Photographer in Colorado

This week Brad Paisley came to town for a concert at Fiddler’s Green. As usual his tour always has a half-dozen semis or more. As I walked down to work (in the white building at the back), a few semis were parked outside. This year his tour has some really cool, colorful murals.

Beat This Summer Tour

During the course of the day, these semis grew in number. One of my co-workers exclaimed that she had not seen so many semis for a concert! After work, I made a point of making images of these semis as I walked back to the light rail station. All images were made with a Fuji X-E1.

Brad Paisley Summer Tour

Another image of the rear of the seven trailers…

Seven Colorful Trailers

The semi tractors were equally stunning. Black with shiny chrome.

Seven Semi Tractors

All seven had the same rear-view mirrors so I positioned myself to make an image that draws attention to the mirrors. In the following image, I like the fleeting image of the lady walking behind.

Rear View Mirrors

Passing by Tuscany Plaza, that is across the road from Fiddler’s Green, this lady was deep in conversation.

Deep In Conversation

I decided to make another image looking down the patio of the building, just showing a hint of the action behind the pillars.

Behind The Pillars

Nearer the station, the sprinklers had been running earlier leaving puddles of water on the sidewalk. The station office block was reflected from these puddles.

Sidewalk Reflections

This was a very popular concert, as evidenced by the lines of people outside the venue and the streams of people making their way to Fiddler’s Green from the light rail station.

Monday morning started as an overcast day with low clouds and mist. Leaving the Light Rail station, I noticed the Ciber building with its head in the low clouds. Monday proved to be a fabulous day with many changes of weather throughout the day. On this day I had brought two cameras — a D-100 for infra-red images and a Fuji X-E1 for the remaining images.

Ciber Immersed In Low Cloud

Walking further along, I positioned myself to capture this image with the building poking out into the sky, just above the trees.

Low Cloud Above The Trees

The light that morning was really great so I stopped off at Samson Park. The light really created a great color contrast of the yellow flowers against the blue fence in the background.

Samson Park, Yellow And Blue

Over the years, I have made several images of the “Queen of Hearts”. This time I chose a different point of view from the side of the sculpture to show the brass hairpiece.

Queen Of Hearts, A Different View

The park is full of characters from “Alice”. Let’s join the Mad Hatter for his tea party.

Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, In The Mist

After work, I walked back to the station in the rain. By the time I reached the avenue of trees, the sun peeked out below the clouds to light up the trees. I made an infra-red image to capture the trees. In the background was a rainbow. This the first image that I have captured with a rainbow and infra-red.

Sun Breaking Out, With Rainbow

Continuing on, I liked the low angle of the sun that cast a light shadow behind the parking garage.

Behind The Parking Garage

At the Light Rail station, the low sun had cast long shadows from the fence on the wet pavement.

Light Rail Shadows And Fountain

Every year, about July 4th, the Arts Festival takes place at Cherry Creek. Today, I visited the festival to appreciate the art on display. While meandering through the streets, I passed this building that looks abandoned. The main entrance was boarded up. This image was processed with the Dramatic BW app to give it a more gritty look of abandoned.

Abandoned Building In Cherry Creek

Returning home, I had to cross 1st Avenue. While waiting for the busy traffic to pass, I noticed this bike, strewn with flowing in the flower bed.

Ornamental Bicycle Among Flowers

Nearby were several bikes, decorated in bright contrasty colors.

Bicycles, Racked Up

On the return trip, crossing Cherry Creek, the clouds had moved in. This was great because the overcast skies removed the harsh shadows along the creek. This image was processed with Tangled FX, to complement the swirling water flowing away downstream.

Cherry Creek, Swirling By

Monday night, I attended an HTML5 Meetup group in Lodo. As usual, I take the Light Rail to get there. Being late afternoon, I made several images on the way there. While waiting for a change of train… I made this image that shows reflections from an adjacent building.

Building Reflections, Downtown Denver

And another one…

Building Reflections, Downtown Denver, No 2

After reaching the final destination, I made my way on foot to Casselmans. Along the way there is one house that has grasses planted along the sidewalk.

Grasses On The Sidewalk, Lodo

Passing an alley, I found this dumpster… and chairs. Those look like really nice chairs that were abandoned in the alley.

Dumpster And Chairs In The Alley

All these images were made with the Fuji XE-1 and 18-55mm lens. I really enjoy shooting with this camera. These images have minimal processing in Lightroom before publishing here.

And here is my iMac…

This Is My iMac

Lodo has some really amazing murals in several alleys. The artists have chosen some really vibrant and saturated colors for many of these murals. The XE-1 has really done a great rendition of these colors.

Lodo Alley Mural

After the Meetup, when the sun had already set, I passed this mural in another alley. I included the lighted window in the image to provide some interest in the image below.

Lighted Window And Mural, Lodo

Eventually I arrived at the Light Rail station. A few minutes before the train arrived, I made this image the included the yellow pavement tiles and yellow sodium street lights. This was contrasted against the deep blue of the night sky.

29th Street Station At Night

That ended the fun for the evening!

Last weekend we visited the Botanic Gardens at Chatfield to see moth collecting in action. After arriving, I had the opportunity of making some images of the sunset.

Clouds At Sunset, Botanic Gardens

After the sun had set, we met Matt and David who would be showing how moths are captured. But first, I found this tree with yellow needles, contrasted against a bed of violet larkspurs in the background.

Tree And Larkspur, Botanic Gardens

The above images were made with a Fuji XE-1, with minimal post processing. We made our way over to the moth collecting site, where David (an entomologist) had setup a sheet lit by incandescent light to attract moths and insects. Here is David busy at work.

David, Entomologist, At Work

I could not get the flash to work on the Fuji — I had set the camera into “Silent Mode”, which disables the flash and the volume control. So, my iPhone was used for David’s image. It was educational to find out about how insects and moths are captured. We also learned much about “what bug is that?”.

Here are some more images from last Sunday’s Chalk Art Festival. This continue from the my last blog post. I found this imaging amusing. I wonder why the ballerinas were using iPads?

Ballerinas, With iPads

This lady on the bike was another amusing image.

Phone From Bicycle

A lot of work goes into creation of these images. Here these artists are taking a welcome break after all their hard work.

Independent Artists

The following work won the award for “Best of Show”.

Denver Beer Disk Jockey

The Grand Hyatt sponsored the artist to create the image of the monkey below. I just waited until a few spectators entered the scene so I could capture something different. I was fortunate that the two guys created the “YAT”!

Grand ..YAT.. Monkey

There was a lot of color with all the flowers in the planters downtown. This artist’s clothes matched the colors of the flowers.

Artist… And Color

Looking down Larimer Street, here are several images along the pavement, lined with crowds of spectators.

Larimer Street Chalk Art

I like this girl’s purple mohawk.

Purple Mohawk

There was also a 3-D image, that is visible when reflected from a mirrored surface.

3-D Chalk Art

I found the detail of all those legs far more visually interesting.

Long Legs

That’s all the images for this event. More information about the Chalk Art Festival may also be found here.

This last weekend was the annual Denver Chalk Art Festival along Larimer Street. On Sunday afternoon, I made a trip downtown. Last year, it was really hot and there was at least one rain shower that washed out some of the artist’s work. Images from last year’s festival may be found here. The weather was great on Sunday with some light overcast weather that made photography easy.

Something Independent

A couple of weeks ago, I ordered a Fuji XE-1. This is a retro rangefinder style camera with electronic viewfinder. This last week I have been making images to get used to this new camera. I have always been a left-eyed shooter with SLR’s for many years. Rangefinder cameras are designed for right-eyed shooters. This was the biggest adjustment that I had to make. Left-eyed shooting does have some advantages — check out Joe McNally’s blog for details.

The image quality from the XE-1 is astounding. Most images here were made with aperture priority auto exposure. These images have minimal post processing in Lightroom. “Something Independent” just has a contrast tweak. The RMCAD artist below, made in afternoon sunlight, has no adjustments!

RMCAD Chalk Artist At Work

Walking along Larimer Street, I made a few images of the artwork on the pavement. The artist below was was in the shadowed side for the street. The crowds in the distant right were in the sunny side of the street. Adjusting the Lightroom “Highlights” slider, toned down the potentially distracting bright highlights.

Artist’s Gaze

Mythica chose to make an image to honor Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn’s birthday was on Saturday. This was a spectacular image of Marilyn, with saturated pastel (or chalk) media. Mythica won an award for the best Color image.

“Marilyn” By Mythica

This artist was deeply immersed in this image.

LEG Artist At Work

Near the food vendors, a manikin was put out on display. Of course, this attracted a crowd of visitors and well-wishers (!) wanting to include him in a picture. This guy was no exception.

Greeting The Manikin

“The Great Gatsby” is currently showing on the movie circuit. This was the subject of the following chalk art.

Gatsby

Here are two of the artists having a discussion about their work.

Gatsby Artists

More images to follow…