" via a 3D mapping routine the focus falls off in a natural progression the further it "extends" away from the main subject. You can control the amount and intensity of the fall off as well as modifying the range of the effect. I absolutely love it and will probably never have to buy a fast lens ever again (kidding? maybe). 

A bit overdone in these examples but easier to see that way....

Nothing beats an A to B comparison, right?

Top one is with the Lens Blur filter using default settings. 

The bottom image is unfiltered. As it appears right out of camera. 

Not a huge difference but enough. 

One click. that's it. No time having to select the subject, etc. 

This is either machine learning or artificial intelligence but whichever it is

I like it.

I used a "dramatic sky" filter from the LRC presets and toned it down by 50%. 

Is any day really complete without a dose of Mannequin? Especially a mannequin with what appears to be a pyramid in the background. 

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