Photographer in Colorado

Last month, I made a trip to the eastern plains of Colorado. I headed out through Kiowa and Calhan. Then I turned into a dirt road to see where this would lead. After several miles, the road came to an end, close to an abandoned house on the prairie. This looked interesting. Earlier in the day, the sky was overcast. After clearing, the blue skies were out again with some interesting clouds in the distance.

Prairie At End Of 48 Road

I decided to explore the area around this abandoned ranch house.

Abandoned House On The Prairie

The house had interesting windows on the second floor level. This house did not actually have a second floor. The windows were probably used to vent the upper areas of the house to cool the house during the hot summers.

Empty Window And Chimney

Over the years, the roof  tiles had fallen off. All that remained were the nails protruding from the sub-roof.

Roof, Nails And Chimney

The interior of the house had deteriorated over the years. This exposed the construction materials that were used in earlier times. Walls and ceilings were clad using lath and plaster methods. This was the common method used prior to dry wall or sheet rock.

Inside The Abandoned Prairie House

After a couple of hours, it was time to head back home. Driving back, I stopped at this windmill.

Windmill And Water

This scene reminded me of similar scenes that exist in the Orange Free State in South Africa.

During May, I tried some new and old iPhone apps. While at a meeting, we were discussing making photographs. During this time, I made one image of my jeans, that showed the texture and folds at the knee. I was intrigued by form and texture. This was given the ShockMyPic treatment.

Shocked Jeans

A new app that I have been trying out is Camera Art FX. The cartoon book preset helped me to create this colorful image.

Cartoon Book Door

Another Camera Art FX is the sketch preset. Here is my rendition of our garage siding with bench.

Sketch Garage Siding

Angela and I attended an organic gardening presentation. Here is another image that I made through an opening in the back of chair. The presenter is at the left.

Looking Through The Chair

Picture Effect Magic is another app. The diffuse effect created an an interesting rendition of the roof and gutter against a clear blue sky.

Diffused Roof And Gutter

There is an interesting app called Slit Scan, that scans an image from the iPhone camera. While moving the phone, the scan line continues to travel down. Our dining chair was the subject of this image. The waves were result of moving the phone laterally. When done, I liked the Shocked rendition.

Slit Scanned Chair

While waiting to collect plants from the organic gardening presentation, I made an image of one of the tomato plants. With shock treatment, this produced this great image.

Shocked Tomato Plant

Reading Outdoor Photographer magazine, Tony Sweet wrote an article about iPhone photography. Pic Grunger was one app that he recommended. This was one image that I made of the lampshades in our local Panda Express takeout. Here is the Bleech Spill effect.

Three Aged Lamp Shades

Enjoy.

Last night I hooked up again with the Illuminate Workshops Meetup Group downtown. We met in Capitol Hill, close to the Governor’s Mansion, just before the sunset. I was parked a half-mile from the meeting venue. Meandering down, I walked down the alley behind Le Central (a restaurant serving French cuisine). The alley was adorned with this fabulous mural.

Le Central Alley Mural

Nearby was this dumpster with some interesting graffitti.

Dumpster Duck

Rounding the corner, I had arrived at the meeting venue, where several photographers were awaiting the arrival of the group leader (Efrain). After a briefing, we headed towards Lincoln St. At the bus shelter was this one individual bopping away to his music, oblivious to the photogs behind him.

Waiting For The Bus

As the sun set behind the city buildings, sodium street lamps became alive. These two parking meters, looking like a pair of Curvy Ladies, basked in the orange street lights.

Two Curvy Ladies

Heading north, I passed in front of Le Central restaurant. The neon light provided some illumination to the scene. It was just too much to handle, so I decided on a series of images for HDR processing. After processing, I felt this image was more effective with a monochrome conversion as well. The light from the neon, and the distant street lights, brought out the texture of the sacks.

Le Central

The patio out front has a patterned fence, adorned in red, white and blue – also the colors of the French flag.

Patterned Fence

The north wall of the restaurant has two glass faced cases containing wine bottles.

Who Drank My Wine

Continuing north along Lincoln, I passed by a couple of night clubs. Across the street is the Beauvallon apartment complex. The lights from the night club across the street cast a purple light on the unlit walls of the building.

Purple And White

Rounding the corner on Tenth Ave, I passed this wall containing glass tiles. Lighting from the inside of this building made interesting patterns in the glass.

Wall Of Glass Tiles

It was about time to head back to the meeting location at the end of the Meetup. In contrast to the bright lights along Lincoln, this street was dark, with a occasional brightly lit doorways.  This door cast shadow rings on the ground.

Shadow Rings

Parking in the this area of Denver can difficult to find. However, I did find one brightly lit parking garage that was totally empty. The dynamic range of light was just to much, so I made several images to create an HDR rendition.

Empty Parking Garage

Nearby was another parking lot that was empty. Now which way was I going? To the left or to the right?

Arrow Left Or Arrow Right

Finally, I arrived at Governor’s Tavern, meeting some stragglers from the Meetup group. We enjoyed a beer before heading home after a fun evening.

Last Saturday, the Denver Photowalk Group held a Meetup at the Castle Rock Fire Station. This Meetup was organized by Tim Tonge, who was a leader of one of the many Kelby Worldwide Photowalks in July last year. I was greeted by Tim on arrival, who gave a brief overview of the event and any procedures to follow should a call occur. Several engines were located in the fire house. This engine was setup with doors wide open.

Fire Engine, Doors Open

Parked outside was a second engine. The sky was full of storm clouds this Saturday afternoon. The clouds were reflected in the windshield.

Ladder And Reflections

Here is a pair of boots… almost ready to wear!

Boots, Ready To Wear

The recreation room is located on one side of the firehouse. No one was playing at this table!

Fire Station Recreation Room

Some more reflections from another windshield.

Cloud Reflections In The Windshield

Tim has arranged Devon to be our firefighter model for the afternoon. Having pulled out the fire hose, Devon slung it over one shoulder. That’s 50 feet of hose that he is carrying.

Devon, With Fire Hose No 2

Devon was chatting with us, but found it difficult to keep a straight face with a bunch of photographers out there!

Devon, With Fire Hose No 3

Finally, I made an image of the three flagstaffs outside the station.

Flags, Flying In The Wind

Thank you, Tim, for organizing this event. Everyone had a great time shooting. You may find more photographs at the Meetup website.

On Saturday night, I joined the Illuminate Workshops Meetup Group. The group met at the terrace of the Museum of Nature and Science, overlooking City Park. On arrival at about 7pm, I was met with a sight of a bunch of 20 something photographers with tripods and gear! The event was planned as a night shoot, but we started well before the sun set over the mountains. Entering the terrace, the sun cast a shadow of the tree on the west facing wall of the museum.

Shadows From A Setting Sun, DMNS

The colors of the setting sun were reflected in the windows that form the west wall of the museum. Soon after making this image, I got to meet Efrain Cruz who headed up the meetup group.

Reflections In The Museum Windows

After the sun went down, I headed down to a park bench below the terrace. I used a red LED flashlight to paint the bench and surrounds with light during the 30 second exposure.

Park Bench With Light Painting

Looking back at the museum, I noticed that the stairways cast shadows on the opaque window panels.

Lighted Stairways Inside The Museum

I attempted some light painting of one of the trees in the park. After tripping the shutter, I ran over to the tree, painting with light from a powerful flashlight. Unfortunately, the exposure was not long enough so I did not get good results — need to experiment more with flashlights next time. Meanwhile, the rest of the groups were doing some interesting effects with flashlights and LED lights in the park. Here is one guy, positively radiating blue sparks!

Blue Sparks

Later, we experimented with gelled strobes. While Armando was flashing this tree with red gels, I managed to sneak an ungelled strobe on the left side of the tree.

Light Painted Tree In City Park

Some of the other images may be found on the Meetup group website. I then headed down to the lake in City Park, where the lights were reflecting off the still water. I included the rocks in the foreground that were lit from yellow street lights that lined the lake.

Reflections Of The City Lights

Heading back towards the museum, I met up with Efrain again. Several folks had already left and others were heading out. Efrain asked me to stay for a portrait shoot. He set up two speedlites on light stands. After setting up, he captured images of me and several other group members. Maybe these will be posted to the Meetup website? I headed back to the parking lot, passing the underground parking garage. Located here are life size models of dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs Entering The Parking Garage

Finally, the front entrance of the museum was nicely lit. The stainless steel columns were lined up nicely catching a highlight from the parking lot lights. So I setup again to make the final image of the evening before heading home.

Entrance To The Museum

What a fun evening, making new images and getting to meet some new photographers in the Denver area.

On Thursday night (March 17), St Paddy’s Day, I gave a presentation on “High Dynamic Range (HDR) Imaging” to the Colorado Nature Camera Club. My presentation notes may be found on the Files page. The presentation was based on my 2008 version.

As I discovered again last night, Murphy really does exist. I picked the 2008 version instead of the updated 2010 version. This is a repeat of the last presentation. Those Leprechaun’s really had a party yesterday. Well, I should have worn green!

The files page has both versions. I have also created HDR processing notes. This document details the workflow steps that I use with Lightroom, Photomatix and Photoshop when processing HDR images. This document may also be found on the Files page. Enjoy.

Last weekend, Carey and I visited the Denver Botanic Gardens for a photo shoot. We spent the afternoon in the hothouses. We entered the hothouses, and after chatting for a while, we got to work. I set up close to this hibiscus plant with a huge red flower — certainly the largest hibiscus flower that I have seen. On looking through the view finder, I was greeted by… Fog! My lens was cold and became a magnet for the humid air. This was my first time photographing inside the hothouse so I was not prepared for the environment.

I was amused to discover my misfortune, so I decided to turned this to my advantage. This was the perfect soft focus filter! After wiping the front element, I was left with enough moisture to give a nice soft focus image.

Hibiscus With Soft Focus

Meanwhile, Carey had made many more images while I was wiping the lens and waiting for the moisture to clear. The hothouse had several cycad plants. I found this one in an area where there was very little air movement. This image was created from several images on different focus planes; these were then merged into a single image with Helicon. This black and white rendition gives the appearance of a metallic plant.

Botanic Garden Cycad

In the orchid house, several water features are present. One plant with purple and blue leaves was located on the edge of the water features. A Lensbaby allowed me to create an image where a select group of leaves was in focus, with the rest of the image blurred.

Purple And Blue Leaves

This violet phaelanopsis orchid got similar treatment. My dad used to grow orchids as a hobby. This hothouse reminded me of the collection that he had amassed in the years before he passed away. I could recognize many of the species that he had collected.

Violet Phaelanopsis Orchid

One of the ponds was stocked with Khoi fish. While making images of the bubbles on the surface of the pond, one of the Knoi swam towards the waterfall. A long exposure showed the flowing water. The Khoi was swimming around, rendered as a patch of orange.

Khoi Under The Waterfall

Finally, we headed to another hothouse, where several tulips and amaryllis were flowering, well ahead of their normal springtime season. This tulip caught my attention with the stripe running up towards the top left of the flower.

Pink Tulip

Soon after, Carey and I escaped the heat of the hothouses to take in the crisp Colorado air. Some of Carey’s images from this photoshoot may be found here:

• http://www.pbase.com/image/132959746
• http://www.pbase.com/image/133014545

We enjoyed the shoot, and discussed some locations for a future shoot before heading out.