Photographer in Colorado

Last weekend, I headed to the mountains to view the fall colors. Heading down Ohio Pass, I stopped at several locations to capture the Colorado gold colors!

Strong winds were blowing for much of the day. Below these aspen trees, the wind had blown down several leaves. I found this composition where the leaves fell among some small pine saplings.

There were still plenty of green leaves in the aspen forests. In this one forest, I found one colony of trees with yellow leaves in the middle of the green.

There are a few areas, where some trees have red and orange leaves.

Making my way back up the pass, I found one spot where the forest presented a palette of colors.

At one location, several aspen trees grow at the edge of a scree slope.

I headed out west when a storm started moving in. When the sun broke through a gap in the clouds, it lit up the storm over West Beckwith Mountain.

Yesterday, I headed downtown to the Highlands to enjoy the fall weather. The Highland Bridge crosses over I-25 and is the main pedestrian and bike thoroughfare to get there from downtown. It has been a while since last visiting, and a large apartment block cluttered the skyline, so I soon headed back towards Commons Park. The late afternoon sun lit up the bridge against a deep blue sky, so I made a monochrome version for this image, to show this tonal contrast.

Along the South Platte River, the late afternoon sunlight creates a lot of interesting reflections and opportunities for abstract compositions. In this image, the reflections caused light to shimmer in the shadows of the bridge.

Along the banks of the river are steps that remind me of a Greek or Roman amphitheater, but with an inverse curve. Most people had moved out the shade into to sunlight, but I did get curved leading lines, and those reflections in the river.

Across the river is a tall apartment block that created plenty of abstract reflections in the water. The reflection of the tree interrupts the repeating patterns of the building in this image.

The bridge that carries Speer Blvd always creates reflections of the trusses in the water.

In this image, the pedestrian bridge and apartment block is reflected in the river.

Now that the water levels have fallen from the high water levels, there is less turbulent flow over this weir. This provides some interesting reflections from the ripple patterns.

A longer lens allowed me to make a tighter compositions of a small area of one of the reflected buildings.

Finally, it was time to return home. On the Millennium Bridge the setting sun created warm reflections in the glass.

In this final image, I stood right under the bridge tower, making this image looking straight up.

Managed to get some of those reflections along the tower as well!

This afternoon, we headed out for a walk along the Platte River. Soon after arriving at the car park, we joined the trail. We found this fisherman sitting, fishing on the rocks out in the middle of the river. The river was flowing slowly, so there were some great reflections of the fisherman in the water.

Within a minute or so, he called “I caught a bass!”. Our fisherman said, “Take my picture with the fish”. He said that the fish was a small-mouth bass, which are common when there are no carp in the river.

As he continued to fish, and we continued our walk, I made this image of his reflection in the water.

The skies had clouded over during the course of the afternoon, but I found a small patch of blue skies with clouds and some contrails.

We passed by a sunflower plant that had several flowers. In this image, I managed to capture the front and back of two flowers. This is not the same species that I shot a few weeks ago — these are just two or three inches in diameter.

Turning back at this point, we passed by the Smash*It Breakroom again, The red door and trim caught my attention. This time, there there was a bike parked outside.

Further down the trail, we passed by a biker who was inspecting his bike.

I made several images, but this was the best of the bunch. Then it was back to home to get a bite to eat.

Yesterday afternoon, I headed back to visit the sunflowers on the Eastern Plains. Even though sunflowers had lost their distinctive yellow petals, they still have big seed heads facing the morning sun. Plus there was an approaching storm that would probably make for some interesting images.

After the sunflowers bloom, their heads get huge with seeds. This causes them to droop under the weight.

The back of the flowers always look interesting, since they are covered with tiny hairs

I found another flower with a big head!

The edge of the flowers also makes a great image.

As the storm was approaching, the wind started picking up, making the flowers sway in the wind. This just required patience in waiting for the right moment to take an image.

Looking out over the sunflowers, the storm clouds became very distinct, with a pale glow.

Soon the storm brought a cloud of dust followed by tons of rain. This caused flash flooding of several plowed fields, forming rivers in places. I headed back home by a different routes. Along the way, I stopped to make some images. Looking north towards Watkins, I made this image of the dark band of sky under the storm clouds

The annual “Taste Of Colorado” usually takes place over the Labor Day weekend. Taking a break from remodeling yesterday, I headed downtown for a break from work. Over the weekend, this festival has plenty of foods to choose from, street vendors and music. While wondering past the vendor booths, I passed by close to the Art Museum. The booth tents echoed the “point” of one of the museum buildings.

There were a variety of activities that people could explore. Two people were riding in Zorbs, and collided.

Stella Artois had set up a bar in an Airstream. 1366 was the year that the original brewery had been established in Belgium.

This Airstream had been cleaned and polished, so I explored some reflections from shiny surface as the sun was setting.

Several bands played on two stages at the venue. I stopped to listen to the Remus Tucker band as per played various good hard-rock numbers.

After the band finished their set, I checked out some of the other events taking place. A new moon had risen over the horizon yesterday evening, so I looked for a composition that included the moon against a twilight sky. By this time, the Denver City and County Build had been lit up in blue. I included the blue buildings against warm twilight sky and new moon. By some quirk of fate, the clock on the clock tower seems to echo the crescent of the new moon!

I made my way to the stage located in front of the building. At this view point, the buildings were blue against the dark night sky.

The last event of the day was a concert with Dwight Yoakam. He started the gig with various rock numbers, before playing country music numbers. This included songs by Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson.

Finally, after leaving the event, I headed off to the light rail station. Waiting for the traffic lights, I made this image of a nearby parking garage.

On the top floor, the parking garage announced “Park Up Hear And Save”.

At this time of the year, the sun is lower in the sky, creating great light and long shadows in the morning and evening. During the daily commute, I started to capture some images at both ends of the day. This building across the road, had some reflections of another building in its windows. I had to wait awhile for the traffic to clear in the street before making this image.

The new Spectrum building is one of the buildings that has plenty of glass that gives the opportunity of capturing reflections.

There was some work around the building that required the use of a lift. The workmen had left it parked in an ideal location to capture the morning shadows.

Returning to the light rail station that same evening, I pass by several planters. Exploring the different planters, I settled on making an image of the translucent red flowers — lit up by the late afternoon sun.

Several planters have plants with really bright yellow-green leaves. It took some time to locate a planter with some decent leaves, where the leaves are in good condition and are in the shady side of the planter. Direct sunlight falling on the leaves would have created bleached highlights on the leaves. Looks like those holes in the leaves were created by beetles!

Finally, I stopped by the fountains. The water pressure is varied during the course of the day. When arriving, the water pressure increased, allowing fountains to rise to some 20-25 feet above the water. The sun to lit up the full sheet of water, allowing me to create an image from a reasonable distance without getting wet!

Just in time, before the water pressure dropped, lowering the fountains to about 5 ft in height.

After a day of painting our kitchen, it was time to head out for some fun finding sunflowers. A few weeks ago, I scouted potential locations. Making my way to the field, I found this flower. After setting up on tripod, the sun hid behind a cloud, providing nice shadow free lighting for a few minutes.

Working the scene, I made some other images after the sun re-appeared. There was slight breeze that was blowing, so several images were discarded due to movement, leaving this one

For this image, I raised the camera to capture this image with the sunflowers receding into the distance.

Most of the sunflowers face the morning sun, so most of the images are backlit with the afternoon sun. However, I did found one sunflower that faced the setting sun.

There was one spot where I found a group of 5 sunflowers, with petals and leaves backlit by the sun.

For a different viewpoint, I re-positioned the camera so that the sun was directly behind the sunflower and re-shot to create this image.

Soon after, the sun dipped behind a cloud, put the sunflowers into the shade. I switched lenses and made a series if images looking down the alley behind these flowers.

After the sun dipped behind the horizon, I found another sunflower, now in the shade. The main stem of a sunflower is covered by hairs. Also, the leaves have a really interesting ribs and texture that I really like to capture.

In this final image, I had to make a sunset shot looking towards the Rocky Mountains. Since we were close to the airport, several aircraft were taking off at sunset. I waited until on airplane had entered the frame for this image.

This was a great day to experience the sunflowers, even though it was another hot summer’s day.