Texas Tidbits: A Master of the Lens, Bob Zeller

Sunset at the Lajitas House , Big Bend

Many of you are familiar with my very good friend in San Angelo, Texas, Bob "The Funky Old Dude" Zeller. Bob has a website of some of the most amazing photographs of Nature, specifically birds, but he has some outstanding shots of the landscape of West Texas as well. Over the last few months Bob has made a couple of trips to the Big Bend area of way out there West Texas and each time he has come back with some awe-inspiring photos of the place. If you've never been to the Big Bend or if have have never even seen it, be prepared to be astounded and make sure you have a pillow on the ground for when your chin hits the floor after viewing these photographic pieces of art. Incredible. Speaking of art...the following photo is one of the most beautiful images I have ever seen.

Santa Elena Canyon, Big Bend, Texas

Take a peek. At the bottom of the photo, just above the last "a" in the word "Santa", is a black "dot". That "dot" is actually a man hiking in the canyon! That one small detail shows the massive size of the canyon walls in contrast to a full grown man. I still marvel at this photo.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, Bob's main photographic subjects are birds. I beilive, and Bob can correct me if I'm wrong, that he has documented over 200 speices of birds! Like these and this. Skip on over to Bob's blog, Texas Tweeties and browse around. You will be stunned at some the shots that Bob has taken. Did I tell you that Bob's photograpsh have been featured at museums and in various publications in Texas? They have. Any doubts about Bob's keen eye to frame a shot that is more than just a photograph will be quelled with one look at the photos below of the American Kestrel.

The Hunt

Be sure to bookmark Texas Tweeties because you'll be sayin' to yourself, "How can a funky old dude who married way up to a chickadee (pun intended) like Ann, be an award-winning photographer?" I'm just sayin'. :)

The Lunch

Texas Tidbits: A Texas Primer Reprise

Here's a post that we put up every couple of months . We post it because this blog is picking up readers at an amazing pace. We are now read in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, plus EIGHTY-SEVEN countries around the world! Precisely because we get new readers so quickly, I like to fill them in on what Texas is all about, so they'll have an idea of why we write the things we do on Three States Plus One. Newer readers, enjoy this post and the link to the Texas Primer. You'll tank me later.  :)

Thanks to you, the reader, Three States Plus One is growing in leaps and bounds. We are barely three months old and we now have friends in forty-five of the fifty states in the USA and twenty nine countries around the world. Our overseas readers are from a diverse group of nations, including, our newest country, Serbia. Other readers hail from Italy, Spain, Israel, Russia, Australia, Taiwan, Mexico, the Philippines, India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, our neighbors to the north, Canada, the Mother Country, Great Britain and so many more. Thank you to you all for being a part of our Global Community of Readers and showing an interest in my home state of Texas. I was thinking that since we have so many new readers, it might be a good time to familiarize them with some facts about Texas, including a brief look at its history. So, I located a primer about Texas that has some basic information that the newer readers might find useful. It's good stuff and I believe that many of you from around the globe who have struggled and fought in order to live in a country free of tyranny and governmental control over your daily lives, will find the story of Texas an inspirational one, not unlike your own.

 Texas is one of the most recognizable places on Earth, if not for the sheer size of the place, then definitely for its unique profile. Almost anyone can look at a map and find Texas once they know what it looks like and the Lone Star flag is equally recognizable as a symbol of Texas by people from around the world. Many people unfamiliar with modern Texas still think of oil wells and cowboys as the mainstays of Texan culture. And they would be right. Oil and cowboys are as much a part of Texas as the Alamo. But the Texas of today is much more than that. Many Fortune 500 and high tech companies call today's Texas home making Texas a new kind of frontier for the 21st Century.

 I am not going to excerpt the Texas Primer for you here as I can't do it justice, so please take a few minutes to read it and you'll have a basic understanding of what is so special about this place called Texas.