Photographer in Colorado

Yaay… Last night, I got to see the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights. After two overcast nights, we had a clear night. The lights were faint but visible.

Northern Lights, Laugavatn

This morning I arrived at Reykjavik for another trip to Iceland. As usual the weather in Iceland changes every 5 minutes. Today it was overcast and rainy… but I did get a glimpse of blue skies and sunshine on distant mountains. Along the shore is a magnificent sculpture “Sun Warrior” that I captured in this image.

Sun Warrior, Reykjavik

I took a walk through the harbor, looking for a late breakfast. While there, I noticed clouds of spray emanating from bow thrusters of a ship on the spilway.

Spray From Waterjet

That got me interested. On the other side, a dock worker was doing some high-pressure waterjet cleaning.

Waterjet Cleaning The Lundey

This ship took my interest because of the unusual shape for the bow.

Lundey On Slipway

In the back street was an interesting bike rack made of welded chain links with colorful seating in the background.

Bike Rack at Harbor

Stopping at Cafe Haiti, I got a bite to eat before returning back to car. Passing the bike rack again, I made some blurred images of the bike rack — by de-focusing the lens. This exaggerated all the colors.

Blurred Bike Rack

Close to bike rack, I found some unusual seating. Two stainless steel propeller blades attached to the wall.

Propeller Blade Seating

That completes some initial images before looking for the hostel.

This afternoon, I headed over to the Highline Canal, close to the Kent Denver School. Having spent most of the day indoors, I had not noticed the smoky skies from the California wildfires. While walking around the lake below the canal, one could see the haze surrounding the mountains.

Front Range Mountains In A Hazy Sky

Walking around the lake, I made some images with ICM (intentional camera movement). This included some horizontal and vertical blurs. The following image was a vertical blur of the reflections of the trees on the far shore of the lake.

Lake Reflections, Intentional Blur

As I completed the circular walk around the lake, the sun sank down in the sky. From the Highline Canal trail, I made this image of the sun setting behind the clouds. The smoky sky intensified the red colors of the sunset.

Sun Setting In A Smoky Sky

Pan to the left, the sun was excluded from the following image. This shows the pink, orange and purple colors of the sunset.

Front Range Mountains In A Smoky Sunset Sky

Moving around, I found a pine tree that would make a candidate for a silhouette.

Pine Tree Silhouette At Sunset

First Friday art walk was on again for Labor Day weekend. Apart from enjoying the artwork and the crowds of people, I enjoy the opportunity to do street photography during the art walks. This month, the street was not closed to traffic, but there were fewer people than during previous months; maybe because of other events taking place? While upstairs in the Grace Gallery, I made this image looking down from the second floor window. After adjusting for the color temperature of the street lighting, the skies turned a deep blue.

Galleries Under Blue Skies

This month, several bands were busy playing in the street. I made several images of this band. With the low light levels, their faces and bodies were blurred. This was my favorite image that showed just enough detail of their faces but movement of their hands and instruments.

Street Band At Art Walk

The Point Gallery, always has interesting artwork in the main entrance. But I also like to go the back and up the stairs. Below the stairs were various pieces of abstract pictures on the walls, where I captured this guy admiring one of the pieces.

Admiring Artwork, Under Stairs

After visiting several galleries, I headed back on the far side of the street. I stopped by Jiggs Barber Shop to see what would develop. As people were walking by, I started making images of the blurred motions.

Jiggs Barber Shop, Santa Fe

After several images, I waited until the crowds had passed to capture the following image of art walkers outside the shop.

Art Walkers, Pausing By Jiggs

Jiggs was closed for business for the night. But nearby was another hairdressers that was a hive of activity, where a guy was having his haircut. I liked the mural on the left wall that is looking down on the customers.

Getting A Haircut, Santa Fe

Enjoy.

While in the parking garage for the gym this week, I found some abstract images. Plastic sheets, covering some construction work was blowing in the wind. I wanted to slow down the movement of the plastic. So this image image was made the the “Slow Shutter” app.

Parking Garage Plastic Abstract

While the wind continued to blow the plastic sheet, I made the following image.

Plastic, Blowing In The Wind

The plastic was opaque enough to get some soft-focus effects. This image was made from the other side of the plastic looking in.

Cone And Mysterious Lights

Leaving the gym today, I made my way into the parking garage. This sun was streaming at just the right angle to cast my shadow across the garage floor.

Shadows In The Parking Garage

Returning to the plastic sheets, I found the kissing silhouettes! What could this be?

Kissing, Silhouette

It turned out the the kissing couple were the top of a traffic cone!

Kissing, Traffic Cone

Several wildfires were burning in the western states (California, Oregon, Washington) this week. The sunsets have been really amazing with intense red and oranges from the smoke. On Friday, I headed to a park that had some elevation above power lines to capture the sunset. This was a park that I discovered that day — Kunming Park. This park used to be called Rosedale Park, but was renamed when Kunming became a “Sister City”. At the park there are three boulders that were imported from Kunming, China. The orange light from the sunset really enhanced the color of the boulders.

Kunming Park Boulders

About this time, several people had arrived at the park, mainly locals, to enjoy the sunset at the end of the work week. In the following image, I captured the sun as it was about to set below the mountains behind the tree.

Sun Setting, Kunming Park

Panning towards the south, away from the sun, the orange was more muted. Also, the layering of the mountain ranges and clouds was more distinct.

Smoky Sunset, Kunming Park, No 1

The park had some interesting steps, with an S-curve, that creates a leads into the image.

Curved Steps Kunming Park

When the sun dropped below the mountains, the orange color of the sky became more intense, as can be seen in the image below.

Smoky Sunset, Kunming Park, No 2

I zoomed in to capture the cloud bank that was hanging above the mountains.

Cloud Bank Above Mountains, At Sunset

I waited, watched and experienced the sunset. Finally, after the sun had dropped further down, the underside of the clouds were lit by the orange sun beams.

Last Rays Of The Sunset Catching Clouds

A few minutes later, the colors faded as the sun disappeared well below the horizon.

Last Sunday, the Colorado Photo Festival continued with a workshop program. Several workshops were offered. I chose the Guanella Pass hosted by Stephen Weaver. Seven of us traveled from Golden to Georgetown by van and headed up the pass. We stopped at one location before reaching the summit. Then we headed down to a meadow that had a variety of different wildflower species. I made to following image of a pair of asters located in the shade of willow bushes. The sun grazed the top of the willow bush to light up the flowers.

Two Asters, Guanella Pass

We spent a couple of hours making images in the meadow before heading down Duck Creek. Crossing the creek, I found a location where algae formed a nice tasty brown scum on a pond in the slow flowing creek.

Algae Scum In Duck Creek

We made our way back up towards the parking lot. Looking over the the west side of the pass, I made this image of the distant grassy mountain top. I included the ridge with willows and pine trees as the foreground for the image below. There were two elk grazing in the meadow at the lower left corner.

Late Afternoon Skies Over Guanella Pass

We moved over the the east side parking lot for some late afternoon snack before continuing with some more photography. We headed down to the lake where the plan was to later catch the sunset. The clouds had built up on the east side of the pass. In this image Mount Bierstadt is the peak on the right, with the Sawtooth Ridge on the left of the peak.

Clouds Over Mount Bierstadt And Sawtooth

We made our way to the lake shore. In this image, I captured the reflections of Mount Bierstadt behind the grasses at shore.

Reflections Of Mount Bierstadt

Here is another image looking across the lake to the south of the pass.

Lake Below Mount Bierstadt

Finally we moved to a mound on the eastern shore of the lake. As the sun dipped down below the peaks in the west, the clouds were lit by red light of sunset.

Sunset Over Guanella Pass

Soon after, we packed up and headed back to the van for the return trip to Golden.