On A Clear Day

Here is another image I shot last Monday at the Monument Hill State Historic Site near La Grange, TX. I usually wait for a partly cloudy day to shoot landscapes but the crystal blue skies in the eastern most corner of the Texas Hill Country were crying to be photographed.

On A Clear Day
Copyright 2008 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shots taken with a Canon 40D tripod mounted, EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM at 16mm, f/11 for 1/90th of a second at ISO 100 on SanDisk digital film. All post capture processing was done in Lightroom 2 and Noise Ninja. Click on the image above for a larger version.

A Little Texas History

Monument Hill is hallowed ground. The remains of men who perished in the struggle for Texas independence are entombed in a granite crypt - their names etched in stone and marked by a towering monument. It is a memorial to the men who died in two separate events in the 1840s: the Dawson Massacre and the infamous Black Bean Death Lottery.

In 1842 Texan forces battled at Salado Creek to repel the Mexican invaders who had captured nearby San Antonio. Nicholas M. Dawson's advance militia company of 54 men, most from Fayette County, marched toward San Antonio to join the fight. As they approached the battlefield, 500 Mexican soldiers attacked, killing 36 men in what became known as the Dawson Massacre. Three men escaped but 15 were taken prisoner and marched over 1,000 miles toward Perote Prison near Vera Cruz in southern Mexico.

Posted in Photography Tagged: Canon 40D, EF-S 10-22mm F/3.5-4.5 USM, Monument Hill State Historic Site, Photography, Texas Hill Country