Photographer in Colorado

This afternoon I headed down to the Platte River. After parking the car, I crossed to the east side of the river, where an alley backs on to a park and trail. I brought along the ultra-wide lens to see whether I could find some fun images with lots of curves. This sign is a well-known feature along the alley — just right for old farts like me!

Old Farts, Pets, Kids, Slow Down

This lens exaggerates  straight lines, and further enhances curves. I found this colorful house along the alley.

Red House On The Alley

Further along the alley, orange-brown pine needles created some interesting patterns on the alley.

Pine Needle Patterns In The Alley

After spending a half -hour at this location, it started getting really cold! I headed back towards the bridge. In this image, I got low down — this allowed me to emphasize the curved of the arched bridge so more.

Footsteps In The Snow On The Arched Bridge

Next to the parking lot is a wide sweeping curve in the trail. The wide angle of the lens emphasis the curve and also allowed me to capture the full expanse of the curve.

Curved Trail Along The South Platte River

Off to a warmer location…

The snow that we received earlier this week has melted and today we had clear blue skies. This afternoon, I headed to the Five Points neighborhood, just east of downtown. Walking down Welton Street, I stopped by this building. Earlier this year the brick work was painted. The last time I was here, the walls were a beige-gray color. Now it is a striking red!

Mosaic Tiles, Five Points

Across the road was an empty building, with “No Trespassing” signs posted all around. I could not help stopping to make an image of the pink door.

Pink Door, Five Points

Deep Rock Water is located a few blocks away. Walking around the block, I noticed that the white water towers catching the late afternoon sunlight against the blue sky.

Deep Rock Water Towers

I found two wine glasses resting on a cabinet. I could not help making some images by shooting through the glass. Focusing on the foreground glass, the background was out of focus.

Wine Glasses, Five Points

Moving around to the other side of the glasses, I focused on the scene within the glass. The rest of the image was thrown out of focus.

Through The Looking Glass

The sun disappeared below the surrounding buildings, cast deep shade on the ground. However, these yellows stripes in the sky were still illuminated, with the moon in the distance.

Yellow Stripes In The Sky

I had the opportunity of processing some of my images from this last week in Utah. The trip to Moab is always more interesting when one takes takes the route through Cisco and the Colorado Riverway. There are always great reflections in the Colorado River.

Colorado Riverway Reflections

The fall colors arrive a little later than in Colorado. I made this image of a lone Cottonwood tree along the bank of the river.

Cottonwood Tree By The Colorado River

The next day, I headed to Hanksville and Caineville. At the base of the Blue Hills, Cottonwood Trees line the edge of a field of green.

Cottonwood Trees, Caineville Blue Hills

Entering Capitol Reef National Park, this tree was hugging the edge of the canyon.

Cottonwood Tree, Capitol Reef

Finally, I stopped by the Fremont River, to make some images of some more fall colors. Here the grasses along the river bank was backlit.

1686-0047-Grasses-Along-Fremont-River-Capitol-Reef

This week I headed to Zion National Park for the Fall Colors. The first day was a trip from Denver to Moab. The next day was a trip from Moab, through Hanksville, Escalante and Zion. The east entrance to Zion is at Mt Carmel Junction, where I stopped to take a break at the White Mountain Trading Post. The north wall of the store is covered with a long mural. I made this panorama with an iPhone, walking parallel to the the wall.

White Mountain Trading Post Mural, No 1

I made a second panorama further along the wall.

White Mountain Trading Post Mural, No 2

Today I made a trip to the Hopi Nation in Arizona. On the way back, I stopped at Coal Mine Mesa, where the following panorama was made near sunset.

Coal Mine Mesa Panorama

Last weekend, daylight savings came to an end. This meant that sunset arrived earlier in the day. Leaving work, I passed the orchids in the lobby of the our office building. With the low sun, these orchid flowers were lit up.

Three Office Orchid Flowers

This week we got our first snow of the season, so the leaves were rapidly falling from the trees. I captured this image of the oak leaves as they were changing from green to yellow to brown.

Oak Leaf In Fall Colors

Last night was First Friday Art Walk. This also marked the start of Art Week in Denver. After arriving on Santa Fe Blvd, I was greeted by this humongous bike, lit up outside one of the art galleries.

Humongous Art Walk Bike

This evening I found a lot of new and interesting exhibits. At one gallery, a videographer had set up camera to shoot a dancer with blue lights. The images were somehow projected back to a screen with a delay. Here is one image that I made of the dancer. The bright lights are from light sticks that she moved through the air while dancing.

Dancer In Blue, Art Walk

I made several images of the dancer. Just before she finished her set, I captured this interesting delayed repeated images of her movements.

Blue Dancer Movements

Finally, leaving this gallery, I noticed a tip jar, lit with red light in the darkened room.

Red Tip Jar

This morning, I spent a couple of hours in our backyard to capture some fall colors before the leaves drop. Our maple tree has made the transition to fall colors. This year, the fall colors arrived late, so the transition to fall colors was very rapid.

Maple Leaf, Fall Color

I managed to find some leaves that had a touch of green — mainly green spots — as in the following image.

Spotty Maple Leaves

We still have cosmos in flower, so I took the opportunity to make some images before these plants are hit with morning frosts.

Pink Cosmos, Before Fall Ends

Wandering around the cosmos, I found some roses still in flower.

Backyard Pink Rose

I was fascinated by the red-spots on this rose.

1678-0154-Pink-Rose-With-Red-Spots

The leaves from the following tree is usually one of the first to drop leaves. Today many of the leaves are still green, but I did find some that were turning. I was intrigued by the yellowing edges of the leaves.

1678-0174-Autumn-Leaves-Green-And-Yellow

This afternoon we headed to Red Rocks Park for a short hike to appreciate the Fall Colors and the great day’s weather. As we climbed up the trail, we met several cyclists on mountain bikes, making their way either up or down the trail. I made this image just before a couple of cyclists bikers entered the frame as they made their way up the trail.

Red Rocks Fall, No 1

The mountain slopes were covered with a wide variety of fall colors in the grasses and low bushes. Also, the recent rains this week added to the color of  the juniper trees.

Fall Colors On Mountain Slopes At Red Rocks

As the sun set, the long shadows crept up the hogs back. I looked for a boulder to add a foreground element in the following image.

View Towards The Hog Back

I noticed bright yellow lichen as we walked past this boulder. I included the pale blue grasses as foreground elements in this image.

Lichen Covered Boulder, Red Rocks

As we headed by the car, I noticed a patch of orange-red grasses.

Red Grasses At Red Rocks

As we headed back to the car, the full moon was rising in the east. Unfortunately, I did not make a decent image of the moon rise.