From our trip down to Brenhan, TX. I added the watch because I thought it would make it interesting, however, my lovely wife informed me it would have been a better picture without the watch. Please vote below in the poll!
I didn’t add the coffee cup on this one. It was there. I thought it would be from Starbucks, but apparently the workers who keep my father’s lawn couldn’t afford Starbucks.
I didn’t do a lot of end-of-year in stuff this year, partly because I knew it wasn’t going to be a banner year. That year came in 2016, when I had 83,417 hits on the site. This year, I didn’t have half of that (36,122 hits). I thought that my low numbers might have been due to a low number of blog posts. I only posted 125 blogs in 2018. But when I looked at the number for 2016, I found that I posted 137 blogs that year. So there was not much of a difference in output.
Part of the decline might be attributed to the fact that of the 125 posts I made this year, about half of them were devoted strictly to photography. I even toyed with the idea of making my blog a photography only site. There have been a lot of reasons why I played with the idea. But as of yet, it still remains a theological blog, with photography thrown in as a diversion.
Given that, here are my top 5 photos of the year. These are the photos that I really liked. I hope you enjoyed them as well.
Please note that all photos appearing in the banner are copyrighted Timothy J. Hammons 2019.
Mother and the Bride: Heidi holding Rebekah’s hand before her wedding in October.
Mother and Daughter: Heidi and Jessica’s hands together. The photo that inspired the top photo of the year.
Grandson at the Park
The Cowboy and the Princess, from the archives.
Waving to Strangers, from the archives.
The pen cup on top of the refrigerator is no longer serviceable.
Joey spotted the locomotive on our way to the library this morning. He asked if we could go to it sometime, and turns out, we did just that. Give our love for trains, and it’s a time of year that brings back many memories about trains, we stopped and spent some time looking at the Frisco Steam Locomotive 19. You can read more about it here.
As with the photos from Wednesday, these too were taken back in November 2009 at a park in New Braunfels, TX.
In this last photo, you can actually see someone very dear to my heart.
From the archives, taken back in November 2009. This is a park in New Braunfels, and Joey is the boy waving to the other children. He was about 2 1/2 when these photos were taken.
Heidi and I found this photo in the grass on one of our evening walks. I don’t know the couple. I hope they are OK.
Driving into Jonesboro, AR., on 67, you will pass a small lake with this line of dead trees. I’ve been fascinated with the trees for sometime because I could not figure out why all of them died the way they did. From the road, it’s hard to tell that they are in the lake. To discover that, I had to enter a posted gate, and climb up on the damn around the lake to take these pictures. It looks as though the owners expanded the lake from a previous border, thereby killing off these trees. But when I asked a local resident, I was told that the trees were actually killed by a tornado. So I still don’t know why they are dead.
Frisco, TX is one of the up and coming cities here in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. I’ve been told they expect the city to grow by 250,000 people in the next 5 years, so you can imagine all the construction that will take place, and has already taken place. City leaders have done a fine job of putting together a new town square, where you can find Frisco’s library, and city offices, all in the same building. Here are just a few of the images I took the other day on a morning walk through the square.
Originally posted October 6, 2010. These were taken at the UT Extension Agency office in Jackson, TN.
We stayed on the Wataugu River back in October for our daughter’s wedding. Our hope was to sit and enjoy the sounds, but we were so busy, we barely had time to enjoy it. I did step out early for some photos. I’ve found that the grey days do offer great opportunities for black and white.
The collection…
Over the last couple of weeks, the level of Lake Texoma has been on the rise. You can get a glimpse of the level of the waters by comparing the first two pictures. In the second picture, you can only see a bit of the tree you see in the first picture.
In the third picture, that is the tree that me and the boys would sit under on the beach when we could.
(Taken July 10, 2006, from the archives.)
On our trip home from preaching at a church in the hill country, we stopped in Llano, TX, along the river of the same name and discovered the results of an annual festival held at Grenwelge Park, a rock stacking festival. Apparently, the good people of Llano have a festival every year in which people come in and stack rocks on top of each other. It is a competition and there is even a championship for it. In the words of Dave Barry, I’m not making this up. You can read about it on Texas Highways magazine.
In view of that, here are some photos from the park with left over rock stacks.
More from the B&B in the hill country of Texas.
Nothing like a couple of pairs of boots to make a great still life.
I love wind chimes. Every time Heidi and I go into Buckee’s, we have to bump into the chimes just to listen. We know we will never be able to afford them, since Buckee’s is so proud of their chimes. But it’s nice to hear the deep, rich vibrations with just a hint of barbecue sauce. (That is the predominant smell in Buckee’s.)
Here are a few shots from the central Texas B&B with tiny chimes.
My favorite all-time downtown is Bristol, TN/VA. I never grew up thinking that I would ever have a favorite downtown, but Bristol clearly is the only one I ever think about going back to on a regular basis. Every time Heidi and I travel to the area, we have to go downtown, walk around, and enjoy the setting. Here are a few pictures to help give you a glimpse.
By the way, it is actually my second post on Bristol’s downtown. Here is the first.
This is my favorite small-business owner in downtown Bristol. He owns the cigar shop.
The following are from the industrial area in Sherman, TX. Old building always make good subjects. I would love to take the following building and fix it up into a house or apartments.
Maybe we could hide a church in this one. But definitely turn it into apartments.
This one has future art studio written all over it.
