I went downtown on Sunday night to work on some new drawings, and I was pretty sure that the gray clouds would not be conducive to shooting. But then, just as the sun dipped below the horizon, it tore through the city with bright pinks for about 10 minutes. I sped over to the other side of the Colorado River and jumped out for a quick shot. Luckily, I always keep the D3X in my car with me in case of a photo emergency like this.

In other news, I finally did that 25 Things thing that has been bouncing around Facebook. If you don’t have a Facebook account, I copied the 25 Things here to the site…

Hey everyone! The crew over at HDR Max has decided on winners for their photography contest. The winner receives a brand new 15″ MacBook Pro! 2nd and 3rd place get full copies of the software.

• 1st place – Justin Kern – Hall of the Mountain King
• 2nd place – Tamara Bauer – Life Is All About Choices
• 3rd place – John McCormack – Three Brothers

I was not the judge, but I know it was a hard choice because I did get to see all the finalists. Really amazing work out there! You can see the three photos on here on my site with the original post or at the HDR Max site.  The contest is over, but you can still get a free trial.  If you decide to order, use the HDR Max coupon code “Stuckincustoms” to get $20 off.

Also, if Justin, Tamara, and John contact me, I want to make sure it’s okay if I post their pics here on StuckInCustoms.com – thanks!

And to celebrate, I have chosen for today’s photo a fun shot of Isabella chasing a baby goat out near Horseshoe Bay, Texas.

Everyone likes the Batmobile yes? It’s especially cool when you see one on the side of the road in Texas that some comic-book redneck has souped up to be something that is on the edge of street-legal. I jumped out quick to grab a shot before the owner could come out and hit me with some sort of a 2×4, which I only assumed me might be carrying. Actually, you never know… around Austin it’s just as likely to be a doctor or lawyer (assuming one of those two to be an honorable, upstanding profession!

I went down on Saturday evening to do some shooting around Austin and caught the capitol around sunset. There are all kinds of interesting things about the Texas capitol, like this cool underground Illuminati chamber you can see here, but the one thing that all Texans seem to know is that our capitol is 14 feet taller than the one in D.C. This is a source of pride for Texans, along with the cool and trivial fact that we maintain, in our state constitution, the right to secede from the Union.

The capitol is made out of this pink granite, and it gets a little pinker at night at soon as they turn on the lights, especially against the blue sky.

This little thing has been a nice distraction for my holidays. This is actually a perfect little fairy that I got for my perfect little daughter who still believes that everything is both real and unreal at the same time. She doesn’t yet realize (or care) about what is possible and impossible. She has this wonderful free-spirit that is delicate and innocent – a soft way of holding my hand with intent as her grip loosens while she falls asleep.

I got her this little winged muse for the holidays – a tiny jewelry box for little things that she likes to use to make herself pretty for me.

Having kids running around is very nice for the artist in me… (uh oh – stream of consciousness warning – but don’t worry I am not a blogger who listens to the same Enya song 37 times in a row) It reminds me that it doesn’t really matter what is real and not real that affects the state of mind… To her fairies and magical forest creatures are real and full of wonder. They affect what she thinks and what she does… Then as adults, we are not supposed to think about that stuff any more because it is for children, but don’t we still fill up our heads with other things that are not real? Not only do we fill our heads up with non-corporeal visions, but most of them aren’t any fun at all! So, I say, why not go ahead and fill up our adult heads with fantastical things that may or may not be real, and have fun with it? I fill my head with things that have a deep truth and a fantastical nature… I suppose you can see some of that bleed out in my photos… and many of these things that are in my head actually come true in unexpected ways. There are elements of my brain that are like Big Fish and The Fall — all of it is there and happening within various levels… I am glad movies like that exist and kids exist… reminding us of what is secretly acceptable.

Merry Christmas from my family to yours! See my three kids there? They’re so happy you come to the blog and, in so doing, help out the family! I love photography,and I love the family, so I can’t think of a better thing to share with you on Christmas.

And thank you so much for sharing the site with your friends and family. It’s helped us to grow to hundreds of thousands of monthly readers. Some come to just look at photos. Some come to learn more about photography. So whether you’re just browsing around for fun or here to get more goodies, I’m thankful! I hope you have a great holiday.

This is the first photo I ever took with my Nikon D3X. If you want to know more about this style of photography, see my HDR Tutorial (it’s free!). If you want to know more about this camera, I have it listed on my HDR Camera page here on the site.

In this photo are my three kids… See the older Ethan in the picture? He said, “Dad, that looks just like your old camera.” I tousled his hair and told him to just be quiet and pose for the photo and be as neoRockwellian as possible with the rest of my brood.

Have a good holiday week!

We have these amazing trees in front of our house, and they explode in color right around this time of year. I took Ethan out front to pose under the tree while I set up across the street to try to capture the mood.

I live in the Hill Country of Texas, just 20 mins (no traffic!) to downtown Austin. I don’t think this photo has captured how hilly it is (or how much pain I feel when I jog up this hill in front of the house!) But, at least you can see the sprinkles of red as the first of the trees turn for winter.

And now for something a little different. I rarely do this sort of thing… People ask me all the time to come take family pictures (or weddings and these sorts of things) — I always regretfully say NO because, well, I never really have a great excuse other than it takes too much energy to do something interesting. Also, sometimes I pretend to be too busy like George in that one episode of Seinfeld.

So I had an idea to make something unique and vintage and the muse here was up for it… and she had similar ideas around capturing some moments with her little boy. I’m happy with how these things are turning out…

We just finished yet another Halloween. We have this fun little neighborhood picnic at the top of our street before the festivities begin. I asked Isabella if she wanted to act like a princess for the camera, and guess what?

This is one of those places that I always drive by in Austin but never took the time to shoot… Finally, one day the clouds seemed right for the kind of shot I wanted, so I pulled over to make it happen!