Sunflower

— Whenever I bike the Southern Walnut Creek Hike & Bike trail in Austin, I know that besides tranquility, I can often run into beautiful scenery, whether it’s wildlife and/or wildflowers. If you ride the entire trail, you will cover about 21 miles (34 km) of a nicely paved trail that offers a variety of terrain and curves, including a half a mile hill that will test your stamina. On this last ride, I even had a baby deer run across the biking trail. I didn’t see its mother, but I’m sure it was likely around. Although most wildflowers are gone by now, there is a large field on the north side of the trail that generally displays a lot of sunflowers. It was no exception this time, even in late July. When I stopped for a short break near Johnny Morris Rd, I noticed how bright this lone sunflower looked. The sun was hitting it just right. Even though I had my camera with me, I thought my cell phone would be better suited for the shots here since I had in mind using a special camera feature the phone app offers: the zoom effect on the shot above. Then I thought it’d also be cool to photograph the flower from its back. The lever of detail the phone camera offered was more than I’d anticipated.