Photographer in Colorado

The climber on our garden fence still has plenty of dried leaves hanging from the branches. Yesterday, this gave me the opportunity to try some macro shots with focus-stacking. When photographing outdoors, a slight breeze can create big issues when making a single image. After making several unsuccessful images outdoors, I decided to bring some of the leaves indoors. I created a set with a black background and lit the leaves with a speedlite and shoot-through umbrella.

Dried Leaves

I shot three images, focusing on the nearest point on the leaf, the furthest point of the leaf and a middle point. The three images were stacked with Helicon. I then converted the color image to black and white for the image above.

Snow was in the weather forecast for a White Christmas this year. This Christmas morning we were greeted with a few inches of snow during the night. Gazing out the window, one of our bushes had accumulated snow on the remains of dried flowers. These looked like snow caps on the end of every branch!

Snow Caps

Here is another image of the snow caps.

Snow Caps, No 2

During the next few hours, the sky cleared and the warmth of the sun melted the snow. Later in the afternoon, we visited our neighbor Chris, where she had prepared a meal that we all enjoyed. A couple of bottles of wine and lots of laughter made for a Merry Christmas!

Yesterday I returned home after completing a trip that included Death Valley and Zion. After leaving Page in the rain, it soon started to snow. Then there was a section of overcast weather to Farmington. The rest of the journey to Alamosa was in snow and blizzards. After staying the night in Alamosa, I made an image of my truck in the parking lot. The entire read of the truck was coated with 2 inches of snow.

Snow Covered Truck

Passing Mount Blanca, a blanket of cloud was depositing fresh snow on the mountain.

Mount Blanca Under Cloud

When I drove through Fort Garland, I passed Hit-R-Mis. Stopping here I mad this image at the front of the store.

Hit R Mis

Here is another image of the Trading Post.

Hit R Mis Trading Post

Continuing on through Walsenburg, I was greeted by this happy snowman, delivering a happy message outside April’s Attic.

Happy Snowman, April’s Attic

This morning I was greeted by a snow storm. This was the view from the hotel room.

After leaving St George, I pulled over the highway for a break. Exploring some Joshua trees, I found Santa.

He seemed very out of place!

This afternoon, I headed out to Foxton, along the Platte River. At this time of the year, the sun setting on Cathedral Spires creates some interesting reflections in the river.

Reflections From Cathedral Spires

Working along the river, I found some interesting rocks at the river bank. Here there were reflections from a rock face at the river bank.

Rocks In The South Platte River

At several locations along the river, the spray from the rushing water formed ice sculptures on the rocks. This was one interesting ice formation with several icicles hanging from the ice.

Ice Sculpture In The Platte River

Close up, these icicles look really interesting, especially when rendered in black and white.

Icicles

On the far bank, was another ice sculpture in a dark shaded area of the river. The low light level required a long exposure of almost 1/2 a second. This allowed the flowing water to render with smooth white trails.

Ice And Flowing Water

Heading back towards the truck, the setting sun cast some interesting colors on these clouds.

Colorful Clouds At Sunset

Yesterday the city was covered with a huge overcast cloud cover. There was a thin sliver of blue sky to the west over the mountains. This would be ideal conditions for a spectacular sunset. Having missed the sunset the previous day, I planned to take this opportunity to capture this sunset. I headed to the park at Harvard Gulch — this is the closest location where there is open space nearby.

Harvard Gulch Sunset No 2

The sunlight streaming in from the left cast long shadows and showed the texture of the ball park in this black and white image.

Harvard Gulch Sunset No 1

As the sun sank below the mountains, the colors changed outlining the clouds with a yellow light.

Harvard Gulch Sunset No 3

As the sun sank lower, the light changed to an orange color.

Harvard Gulch Sunset No 4

And a deeper orange.

Harvard Gulch Sunset No 5

Walking to work this week, I noticed these red umbrellas at Tokyo Joe’s.

Red Umbrellas

The next day, I noticed that I pass by the color “red” all the way to work. So I decided, let’s make red a project for this week’s post. At the DU Light Rail station, the back panel of the bench has red.

Bench At DU Station

Red or rather a darker red (maroon) is the theme color of the DU station. Here we see another bench in red.

Red Bench At DU Station

Road crews have been busy in Greenwood Village these last few weeks. So there are still road signs and cone zones along the road.

Flagger And Cone

Off course, there are plenty of markings in the sidewalk. Is this a sign of still more construction in the near future?

Sidewalk Markings

Then there is the familiar bus stop, with a cone zone forming a line into the distance along the road.

Bus Stop

Returning home, I passed by this red ribbon tied around an aspen tree at Tuscany Plaza. While making this image, I showered by falling pieces of bark. A Downy Woodpecker (which has some red in its plumage), was busy pecking for insects above me!

Red Ribbon On Aspen Tree

At Tuscany Plaza, festive decorations had been installed during the day. So some green and even more red!

Red Ribbon 312

After reaching DU, I climbed the stairs in the parking garage. Here the familiar maroon theme in the parking garage.

Staircase With Red

Earlier in the week, Angela brought home a pot of Chrysanthemums. Of course, these had plenty of red to complement the yellow in the flowers!

Chrysanthemums, Red And Yellow

Yesterday afternoon we had a light snow storm. Last night, our bird bath froze over trapping some colorful leaves below the ice. This inspired me to create some variations from my initial iPhone image. My final variation was made by processing the image several times with Snapseed.

Iced Leaves, Variation No 3

Here is the original image that I used for these variations.

Iced Leaves

Examining this image, the color in the frozen leaves is barely noticeable. Let’s see how we can bring out the colors of the leaves. After conversion to a black and white image. the leaves became very indistinct. However, applying a red filter during the black and white conversion caused the leaves to glow.

Iced Leaves, Variation No 1

Let’s combine the original image with this black and white image. For this, I used Blender to blend the two images using a “color burn” blend mode. This  has the effect of increasing the contrast in the image.

Iced Leaves, Variation No 2

After seeing this image, I was inspired to pursue processing of the original image by increasing the color saturation in the leaves. After two rounds of processing of the original image with Snapseed, variation 3 resulted in the first image.