Photographer in Colorado

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.

This last weekend was the 2nd Annual Colorado Photography Festival. Saturday was the Symposium Day that had really interesting speakers and presentations. On Sunday, several workshops were held. I had signed up for the HDR Workshop run by Mark S Johnson. After a short classroom session at Auraria Campus, we headed for the Tivoli Center where we made our images. Later in the afternoon, we practiced HDR post-processing on some standard set of images.

The Tivoli Center is currently the home of the Students Union on Auraria Campus. This is historic building in the Denver metro area. In a past life this was the home of the Tivoli Brewery Company. Many artifacts and machinery from the past life as a brewery have been incorporated into the current building. The student lounge includes the steam-powered generator.

Tivoli Generator

Here is another view of the same room.

Empty Chairs, Boiler Room Lounge, Tivoli

Adjacent to the lounge is the boiler room and steam-powered machinery that is no longer in use.

Tivoli Boiler Room

We headed down to the basement where Sigi’s Cabaret is located. The bar was closed and empty of all liquid refreshments!

Winston Bar

Here is different view of the same bar counter.

Sigi’s Cabaret Bar Counter

Finally we headed up to the Adirondacks Room. This is located adjacent to the beautiful copper kettles that were used in the brewing process.

Adirondacks Copper Kettles, Tivoli

The Tivoli Center is a great venue for making images of cool historic artifacts as well as capturing textures of the floors and walls in the building. The workshop was a great help for capture and post-processing of HDR images. Thank you Mark for a great workshop.

We have these really great Cosmos plants in our garden. I have always loved these plants since I first encountered them in South Africa. A few years ago,  we planted a handful in a flower bed. Every year, I harvest the seeds for the next season. Now, they even seed themselves. Every year we have a bank of Cosmos plants that grow 5 to 6 feet tall and flower in the late summer.

After listening to a podcast on macro photography last weekend, I decided to try some different techniques. My favorite podcast is “The Candid Frame“. This is just the best photography podcast out there. The podcast that I listened was an interview with the photographer Mike Moats. You may also find this on iTunes.

Red Cosmos

Cosmos flowers come colors that range from white to pink to red and dark purple. This is one of the dark ones.

Red Cosmos, No 2

Most of our flowers are purple, pink or white. I often like to make flower images from the side, or backlit from below.

White Cosmos

Here is a backlit image.

White Backlit Cosmos

Some Cosmos flowers even have white petals with red tips, but I did not make any images of those. One of the other bushes that we have is the Blue Spirea. Every year these bushes hosts dozens of bees collecting nectar from the blue flowers.

Blue Spirea

There are at least three species of bees that are attracted to the blue flowers. This include the little indigenous green bees, the giant bumble bee and many of the common honey bees. Recently the general bee population has been distressed, so it is great that we support a small population here.

This last week, Angela and I had planned to be on vacation along the Niobara River in northern Nebraska. However, the wildfires in this area caused the trip to be canceled. We decided to do fly fishing in Gunnison. After spending three days in Gunnison, we stopped at Salida on the return journey home. After parking, I spotted a mural and was immediately attracted to make this image. It appeared that there were several products illustrated in this mural over the years.

“Refreshing”, Mural

As we made our way through the town center, I found these kayaks that had been strapped to the wall.

Nine Kayaks

While in Salida, we strolled along the Riverwalk. The Riverwalk is located along the west bank of the Arkansas River that flows through Salida. Outside the Public Service building is a colorful tree sculpture. I decided to gjve this the image the Simply HDR treatment.

Tree Sculpture

After strolling along the Riverwalk, we meandered around some stores. Inside a book store, was this colorful bookshelf.

Colorful Bookshelf

Angela motioned me the backyard located at the rear of the bookstore — she knew I could not resist making an image here.

Book Store Backyard

Across the street were several horse sculptures. For this image, I used Snapseed to convert the image to monochrome and added a frame.

Iron Horse

Also across the street was the fire station. I liked the reflection of E-114 in the water puddle on the concrete driveway. So E-114 got the Simply HDR treatment to enhance the reflection.

E-114

The trip to Gunnison was an enjoyable but unplanned vacation destination.

Yesterday we took a walk along the South Platte River to view some of the bird life. There were plenty of mallards and swallows, but fewer other species. We did manage to see a great blue heron and several night herons. At one spot, where we saw a night heron, we had stopped by a bush with some wildflowers. While making some images, I noticed that there were several bugs that had climbed into one of the flowers. In one clump of flowers, I had counted 9 bugs — too many to capture in one image.

Bug On Wildflower By Platte River

Here is another image given a black and white treatment with Snapseed.

Wildflower Near South Pliatte River

Further along were some thistles. The fine hairs were difficult to see in the original image, so I tried ShockMyPic, to render the hairs like paintbrush strokes.

“Shocked” Thistle Along The South Platte

Several milkweed plants grow close to the banks of the Platte River. Here I found a red bug crawling over one of seed pods.

Red Bug On Milkweed

I noticed another plant that had three seed pods. I converted this image to black and white to reveal the texture of the seed pods.

Milkweed By The South Platte

Later in the fall, these seed pods dry out and split open, releasing hundreds of seeds. These seeds are attached to very fine white hairs so they can be carried by the wind. I wonder whether the hot weather will cause the pods to open sooner this year.