Photographer in Colorado

Yesterday was the Worldwide Photowalk event. This is an annual event that was started by Scott Kelby. I registered with the Five Points photowalk that was arranged by Andy Johns. About a dozen photographers met at the “Coffee at the Point”, where the walk started at 8am. I have included some of the images that I made. More images may be found on my Flickr photostream here. Images from other photographers in our group may also be found here.

The Five Points neighborhood is very colorful, as can be seen in the following image of Sax Player mural, that adorns one of the historic buildings in the area.

Sax Player Mural, Five Points

I found this blue morning glory along the shaded side of the street.

Blue Morning Glory, Five Points

One of the murals, comprised a wave of mosaic tiles.

Mosaic Wave, Five Points

There where several embedded fractured mirrors that were included in the mural. In the following image, I positioned myself the capture reflections from the sunlit street.

Fractured Mirrors, Five Points

Here is another reflection of murals from the other side of the street.

Fractured Mural Reflections

Along the shady side of the street was one store with frosted windows. Behind the window were several jars containing various goodies! In the following image, I included reflections from the sunlit side of the street. That’s a reflection of me on the right side of the image.

Jars In The Frosted Window

Adjacent to a bike store, several tires were discarded in the alley.

Discarded Tires

Along one street, we passed some apartments with this line of satellite dishes. Couldn’t they just share one dish?

Couldn’t They Share One Dish?

For more images of this fun event, head over to the the Flickr page.

Last weekend, cold weather was forecast. Freezing weather usually this signals the end of the cosmos plants. This incited me to make some images of these fabulous plants. Fortunately, the temperatures did not plunge below freezing, so I managed to shoot these images over the course of 3 days.

It is always challenging making images of cosmos flowers, especially macro images. Flowers are grow from buds at the end of a long thin stem. The slightest breeze causes the flowers to move. During the course of making this images, there was a slight overcast and very little air disturbances — perfect conditions for making images.

Most of our plants are either white, red or pink. However, there are plenty of variations that have red and white coloring, as in the following image.

Red Cosmos

In this image, I captured a red cosmos flower before it was fully open.

Red Cosmos, No 2

Cosmos flowers are always difficult to capture because the leaves are so fine. This means that one has to find a decent background that is not busy.

White Cosmos

Looking through the variety of plants, I found this following flower having white petals, fringed with pink edges.

Pink And White Cosmos

Yesterday I made an image of a pink cosmos, but failed to notice an out of focus leave obscuring most of the flower.  Today the stamens had withered, so I had to find another pink flower that had opened earlier in the day.

Pink Cosmos

Leaving Skomer Island, we headed towards Little Haven, where we had breakfast. After breakfast, we took a walk through this quaint seaside village. I was fascinated by the pale blue color of this house, so I moved around to include the colorful umbrella in the image.

Main Street, Little Haven

Adjacent to the car park, was a boatyard. I meandered around to find the most colorful boat that happened to be a row-boat. I needed to find some colorful images to complement the greens of the Welsh countryside! This one seated eight rowers and one cox in the rear.

Row Boat, Little Haven

Soon afterwards, we headed north to the town of St. Davids, where we were to stay in a hostel for two nights. During the course of the day, clouds gradually moved in, which made for great hiking weather. We headed towards Whitesands beach. The ridge above the beach was covered with flowering heather. I captured this image, using the pointed boulder in a near-far composition.

Rock At Whitesands

Moving towards the cliff edge, I found the heather growing in the fractured rocks. This point is about 40-50 miles from the coast of Ireland. This would be just over the horizon in the following image.

Rock And Heather, Whitesands

We made our way back to the hostel for dinner and the evening. The following day, we headed in to St. Davids, where a cathedral is located. Adjacent to the cathedral are ruins of the “Bishop’s Palace”. This proved to be more interesting than the cathedral. The following image shows the elaborate purple and white checkerboard pattern that once adorned the main hall.

Bishop’s Palace At St Davids

We were looking for a post box to mail some postcards. I found this one right outside the palace. After mailing the cards, we headed towards the main street to do some shopping.

Post Box, St Davids

We headed back to the hostel that is located at the base of a hill. I climbed to hill to reach the cairn on the peak. The wind was really pumping at the peak. Fortunately the tripod kept my camera still in the howling wind.

View From Cairn, Whitesands

This was one of the last images that I made during our trip. The following morning we headed back to London, where we would spend the night with family before returning on our flight back to Denver. This was a great trip, that we enjoyed with Susan.

The next location for our trip was Skomer Island. We packed up from Marloes Sands and headed over to the harbor for a short boat trip to the island. While waiting for the boat to arrive, I made this image of Susan.

Susan At Skomer Island

During the 15-minute boat trip, I made this image of Susan and Angela as the boat was being bounced around by a large swell.

Susan And Angela On Boat Trip

After arrival at the island, we were given an introduction to the island before finding our rooms. Skomer Island is a bird sanctuary and a bird research facility that is some 700 acres in size. During the summer months, the island is home to many thousand birds. There is also a large year round population of several hundred rabbits. Soon after arrival, we took a short hike to the northern side of the island, where I made the following image of flowering heather.

Heather On Skomer Island

This is the lodge where we stayed. Solar collectors are installed on the roof, to provide energy that powers all electrical equipment in the buildings.

Lodge On Skomer Island

We were on the island for “Shearwater Week”! The island serves as a breeding ground for over 100,000 breeding pairs of Manx Shearwater birds. Eggs are laid in underground burrows. After the chicks hatch, parents fly several hundred miles to feeding grounds out at sea to gather food that is fed to chicks every second night. During the day, we got to see some chicks. Later that evening, we attended a presentation by some of the  staff that were conducting research into Sheawater birds. During the night, adult birds returned to the burrows to feed the chicks. We got to see a few of the adult birds and heard hundreds of birds calling out in the night.

For the last week in August, we traveled to England to meet our daughter Susan. After a day of travel, we arrived for a one night stay in London. The following day we headed to Wales. After passing through Swansea, we left the M4 and headed to the Gower peninsula, for a break from driving. We stopped at Penrice Castle Park and took a walk through the park. Susan and Angela headed up the path while I made to following image.

Path To Penrice Castle

The castle is located on the top of a hill that we climbed. In the past the castle was destroyed and is now in ruins; the walls are covered in bushes as nature takes its course.

Penrice Castle Ruins

From the castle walls, we looked down over the mansion situated in the park grounds. After climbing down, it soon began to drizzle. This was our signal to complete the journey! The remainder of the journey was in the rain.

Mansion At Penrice Castle

We stopped at Broad Haven for dinner and checked into the hostel at Marloes Sands later that night. During the night, it continued to rain and stopped for a short time in the morning.

We took this opportunity to walk down to the beach. Off course, the rain started again and continued for a few more hours! We headed back to the hostel so that we could dry off.

Rocks At Marloes Sands

As we headed back to the hostel along the cliff path, I stopped to make the following image of the beach while the the rain continued to fall.

Beach At Marloes Sands

During the afternoon, the weather cleared and we headed out to do some more exploration. We made our way to Dale, a coastal town a few miles away. We had some grocery shopping to get done before we enjoyed the sunny weather as sailors were packing up their boats for the weekend. I took a walk through one of the streets where I found these two flower boxes with bright red geraniums.

Geraniums At Dale

Last week, I headed out to Tower Road, where last year there was a huge field of sunflowers. No luck this year. Yesterday, late afternoon, I headed further east along I-70. Near the Watkins exit, I left the interstate. In the distance were fields of yellow that caught my attention, so I meandered through various roads to get there. As I walked along the roadside, I noticed one corn plant growing up among the sunflowers — a case of “pattern interrupted”!

Corn Among The Sunflowers

Most of the sunflowers face the rising sun, so I had the opportunity of shooting back-lighted flowers in the afternoon sunlight.

Backlit Sunflower

One of the flowers was side-lighted against a dark background. This was perfect for a black and white, monochrome conversion.

Single Sunflower

Walking carefully among the plants, I setup with a wide angle lens, and angled down to make this image that shows all the flowers facing east.

Field Of Sunflowers

The sunflowers were planted in rows, aligned east-west in this image. Shooting into the sun was going to be tough — the lens needs to be shaded to prevent flare spots. The lens already had a lens hood, but I had to shade the front of the lens with my hand to block the sun. I just love the all those flowers, with dark orange centers surrounded by yellow petals. In the distance were storm clouds, which added to the drama of this image.

Sunflowers And Distant Storm Clouds

With a long lens, I focused on the clump of sunflowers in the middle distance, so that they were peeking out behind the foreground flowers.

Sunflowers Peeking Out

I made several more images as the sun went down. After the sun disappeared below the horizon, the setting sun lighted up the clouds — pink against the blue sky. The grain elevator was also included to balance the composition in this image.

Sunflowers, After Sunset

While enjoying the sunflowers during the afternoon, I heard voices in the distance. Returning to the car, I found several cars parked along the roadside. Several visitors, some with school kids, had stopped nearby to enjoy these magnificent flowers.

Last Saturday our Meetup group had the August night shoot at Garland Park. This time we had light painting and sparks flying. After dark, we setup for this image of a fire wheel. The sparks are caused by glowing steel wool fragments.

Fire Wheel

Here is another image where we included an orb and light dancing! (on the right side).

Orb And Fire Wheel

Finally, we had a sombrero hat fire wheel, where the sparks fly horizontally.

Sombrero Hat Fire Wheel

After wards we did some light painting. Here is Diane with a light saber. She was moving on a swing in the kid’s playground, waving the light saber.

Diane With Light Saber

For more images, take a look at the Illuminate Workshops gallery on Meetup.com.