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Meetup At The Museum and City Park

On Saturday night, I joined the Illuminate Workshops Meetup Group. The group met at the terrace of the Museum of Nature and Science, overlooking City Park. On arrival at about 7pm, I was met with a sight of a bunch of 20 something photographers with tripods and gear! The event was planned as a night shoot, but we started well before the sun set over the mountains. Entering the terrace, the sun cast a shadow of the tree on the west facing wall of the museum.

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Shadows From A Setting Sun, DMNS

The colors of the setting sun were reflected in the windows that form the west wall of the museum. Soon after making this image, I got to meet Efrain Cruz who headed up the meetup group.

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Reflections In The Museum Windows

After the sun went down, I headed down to a park bench below the terrace. I used a red LED flashlight to paint the bench and surrounds with light during the 30 second exposure.

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Park Bench With Light Painting

Looking back at the museum, I noticed that the stairways cast shadows on the opaque window panels.

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Lighted Stairways Inside The Museum

I attempted some light painting of one of the trees in the park. After tripping the shutter, I ran over to the tree, painting with light from a powerful flashlight. Unfortunately, the exposure was not long enough so I did not get good results — need to experiment more with flashlights next time. Meanwhile, the rest of the groups were doing some interesting effects with flashlights and LED lights in the park. Here is one guy, positively radiating blue sparks!

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Blue Sparks

Later, we experimented with gelled strobes. While Armando was flashing this tree with red gels, I managed to sneak an ungelled strobe on the left side of the tree.

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Light Painted Tree In City Park

Some of the other images may be found on the Meetup group website. I then headed down to the lake in City Park, where the lights were reflecting off the still water. I included the rocks in the foreground that were lit from yellow street lights that lined the lake.

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Reflections Of The City Lights

Heading back towards the museum, I met up with Efrain again. Several folks had already left and others were heading out. Efrain asked me to stay for a portrait shoot. He set up two speedlites on light stands. After setting up, he captured images of me and several other group members. Maybe these will be posted to the Meetup website? I headed back to the parking lot, passing the underground parking garage. Located here are life size models of dinosaurs.

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Dinosaurs Entering The Parking Garage

Finally, the front entrance of the museum was nicely lit. The stainless steel columns were lined up nicely catching a highlight from the parking lot lights. So I setup again to make the final image of the evening before heading home.

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Entrance To The Museum

What a fun evening, making new images and getting to meet some new photographers in the Denver area.

{ 2 comments… add one }
  • Gregg Lowrimore April 4, 2011, 10:04 pm

    Nice article Match. Sounds like a great time, too. Maybe this is a meetup group that I need to check out sometime.

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