Photographer in Colorado

Leaving Reykyavik, I stopped at the geothermal power generating station for a tour.

Hydrothermal Cooling Towers

Iceland is volcanic by nature, with boulders covered by bright green moss.

Volcanic Rock And Moss

Along the roadside, the grasses and bushes were in their autumn colors.

Autumn Colors Along Roadside

Iceland has thousands of waterfalls. Many are a short trip from the main circle route.

Skogafoss, Waterfalls

Finally, I arrived at Vik at the end of a busy day.

This morning I arrived in a rain-soaked Reykyavik for a vacation in Iceland. It was a welcome change to see rain after several weeks of dry weather in Colorado. After arriving in the city, I checked into the hostel that is located near the harbor. Soon afterwards, I took a walk around the city center. At the harbor, I encountered this rain soaked bench.

Wet Harbor Bench, Reykyavik

Reykyavik has many colorful houses. I waited for lady pushing pram with her baby to enter the scene, to complete the composition.

Mother And Orange House

Further along the street, this bar window had a line of six identical figurines lined up along the ledge.

Six Figurines

Along one street were several bicycle racks. The incomplete reflection of the wheel in the puddle made this image for me!

Bicycle Reflection, Reykyavik

In the harbor area, I encountered another bright red bicycle. This bike was part of the advertisement for a bike rental business located in the harbor.

Red Bicycle, Reykyavik Harbor

There a many bright colorful murals in Reykyavik. This chicken was just waiting to be captured!

Reykyavik Chicken Mural

That’s all from Iceland for now.

For three or four weeks every fall, our aspen forests in Colorado wear their fall colors before the leaves drop. Yesterday I made a trip down Shrine Pass. On a steep east-facing slope, these were the first aspen that are encountered.  Most aspen trees that I have photographed in previous years were on relatively flat ground. At this location, the steep slope allows for an interesting composition.

Aspen Forest, Shrine Pass

Climbing up the slope, I made several images. The following image was made close to the edge of the aspen forest, adjacent to the pine forest. I like the way the backlit leaves against the pine forest.

Aspen, Backlit By Afternoon Sun

Most aspen trees have branches near their crowns. Lower down the branches break leaving behind triangular shaped scars. Here is one where some moss has settled on the scar.

Aspen Trunk Scar

Looking down Shrine Pass we can see the magnificent fall colors on the east facing slope.

Fall Colors At Shrine Pass

Earlier in the summer I made a similar image from this location — under rainy, overcast skies with green forests.

Boulder And Aspen, Shrine Pass

Looking towards the sun, the aspen trees light up with cheerful yellow and green leaves. I included the backlit foreground grasses to complement the trees.

Aspen And Grasses

I made my way down forest road 709, where it meets the creek. Here is the view back across the bridge over the creek.

Forest Road 709

The light on the aspen trees only lasted a few minutes longer before the slope fell into the shadows.

September is the time that the aspen trees adopt their fall colors for a few weeks before shedding their leaves. It is also a time that I enjoy the experience of the bright yellow foliage against the blue Colorado skies. With all the dry weather and lack of rain this year, I did not know how the aspen would look. Yesterday, I made a trip to the mountains, stopping at Boreas Pass. This pass was the site of the old narrow gauge railroad that connected Como and Breckenridge in years gone by. This is one of the first locations that usually gets a good covering of the modern “Colorado Gold”.

At the first location where I stopped, I setup below the aspen trees. Most aspen trees change colors from green to yellow. However, there are a few trees that change to an orange/red color. I selected this location because of the orange/red tree among the green and gold.

Aspen On Boreas Pass

After making a few images at this location, I made my way back down towards Como. Descending the pass, I noticed this island of aspen among the pines in the forest. The dry weather did not disappoint!

Aspen And Pine Forest, Como

From here I made my way back home by way of Guanella Pass. The road up the pass follows beside Geneva Creek. I stopped at a location where I have previously made images at some waterfalls.

White Waterfall At Geneva Creek

In previous images that I made in later winter and spring, there was a greater volume of water flowing over the falls. With the low water levels, the rocks exposed pale colors, almost white, in the rocks. I had not noticed these pale colors at these falls before.

Geneva Creek Waterfall

Proceeding up the pass, I stopped at a parking lot located beside the creek. As I approached the creek, the fall colors were reflected in the creek.

Aspen Reflections In Geneva Creek

Here is a second image at this spot.

Boulders And Fall Colors In Geneva Creek

This light did not last for long as the sun dropped below the clouds and the mountain ridge to the west of the creek.

Our meetup group, Illuminate Workshops, met at Memorial Park in Colorado Springs last night. The event was the Balloon Glo, which is held every Labor Day weekend, as part of the Colorado Balloon Classic. The “Glo” takes place after sunset, where the balloons are  inflated but tethered so that they do not ascend. The balloons are lit from within by burning gas.

The balloons are first partially inflated by electric fans while the balloon is laid out on the ground. Only then can the gas burners be used to fully inflate the balloon. The heat from these burners is really hot — I could feel the heat from where I was standing. I like the expression on the lady helping to keep the balloon open in the image below!

Feeling The Heat

Here we see a nearby balloon, almost fully inflated.

Inflating The Balloon

Once all the balloons have inflated, their burners were shut off, except for an occasional burst to keep the balloon aloft. After this, there is a countdown so that all balloons are light up to glow simultaneously.

Three Balloons

The countdown was repeated many times during the evening so the crowds could enjoy the huge balloons lighting up Memorial Park. The following balloon “Sprit of Colorado”, gives the title for this post. At the back, one can see a cowboy riding his bronco. The couple in the foreground seem to be enjoying the event.

Spirit Of Colorado

Towards the end of the event, the balloons were deflated. While this was in progress, I made an images of the balloons against the night sky. I was chatting with Efrain Cruz, our host for the Meetup Group, about a light painting workshop that Ben Willmore held at Creative Live last weekend. Efrain proceeded to light paint the basket in the balloon below. While busy, I made an image using the light he played on the scene.

Balloons And The Night Sky

After the event we headed back towards the parking lot. I made this image of the deflated cowboy balloon. The lights in the background were from bungee jumpers, mainly kids, who had lots of fun at the event.

Feeling Deflated

Earlier in the evening, the crowds were lining up to do globe riding in these Zorbs. The two guys were just preparing to deflate the Zorbs before packing up for the night. I managed to make this image of two Zorbs before they deflated the nearest one.

Packing Up The Zorb

Here is another image with the Zorb backlit by the park lights.

Zorb At The Park

I made this image of the interior of the Zorb, where the inner and outer shells are maintained in position by the plastic rods.

Ab Zorbed

That completes this week’s set of images. It was quite an experience going up close to these hot air balloons. This was the first balloon event that I had attended and also the first that I photographed.

Yesterday afternoon I made a trip to Foxton, along the South Platte River. The river was flowing strongly down the valley. It was good to hear the soothing sound of  water rushing past. After parking at the roadside parking lot, I took a walk along the riverbank. During previous visits to this spot, I never noticed the crescent shape of the nearer of these two boulders. I made several exposures, but this image at a slow shutter speed best captured the motion of the flowing water.

Boulders In The Platte River

Turning back towards the parking lot, the sun caught the peaks of Cathedral Spires. There are definite signs that autumn is slowly approaching. Several bushes had traces of fall colors beginning to show. Yellowing leaves may be seen on some of the bushes in the image below. Sumac bushes can look quite spectacular during the fall — several sumac bushes in this area have already have bright red leaves.

Cathedral Spires And Platte River

There is one spot at the roadside where the granite boulders have been vertically stacked as a result of erosion and weathering over the millennia. Over the years I have made several attempts at making images of this boulder stack. This is one of the more successful attempts; the diffuse overhead light revealed the shape and texture of the boulders.

Stacked Boulders Along The Platte River

From the parking lot, a trail leads up to Cathedral Spires through the pine forest. I headed up the trail until reaching a huge boulder. Climbing to the top of the boulder reveals a view of the forest with the spires peeking from the top. Using a wide-angle lens allowed me to include a large portion of the boulder at the base.

Cathedral Spires

This was the last image that I made before the clouds cast shadows on the spires with the setting sun.

This weekend we headed to North Park for a birding trip. After arriving at Walden in the late afternoon, we set up the tent in the campsite. We had enough time remaining to head over to the Walden Reservoir before the sun went down. Here there were some of the species that we wished to see, including Western Grebes (carrying their young on their backs).

On returning to the campsite, conditions were perfect for some photography of the night skies. After some test shots, I discovered that exposures longer than 10 seconds resulted in star trails starting to record. Shooting at f/2.8 for 10 seconds, the ISO had to be raised to 3200. This is the first successful image with these settings.

Night Sky Over North Park

After some more test shots in different areas of the sky, I oriented the camera into a landscape format to capture some more images that included the Milky Way (the galaxy in which we are located).

Night Sky Over North Park, No 2

Several images captured the flashing beacons from overflying aircraft! After these reasonably successful images, I will definitely be making more attempts to capture the night sky.