Morphology of a forced regression

'Forced regression' is an important concept in sequence stratigraphy - it occurs when relative sea level falls and the shoreline shifts in a seaward direction, regardless of how much sediment is delivered to the sea. This is in contrast with 'normal' regressions, which take place when relative sea level doesn't change or it is rising, but rivers bring lots of sediment to the coast and are able to push the shoreline seaward. These concepts are commonly illustrated with simple cartoons (like the ones on the SEPM sequence stratigraphy website), showing how beach deposits stack in a dip direction, and how their tops are eroded by rivers as sea level continues to fall.

Unless you live in a horizontally challenged flatland (vertical-land? 2D seismic-land?), real regressions happen in three dimensions, and their morphology is much more complicated, more interesting, and more beautiful than what one can dream up with a few lines in a single cross section. The example below is an airborne lidar image from Finland. The original data has a horizontal resolution of 2 meters and a vertical resolution of 30 centimeters.

Airborne lidar image of uplifted coastal plain in Finland
Image courtesy of Jouko Vanne, Geological Survey of Finland

The two dominant morphologies and deposit types clearly visible in the image are (1) ancient coastlines, formed as sand brought to the sea by rivers was reworked by waves into beach ridges; and (2) an incised river valley that cuts through these shoreline deposits. Note how the river seems to be incising and migrating laterally at the same time, generating a scalloped valley edge. The reason for this forced regression during a time of global sea-level rise is the isostatic rebound of the Scandinavian Peninsula after the retreat of the ice sheet.

Looking at this crystal-clear morphology, it is tempting to think that this area must look very interesting in Google Earth as well. It turns out that it doesn't; this is actually a pretty heavily vegetated land, not too spectacular on conventional satellite imagery (see figure below). The laser rays of the lidar are able to see through the non-geomorphological 'noise' and show stunning geomorphological detail.

Comparison of satellite image from Google Earth with detail of lidar topography

To explore a higher resolution version of this image, and for additional lidar visualizations of similar beauty, check out Jouko Vanne's Flickr site. The National Land Survey of Finland has started collecting this kind of data in 2008 and they are planning to cover the whole country with high-resolution DEMs within a few years.

A great way to spend taxpayer money, as far as I am concerned.

Einstein, tea leaves, meandering rivers, and beer

If you make your tea the old-fashioned way, ending up with a few tea leaves at the bottom of the teacup, and you start stirring the tea, you would expect the leaves to move outward, due to the push of the centrifugal force. Instead the leaves follow a spiral trajectory toward the center the cup. The physical processes that result in this 'tea leaf paradox' are essentially the same as the ones responsible for building point bars in meandering rivers. It turns out that the first scientist to make this connection and analogy was none other than Albert Einstein.

In a paper published in 1926 (English translation here), Einstein first explains how the velocity of the fluid tea flow is smaller at the bottom of the cup than higher up, due to friction at the wall. [The velocity has to decrease to zero at the wall, a constraint called 'no-slip condition' in fluid mechanics.] To Einstein it is obvious that "the result of this will be a circular movement of the liquid" in the vertical plane, with the liquid moving toward the center at the bottom of the cup and outward at the surface (see the figure below). For us, it is probably useful to think things out in a bit more detail.

Einstein's illustration of secondary flow in a teacup

A smaller velocity at the bottom means a reduced centrifugal force as well. But overall, the tea is being pushed toward the sidewalls of the cup, and this results in the water surface being higher at the sidewalls than at the center. The pressure gradient that is created this way is constant throughout the whole water tea column, and overall it balances the centrifugal force (unless you stir so hard that the tea spills over the lips). This means that the centrifugal force wins at the top, creating a velocity component that points outward, but loses at the bottom, creating a so-called secondary flow that is pointing inward. The overall movement of the liquid has a helical pattern; in fact, those components of the velocity that act in a direction perpendicular to the main rotational direction are usually an order of magnitude smaller than the primary flow.

Einstein goes on to suggest that the "same sort of thing happens with a curving stream". He also points out that, even if the river is straight, the strength of the Coriolis force resulting from the rotation of the Earth will be different at the bottom and at the surface, and this induces a helical flow pattern similar to that observed in meandering rivers. [This force and its effects on sedimentation and erosion are much smaller than the 'normal' helical flow in rivers.] In addition, the largest velocities will develop toward the outer bank of the river, where "erosion is necessarily stronger" than on the inner bank.

Secondary flow in a river, the result of reduced centrifugal forces at the bottom

I find the tea-leaf analogy an excellent way to explain the development of river meanders and point bars; just like tea leaves gather in the middle of the cup, sand grains are most likely to be left behind on the inner bank of a river bend. Yet Einstein's paper is usually not mentioned in papers discussing river meandering -- an interesting omission since a reference to Einstein always lends more weight and importance to one's paper (or blog post).

A recent and very interesting exception is a paper published in Sedimentology. It is titled "Fluvial and submarine morphodynamics of laminar and near-laminar flows: a synthesis" and points out how laminar flows can generate a wide range of depositional forms and structures, like channels, ripples, dunes, antidunes, alternate bars, multiple-row bars, meandering and braiding, forms that are often considered unequivocal signs of turbulent flow. [This issue of Sedimentology is open access, so do click on the link and check out the paper!]. As they start discussing meandering rivers and point bars, Lajeunesse et al. suggest that Einstein's teacup is extremely different dynamically from the Mississippi River, yet it can teach us about how point bars form:

A flow in a teacup with a Reynolds number of the order of 10² cannot possibly satisfy Reynolds similarity with the flow in the bend of, for example, the Mississippi River, for which the Reynolds number is of the order of 10⁷. Can teacups then be used to infer river morphodynamics? 

The answer is affirmative. When dynamical similarity is rigorously satisfied, the physics of the two flows are identical. However, even when dynamical similarity is not satisfied, it is possible for a pair of flows to be simply two different manifestations of the same phenomenon, both of which are described by a shared physical framework. Any given analogy must not be overplayed because the lack of complete dynamic similarity implies that different features of a phenomenon may be manifested with different relative strengths. This shared framework nevertheless allows laminar-flow morphodynamics to shed useful light on turbulent-flow analogues.

Apart from helping understand river meandering, the tea leaf paradox has inspired a gadget that separates red blood cells from blood plasma; and helps getting rid of trub (sediment remaining after fermentation) from beer.

That explains the 'beer' part of the title. And it is time to have one.

References

Einstein, A. (1926). Die Ursache der Meanderbildung der Flusslaufe und des sogenannten Baerschen Gesetzes Die Naturwissenschaften, 14 (11), 223-224 DOI: 10.1007/BF01510300

Lajeunesse, E., Malverti, L., Lancien, P., Armstrong, L., Metivier, F., Coleman, S., Smith, C., Davies, T., Cantelli, A., & Parker, G. (2010). Fluvial and submarine morphodynamics of laminar and near-laminar flows: a synthesis Sedimentology, 57 (1), 1-26 DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-3091.2009.01109.x

Wave ripples on an eroding beach

I shot these photos in 2003, at Sea Rim State Park in east Texas, close to the border with Louisiana, a relatively remote and beautiful state park along the Gulf coast that suffered a lot of damage during both Hurricane Rita in 2005 and Hurricane Ike in 2008. On that chilly November day the light was great and the variety of shapes and patterns created by wave ripples and exposed during low tide was amazing.

Wave ripples are more symmetric than current ripples. Needless to say, wave ripples originate thanks to the back-and-forth movement of sand by waves, whereas current ripples form under unidirectional flows (like rivers and turbidity currents). Wave ripples are also more regular than current ripples, extend for much longer distances laterally, and often terminate - or continue - in 'Y'-shaped junctions. For the same wavelength, they are also taller; the L/H ratio of most wave ripples is between 4 and 10, in contrast with current ripples that have an L/H value of ~20.

Perfectly symmetrical ripples form under bidirectional currents that are perfectly symmetrical themselves; but this tends to be the exception rather than the rule, as shoaling waves create a net shore-directed movement of the water. The resulting ripples are asymmetric, with the steeper side facing the coast, but still more symmetric and more regular than pure unidirectional ripples. Weak tidal currents can cause the asymmetry as well. The photo below shows wave ripples with a significant asymmetry that makes them difficult (if not impossible) to distinguish from current ripples.

This set is also asymmetric, but to a lesser degree:

Sea Rim State Park is at a location along the Gulf coast where the beach is eroding and the coastline is retreating; it is a typical example of a transgressive coast. The erosion is the results from both sea-level rise and from lack of longshore sediment transport strong enough to nourish the beach with sand. The evidence for the transgression is quite obvious: banks of well-consolidated muds that were originally deposited in the lagoon behind the coastal barrier are being eroded by the advancing waves:

More on wave ripples at Olelog.

The complexity of sinuous channel deposits in three dimensions

The beauty of the shapes and patterns created by meandering rivers has long attracted the attention of many geomorphologists, civil engineers, and sedimentologists. Unless they are fairly steep or have highly stable and unerodible banks, rivers do not like to follow a straight course and tend to develop a sinuous plan-view pattern. The description and mathematical modeling of these curves is a fascinating subject, but that is not what I want to talk about here and now. It is hard enough to understand the plan-view evolution of rivers, especially if one is interested in the long-term results - when cutoffs become important -, but things get really complicated when it comes to the three-dimensional structure of the deposits that meandering rivers leave behind. The same can be said about sinuous channels on the seafloor, created and maintained by dirty mixtures of water and sediment (called turbidity currents). An ever-increasing number of seafloor and seismic images show that highly sinuous submarine channels are almost as common as their subaerial counterparts, but much remains to be learned about the geometries of their deposits that accumulate through geological time.

Using simple modeling of how channel surfaces migrate through time, two recent papers attempt to illustrate the three-dimensional structure of sinuous fluvial and submarine channel deposits. In the Journal of Sedimentary Research, Willis and Tang (2010) show how slightly different patterns of fluvial meander migration result in different deposit geometries and different distribution of grain size, porosity and permeability. [These properties are important because they determine how fluids flow - or don't flow - through the pores of the sediment.] River meanders can either grow in a direction perpendicular to the overall downslope orientation, or they can keep the same width and migrate downstream through translation. In the latter case - which is often characteristic of rivers incising into older sediments -, deposits forming on the downstream, concave bank of point bars will be preferentially preserved. These deposits tend to be finer grained than the typical convex-bank point bar sediments. In addition to building a range of models and analyzing their geometries, Willis and Tang also ran simulations of how would oil be displaced by water in them. One of their findings is that sinuous rivers that keep adding sediment in the same area over time (in other words, rivers that aggrade) tend to form better connected sand bodies than rivers which keep snaking around roughly in the same horizontal plane, without aggradation.

Map of deposits forming as river meanders grow (from Willis and Tang,  2010).

Cross sections through the deposits of two meander bends (locations shown in figure above). Colors represent permeability, red being highly permeable and blue impermeable sediment. From Willis and Tang, 2010.

Check out the paper itself for more images like these, plus discussions of concave-bank deposition, cutoff formation, and filling of abandoned channels.

The second paper (Sylvester, Pirmez, and Cantelli, 2010; and yes, one of the authors is also the author of this blog post, so don't expect any constructive criticism here) focuses on submarine channels and their overbank deposits, but the starting point and the modeling techniques are similar: take a bunch of sinuous channel centerlines and generate surfaces around them that reflect the topography of the system at every time step. However, we know much less about submarine channels than fluvial ones, because it is much more difficult to collect data at and from the bottom of the ocean than it is from the river in your backyard. The result is that some of the simplifications in our model are controversial; to many sedimentary geologists, submarine channels and their deposits are fundamentally different from rivers and point bars, and there is not much use in even comparing the two. Part of the problem is that not all submarine channels are made equal, and, when looking at an outcrop, it is not easy - or outright impossible - to tell what kind of geomorphology produced the  stratigraphy. In fact, the number of exposures that represent highly sinuous submarine channels, as observed on the seafloor and numerous seismic images, is probably fairly limited. One thing is quite clear, however: many submarine channels show plan-view migration patterns that are very similar to those of rivers, and this large-scale structure imposes some significant constraints on the geometry of the deposits as well.

That being said, nobody denies that there are plenty of significant differences between real and submarine 'rivers' [note quotation marks]. A very important one is the amount of overbank - or levee - deposition: turbidity currents often overflow their channel banks as thick muddy clouds and form much thicker deposits than the overbank sediment layers typical of rivers. When these high rates of levee deposition combine with the strong three-dimensionality of channel migration, complex geometries result that are quite tricky to understand just by looking at a single cross section.

Cross section and chronostratigraphic diagram through a submarine channel system with inner and outer levees (from Sylvester et al., 2010).

One of the consequences of the channel migration is the formation of erosional surfaces that develop through a relatively long time and do not correspond to a geomorphologic surface at all (see the red erosional zones in the Wheeler diagram above). This difference between stratigraphic and geomorphologic surfaces is essential, yet often downplayed or even ignored in stratigraphy. In terms of geomorphology, the combination of channel movement in both horizontal and vertical directions and the extensive levee deposition results in a wide valley with scalloped margins and numerous terraces inside:

Three-dimensional view of an incising channel-levee system (from Sylvester et al., 2010).

This second paper is part of a nice collection focusing on submarine sedimentary systems that is going to be published as a special issue of Marine and Petroleum Geology, a collection that originated from a great conference held in 2009 in Torres del Paine National Park, Southern Chile.

PS. As I am typing this, I see that Brian over at Clastic Detritus is also thinking about submarine channels and subaerial rivers... Those channels formed by saline density currents on the slope of the Black Sea are fascinating.

Willis, B., & Tang, H. (2010). Three-Dimensional Connectivity of Point-Bar Deposits Journal of Sedimentary Research, 80 (5), 440-454 DOI: 10.2110/jsr.2010.046

Sylvester, Z., Pirmez, C., & Cantelli, A. (2010). A model of submarine channel-levee evolution based on channel trajectories: Implications for stratigraphic architecture Marine and Petroleum Geology DOI: 10.1016/j.marpetgeo.2010.05.012

A hike in the Bucegi Mountains, Romania

Recently I had a chance to revisit a fantastic hiking trail in the Bucegi Mountains, located in the Romanian Carpathians (or Transylvanian Alps, for those who prefer a more exotic name). The Bucegi are among the most spectacular hiking and climbing places in Eastern Europe, with some of the tallest cliffs in the region. Back in the good old days when I used to live closer to some significant topographic relief (as opposed to a living on a %^$#@ flat passive margin), this hike was one of our favorites. The main attraction is a steep climb along a valley floor that usually has some snow even during the summer months. In the steepest sections there is no proper trail and usually there is nobody else around; this is the perfect place if you want some outstanding scenery without the crowds.

The predominant rock type in these mountains is the Bucegi Conglomerate, a Cretaceous formation with lots of limestone clasts. The limestone pebbles, cobbles and boulders were eroded from Jurassic carbonates that outcrop in the western parts of the Bucegi. This is one of the thickest conglomerate accumulations I have seen and I know of; its thickness reaches 2000 meters in places. It was probably deposited as fan deltas along a rocky coast, with rivers that were directly depositing coarse-grained sediment onto a submarine slope. There is evidence for deposition by sediment gravity flows: many conglomerate layers show no obvious stratification (which one would expect in a river deposit) and normal  grading is common. Toward the top, there is one spectacular layer, likely deposited by a single flow, with limestone blocks tens of meters across. [These blocks are often called olistoliths.]

Typical Bucegi Conglomerate (photo taken in 1995)

Originally these rocks were described as 'molasse' (one of those terms that probably were invented only to hide our ignorance about the relationships between mountain building and sedimentation), likely reflecting deposition in shallow marine environments. In the late seventies, when the idea that thick piles of coarse sediment could be of deep-marine origin was still big news in geology, the Bucegi Conglomerate actually made it onto the pages of Nature.

View Bucegi Hike in a larger map

In any case, our hike in June was long and strenuous (see the map above), but the weather was outstanding and we had the whole mountain to ourselves: apart from the meteorologists at the Omu Peak, we haven't seen a human being while hiking.

Here are a few more photographs (see the rest at Smugmug):

There is still plenty of snow in the 'Valea Alba' ('white valley') in June

The artist previously known as erosion

That's all conglomerate

When you clearly need a log-scale for grain size (note the two limestone 'grains' and the normal grading above the lower one)

This picture gives an idea how big the limestone blocks in the previous photo are: note the two guys in the front for scale

Deep-sea landscapes from the ice age

The upcoming edition of Accretionary Wedge is going to focus on geo-images. I was always fascinated by the beauty of landscapes and landforms, natural patterns and textures, as many of the posts on this blog can testify; that is one of the reasons why I became a geologist.

However, this time I want to show a different kind of geo-image. These are not usual photographs; they are pictures of landscapes that existed thousands or millions of years ago. The 'photographer' uses acoustic waves instead of light. Once the data is recorded, a whole lot of processing and editing is required to get a reasonable result. Most often it is not trivial to make sure that the final image indeed comes close to capturing one geological moment in time, and part of it is not hundreds of thousands or millions of years older than the rest. It is a bit like stacking vertically pictures that come from time-lapse photography, but parts of the older images are erased later and get replaced with pixels that belong to more recent shots.

I am talking about maps that come from three-dimensional seismic surveys, especially their shallower sections located near the seafloor. Using this kind of data, it is possible to reconstruct ancient landscapes through careful mapping. The result is never going to be perfect, or even comparable to present-day satellite imagery, on one hand due to the limited lateral and vertical resolution, and on the other hand due to the removal of significant parts of the stratigraphic record through erosion.

Still, it is amazing that it is possible to reconstruct for example how the Gulf of Mexico looked like during a glacial period. The images below come form the continental slope of the Gulf, and are buried a few hundred feet below the seafloor. This morphology most likely formed during a glacial period when rivers were crossing the exposed shelf and delivering sediment directly onto the upper slope.

source: Virtual Seismic Atlas

Two submarine channels are visible, both of them directly linked to a delta that was deposited at the shelf edge. Colors correspond to thickness: red is thick, blue is thin. The next image shows the surface underlying the channels; in this case, the topographic surface is draped with seismic amplitude:

source: Virtual Seismic Atlas

There are more images from this ancient landscape available at the Virtual Seismic Atlas, a great resource for geo-imagery in general (see this post at Clastic Detritus for more detail). It is best to view these 'photographs' at larger resolution (which is pretty big in this case!) -- you can do that if you go to the VSA website.

Garmin Forerunner 110 GPS watch - a review

A couple of years ago I decided to take running a bit more seriously and to try to keep track of when, how much, and how fast I run. As a dedicated Apple-afficionado and beginner runner, the obvious choice was the Nike+ sensor (which you place in the sole of your shoe), coupled with an iPod Nano. I have been using this setup for about two years now, and I was fairly happy with it. It was easy to start using it, it definitely helped me run more and faster than before, and GPS units were just too big or too nerdy (even for me) to carry around on a Saturday morning run in the park.

However, it has always bugged me that the precision and accuracy of the Nike+ system was far from perfect, and I knew that GPS watches could do much better, not to mention that you can also put your run on a map. I caved in to the temptation a few days ago and ordered a Garmin Forerunner 110 GPS watch; here are some initial observations.


The Forerunner 110 is designed to be relatively small and simple, with limited functionality. In other words, it is targeting people like me: mostly outdoor runners (it is not very good for biking and useless for indoor running) who don't need all kinds of functionalities that most other Garmin GPS watches have. It gives you basic information like pace, time, distance, and heart rate (if you are using it with a heart rate monitor), and that's about it. The relatively small size and reasonably good (=minimalistic) look means that you can wear this gadget on your wrist pretty much every day, without looking like a total nerd.

In terms of usability, the Forerunner 110 does pretty well. It doesn't rely on the touch interface that is built into the latest and greatest Garmin sports watches; instead, it has four large buttons that are easy to push when you want to -- or not to push inadvertently when you don't want to. This can be important in the middle of a sweaty run when you are not really in the mood for the subtleties of dealing with a sensitive touch interface. For example, I often have problems with the touch-wheel of the iPod nano. Recording a run basically comes down to (1) waiting until the watch gets a GPS fix; and (2) pushing the 'start/stop' button. In my limited experience, getting a GPS fix works pretty well and relatively fast, although it did take about 5 minutes the first couple of times. That is too much for a runner. Yesterday and today however it was much better, it locked on to the satellites in less than a minute.

So far so good. The one major issue I ran into was that, after a first recorded run, when I wanted to upload the data to the Garmin Connect website, I couldn't get the watch to talk to my MacBook. It took lots of trial-and-error and one-and-a-half hours on the phone with the Garmin help desk to figure out that the charging clip that's supposed to attach to the four exposed contacts on the back of the watch was not exactly where it should have been, despite the fact that the watch was charging (or it looked like it was charging anyway). This might be just a reflection of my limited intellectual capabilities, but I doubt that I am the only one who will run into this problem.

When it comes to uploading your workout data to a website for visualization and analysis, the Garmin ecosystem definitely leaves the Nike+ setup in the dust. The obvious advantage is the visualization of your runs in Google Maps. This is a major plus for a map-lover; but in addition to that, the Garmin Connect website makes it very easy to export the data and visualize it with Google Earth or any other software that can handle geospatial data. No export options exist for the runs you have recorded with the Nike+ sensor. In addition, the quality and usability of the Garmin graphs showing pace/speed through time is way better than the flashy but largely useless attempt that Nike has put together. Compare these two graphs (representing the same run):



Nike+ website



Garmin Connect

The Nike+ graph is pretty close to useless, whereas the one from Garmin Connect looks like a plot based on real data and it shows real trends (e.g., that I was running significantly slower during the last half of the run). And this is not a reflection of poor data quality coming from the iPod software; it turns out that the resolution of that data is much better than what Nike shows you. In general, Garmin treats the workout data in a much more scientific yet simple manner, also giving you the options of taking the data elsewhere, whereas the Nike website is colorful and animated, but has limited and closed information that has been dumbed down too much for my taste.

To wrap it up, despite a few - hopefully short-lived - annoyances, I am fairly happy with this new gadget. I will try to find out later how well it can be used for geotagging photographs while hiking or doing field work, something I still don't have a simple solution for.

Update (6/20/2010): I have been using this watch for more than a month now. It works pretty well for running, although I did have a problem today: it froze at one point, and I couldn't record any new data. It was very hot and humid, and I guess the contacts on the back side of the watch couldn't handle the amount of salty sweat I was producing. Now it works again. Also, it is a good idea to turn on the GPS reception a few minutes before you start the run because sometimes it still takes 2-3 minutes to get the coordinates.

In terms of using it for hiking and geotagging photographs: I did a hike using both this watch and an older Garmin unit, and noticed that the accuracy of theForerunner 110 is better than that of the Garmin eTrex Vista Cx. The watch worked much better in the forest and in a deep, narrow valley, where the GPS signal must have been weak. The problem is that the battery of the Forerunner 110 doesn't last long enough for a full-day hike; after about 5 hours of constant GPS recording, I couldn't use it any more.

Update (2/4/2011): It looks like this watch (certainly the one that I am using) has a major flaw: when connected to a computer, the USB connection is easily broken because of the questionable design of the contacts on the back of the watch and the clip. The watch freezes and the only way I could get it back to life was to do a hard reset. This means that any data you have on the watch is lost. I have lost running data due to this issue several times; the last time it was especially annoying since it successfully got rid of the GPS record of my first marathon. Thanks, Garmin!

Update (3/30/2012): The problem I mentioned in the update above hasn't occurred since I did a software update. However, a few months ago (about one and a half years after I bought the watch) the strap broke and I don't think there is an easy way to replace it. Also, often (but not always) it takes 20-30 minutes to get a GPS lock. It is time to get a new watch, and I think I will stay away from Garmin for now.

Evapor-art from the Permian Castile Formation, west Texas

The Late Permian Castile Formation is a ~500 m thick accumulation of evaporites in west Texas and south-eastern New Mexico. Its most striking feature is the vast number of alternating thin layers of lighter- and darker-colored deposits, layers that seem to be continuous across most of the Delaware Basin. The white laminae are mostly gypsum and anhydrite; the darker layers consist of calcite and organic matter.


Most experts agree that these laminations reflect seasonal changes; that is, a pair of white and dark layers corresponds to one year. The thicker gypsum layer was deposited during the dry season; the thinner calcite layer with the organic material formed during the humid season when algae were more abundant and only carbonates could precipitate from the lower-salinity water [for more details, see this paper].


The image above gives an idea how laterally persistent these laminations can be; the two photographs come from cores that are 24 km (~15 miles) apart (source: Kirkland, D.W., 2003, An explanation for the varves of the Castile evaporites (Upper Permian), Texas and New Mexico, USA, Sedimentology 50, p. 899-920).

These evaporites are often affected by small-scale faulting and folding; the resulting patterns are quite variable and aesthetically pleasing (well, at least according to me). I shot these photos on a recent geological trip to Guadalupe Mountains National Park, in a roadcut near highway 180; more pictures here.

Texas wildflowers

The weather has been awesome around here lately (yes, in Houston!, the weather!, awesome!), and otherwise uninteresting roadside places are starting to be flooded with colors. Here are a few shots; more over at Smugmug.



This one is actually from 2008:



One of the issues with photographing flowers is that parts of the pictures are often out of focus, as it is obvious in this shot:

 

And a way to deal with that is to take a number of pictures that are focused at different distances and then merge them in Photoshop (as described in this video). This image was put together from four different photographs, and is a somewhat better version of the previous scene (the fact that the wind was pretty strong didn't help):