Photographer in Colorado

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…

For this week, I found some colorful images that I made over the last couple of weeks. My gym recently acquired some kettle bells. Walking past these, I was drawn to the color of these weights that were haphazardly left at the edge an exercise area. This image was processed with Simply HDR to add some gritty texture to the bells and flooring mat on which they were resting.

Colorful Kettle Bells

Returning home after work, I passed by Tokyo Joe’s where their outdoor tables were adorned with red umbrellas. The overcast afternoon light was great for this scene, providing a giant softbox with few harsh contrasty shadows. This image was given the tangled treatment with the Tangled FX app. This added nice bright highlights to the image.

Red Umbrellas

Near the Light rail station are these slick shiny chrome water valves with red handles. The image was processed with Snapseed, adding some more contrast to the shadows from the overcast weather.

Shiny Chrome Water Valves

While passing outside the building above, cleaners were busy sweeping the floor inside the lobby. The lobby also has towering yellow strip lights illuminating the lobby. Tangled FX was used to give a pencil sketch-like effect to this scene. Only after processing the image, I noticed the shadowed reflection of myself at the left edge of the image. I decide to leave this patch of brighter color in the image to add to the color.

Yellow Strip Lights

The Downtown Denver Arts Festival takes place every year over the Memorial Day weekend. This is my favorite art show in the area. We meandered around the booths admiring various works of art on display. At one booth, an artist had several sculptures on display. I liked the effect of the orange lines radiating from the orb.

Sculpture, Silver And Orange

Adjacent to the above was another silver sculpture of a vase. The orange reflection, from the sculpture above, was reflected in the vase. This is what drew me to make both these images.

Reflection Of Silver Sculpture

At a nearby booth, another artist had oil paintings on display. The following image is a tiny section of some detail of one of the paintings. I was intrigued with how the color was created in the oils. The colorful underlay was covered with a layer of blue paint. This was then scraped off to reveal the underlying colors.

Oil Painting Detail

After leaving the festival, we stopped off to dinner at a nearby restaurant. Angela recently bought a pair of black and fluorescent green Nike shoes. These look really cool!

Angela’s Cool Nikes

While waiting for food to be prepared, I made an image of one shoe. This was then given the Simply HDR treatment to add some texture and contrast to the image.

Spring eventually arrived for our tulips in the backyard. This year the tulips flowered about a month later than usual, just in time for Mother’s Day. Our yellow tulip got the “tangled” treatment with Tangled FX.

Tulip In The Backyard

I made one image of the red rose with the iPhone as close it could focus. There was still some distracting background around the flower. After cropping out the background, this was the result.

Tulip Stamens

Earlier in the week, I bought some fresh yellow and red roses from the store. After a couple of days, the flowers opened out in time for Mother’s Day. After experimenting with “Tangled FX” on other flowers, the results become a bit more predictable.

Soft Yellow Rose

Tangled FX does a great job of detecting the soft edges of the tips of the rose petals. In between the edges, this app creates some great abstract textures.

For the First Friday, we visited the Art Walk on Santa Fe. One gallery that we visited was located on the second floor. That Friday the sunset was spectacular. I could not resist making this image looking out across the roof of the adjacent buildings.

Roof And Sunset, Art Walk Studio

The view through the window allowed me to make a closeup image of the skylight. This was converted to black and white with the “Dramatic B&W” app on the iPhone.

Art Walk Skylight

Behind this studio was a deck with a pair of empty deck chairs.

Pair Of Deck Chairs

Those curved backs just cried out for a change in perspective. Moving close up, I used the chair back in the foreground to lead in to the image. I focused on the far chair. This is one of the rare cases when the iPhone does not give a huge depth of field. After converting to black and white with Snapseed, this was my result.

Art Walk Deck Chairs

For this Art Walk, we made visits to many second floor galleries. On leaving one of the galleries, I noted that the stairs made a nice lead in to the sidewalk down below. I positioned myself and waited for a passer by to enter the image space. Here I was fortunate to capture one young lady perfectly positioned in the doorway and texting on her phone.

Texting By The Door, Art Walk

Outside another studio were bunches of keys hanging from a door knob. This image was made under tungsten incandescent lighting that causes a yellow color cast. This image was processed with Snapseed, desaturating the colors to reduce the strong yellow cast.

Bunches Of Keys

During the previous week, the Light Rail “W” line began service from Denver, through Lakewood and on to Golden. As usual, rides were free for opening day. We joined the hoards of people exploring the new service. At the Broadway station, are walls of glass blocks. These always create interesting pictures with wild distortions caused by the thick uneven glass surfaces.

Looking Through The Glass Brick Wall

That week, Joe Bonamassa visited Denver and played at the Bellco Theater. This was a great concert by a guitarist that I have enjoyed listening to for several years. After the concert, I was waiting for Light Rail at the Convention Center. Looking up towards the roof, I noticed all the cables and lighting, that created strong lines through the image.

Convention Center Station Roof

This was a perfect candidate for processing with “Tangled FX”. During processing, bright highlights and contrasty lines are emphasized by spiky lines, as can be seen above.

Last night was the monthly Illuminate Workshops photowalk. This month we met outside East High School, just off Colfax Avenue. There is this huge red “E” outside the front entrance. Could not resist a really wide angle shot.

“E”, East High School

After a group shot, Efrain gave a quick briefing of the planned route and a tutorial for new participants to a night shoot. While the light levels were falling, I made some deliberate blur shots. At low light levels, it is easy to make blurs because long shutter speeds allow for camera movement to be captured.

Orange And Blue Blur

The East High School has some really neat architecture — built with stone and brick. There are a some other high schools in Denver with similar construction materials. The main entrance was lit with tungsten lighting, giving a yellow glow. The exterior was lit by daylight balanced lighting.

East High School Entrance

The building frontage was lit by daylight balanced lights that created some nice long shadows.

Bench At East High School

After making images at the school, I headed along Colfax, joining some other photogs along the way. At a bus shelter, I set my camera. and focused on the grill. I waited until most of the oncoming cars passed by before making this image that shows the out of focus background.

Bus Shelter Grill

Along Colfax, I made several images that may be found on the Meetup website. However, this one building had green leaves. This was complemented by the green dumpster.

Green Leaves And Dumpster