Photographer in Colorado

Last weekend was another working weekend. During the afternoon, I took a break from work to visit Harlequin Plaza — about a five minute walk from the office. This is one of the sites for Museum of Outdoor Art exhibits in the area. There are several statues with a theatrical theme. These statues are distinctive because they are black in color and wear shiny golden colored masks. This one has a humongous nose.

I Like Your Nose

One of the statues is playing a horn, that is set against the blue sky.

Horn In The Sky

Here is a shiny mask.

Shiny Mask

The sun was setting in the sky while the air became much colder. Heading back to the office, there is a ditch that drains water away from the laws and parking lot. The sun picked out the orange branches of the bushes.

Drainage Ditch At Sunset

At one spot, water had accumulated in a pool, where the leafless tree was reflected. All these images were made with a Lensbaby. This is a unique lens that has one sweet spot where the focus is sharp. The sharpness falls off rapidly into a blur from here to the edges. The position of the sweet spot can be adjusted within the image.

Reflection In The Ditch

Outside the office are planters that reflect the light of the setting sun.

Planter In The Setting Sun

Usually we are accustomed to experiencing the builder and the planters as being white in color. However, the camera captures the building in the setting light that is more yellow or orange.

The last two weeks have been overload at work. On Saturday, I took a break from the office desk to enjoy the great afternoon while waiting our deployment process to complete. With camera in hand, I headed out of the office. The Cascades building across the road have several clumps of grasses planted in the flower beds.

Autumn Grasses

The low afternoon sun provided a nice backlight for the grasses. During autumn, these grasses take on a golden color.

Golden Grass

I made my way up to Samson Park, where the sun lit up the polyhedral shelter.

Luminous Polyhedron

Entering the shelter, the translucent faces took on some of the color of the deep blue sky.

White Star

Several lamp posts light the path that runs through the park. The white globes of the lights stand out against the blue sky.

Samson Park Lighting

At this point I switched to a Lensbaby. One feature of Samson Park is the “Mohawk Wind Sculpture” that I photographed in a previous post “Fall Colors At Samson Park“. This allowed me to capture an abstract image of the sculpture.

Mohawk Wind Sculpture Abstract

One of the sculptures in the park depicts a couple of lovers huddled on a park bench. Here the lady is in a state of eternal bliss.

Sculpture, In Bliss

XCelEnergy have been busy in the street installing new cabling or upgrading existing power distribution cables over the last few months. There was a construction crew busy this weekend too. A few weeks ago they completed construction that included this manhole cover that I pass everyday. The red stripe makes this feature difficult to ignore.

Energy Manhole

Returning back to the office, I noticed this array of brightly colored valves that are used to supply water to fire trucks in the event of fires.

Red Valves

Finally, it was back to the office to check on the deployment of the application. Entering the building, these trees were silhouetted against the blue sky.

Office Window Reflections

After checking on the successful deployment, it was home time!

Today is Thanksgiving day. We had friends around to share the day. Here are Stephen, Nicky, Chris, Angela and Jerry.

Thanksgiving Guests

Stephen recently graduated from Law School at Denver University.

Stephen

Jerry is a long-time hiking companion of our daughter, Susan.

Jerry

Here is Angela after her fill of turkey and wine!

Angela

The images of Stephen, Jerry and Angela were made with a remote flash that was set up on the cabinet above; the flash was directed up at the ceiling.

After reading David Hobby’s post on Strobist, I decided to make some images of the day. Here is the turkey ready to go into the oven.

Thanksgiving Turkey - Before

After our guests arrived, I took the turkey out of the oven.

Thanksgiving Turkey - Cooked

Here are the remains after everyone had their fill.

Thanksgiving Turkey - Remains

We opened a bottle of red and white wine to accompany the meal. After finishing my glass of red, I made this image shooting through the glass.

Through The Wine Glass

Jerry prepared a sweet potato pie with macadamia nuts. This was the pie before we started.

Sweet Potato Pie - Before

And here is a portion after we cut slices.

Sweet Potato Pie - After

Happy Thanksgiving all.

This last week we have had wintry weather. Monday started with a light snow storm. As I arrived at the light rail station, I could not help but notice this lady with a colorful umbrella. I chose to make use for the colors as the main subject of the image.

Lady With Colorful Umbrella

Later in the week, we had several windy days. At Samson Park, the wind blew the heads of these flowers. It was far too windy to capture an image the showed detail in the flower against the blue background. So I decided to create several images with vertical blur to accent the movement of all elements in the image. This was the image that best captured the motion of the flower head.

Blowing In The Wind

At the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, it appeared that some gremlin had spilled water!

Spilt Water At The Mad Hatter's Tea Party

This was the first time that I had noticed that the flower beds had been laid out as a chess board.

Samson Park Chess Board

This weekend was the Rocky Mountain Software Symposium in Denver. While driving to the conference center on Saturday morning, the sun was rising behind the low cloud bank. I exited the highway at the Tech Center to head the monument. This monument is surrounded by several flagstaffs. At night, the monument and flags are lit by several colored lights. On this morning, I was lucky enough to capture an image with the sun rising behind the cloud bank. A few seconds later the cloud bank thickened to hide the sun completely.

Foggy Sunrise At The Tech Center

The flagstaffs usually have the same decorative flag on each staff; these flags are changed frequently. Currently, there is a blue wintry theme to the flags. The floodlights were still lit as I moved around the monument. Here we can see the red lights reflecting off the monument.

DTC Monument And Flags

One staff always carries Old Glory, flying in the wind.

Old Glory And Foggy Sunrise

Soon it was time to make my way to the conference center to attend the first session.

Last weekend, I returned from a short vacation to Utah and Arizona. Work has also been busy, so this post is a little late. I made the trip to Moab, stopping at Cisco during a late afternoon storm. After camping, I headed up to Arches National Park early the following morning. The cottonwood trees in Courthouse Wash had taken on their fall colors — a vibrant yellow. I set up away from the park road to capture the high altitude clouds with the sandstone skyline in the distance.

Arches Fall Sunrise

Later in the day I made my way towards Escalante. After passing through Hanksville, I spotted this abandoned concrete truck at the roadside. It seems to be covered with graffiti from a previous election.

Vote No Concrete Truck

In late afternoon, I headed towards Devil’s Garden that is located along 50 mile road. This is a dirt road that rapidly degrades into a bone-jarring experience as one drives further along. Devil’s Garden has several sandstone hoodoos. The hoodoo at the left edge always reminds me of a statue with a huge nose!

Devil's Garden Hoodoos

Whilst working the area, I encountered another group of photographers attending a workshop led by Jack Dykinga. I have long admired Jack’s work and introduced myself. Jack asked whether I was a pro photographer. I said “No, but I do make some print sales”. To which he joked that I was “hurting his business”! After chatting for a while, Jack setup a tripod for a night photo session under Metate Arch.

The canyons around Escalante are reknown for an abundance of slot canyons. The following morning, I took a hike into Zebra slot — this slot has distinctive stripes in the canyon walls. It had not rained in the area that day, so I was assured that there would not be any flash floods in the canyon. This is something to be constantly aware of when hiking slots. Soon after entering Zebra slot, I discovered that the canyon floor was flooded. Bummer! I never did get to those stripes, but here is a view of the canyon floor.

Flooded Zebra Slot Canyon, Escalante

That afternoon, I arrived at Zion National Park. I entered the park via the east entrance that follows along Pine Creek. Here may be found a rock outcrop with a small tree growing from the top. I have see this tree be referred to as a “funny little tree”. This does not do justice to this unusual tree that I have named “Serious Big Tree At Zion”.

Serious Big Tree At Zion, No 2

Whilst working this area, I met another photographer from a group that was out from New Jersey. I am not sure whether this was another group attending a workshop. I never did get to find out. This guy noticed my shoes, and proceeded to talk about shoes for the next five minutes!

One feature of Zion during the fall are maple trees. This variety does not grow very tall and has small leaves. During this trip, the maples glowed a magnificent red. Here is a small cottonwood that contrasts nicely with the red maples.

Cottonwood And Maple In Pine Creek

This is the typical site that greets you when you climb down into the creek bed.

Maples In Pine Creek, Zion

During the time at Zion, I hiked into The Subway, meeting a couple of other photographers — CW and Brett — and taking my time to explore Zion. After spending three nights camping at Zion, I made my way to Page, AZ. I settled into a cheap hotel room, where I could have a shower later (there are no shower facilities in the Zion campsites).

Then I headed out to the Paria Rimrock area, where there are several hoodoos. I was planning to make photographs looking down upon the hoodoos. This requires a drive along a dirt road (that was closed several miles further than I needed to travel) and a 40 minute hike to the cliff edge. After arriving, I setup tripod and then opened my backpack to discover no camera! Earlier in the day, I had taken the camera out to prepare for quick access when required. I had forgotten and the camera got tangled up the a coat! Well that ended that opportunity — the sun had set by the time I got back to the truck. I decided to may my way to the hoodoos from the base for some night shots.

Light Painting Of Toadstool Hoodoo

Some time ago, I found a cheap and powerful “million candlepower” flashlight with rechargeable batteries for some night photography. So I decided to take this opportunity to light up Toadstool Hoodoo by light painting. This is the first occasion that I attempting light painting. However, the experience did allow me to make half a dozen or so images before the batteries discharged! I used the flashlight to light up the prominent hoodoo against the darkening night sky. Not to shabby for a first attempt.

Two weeks ago, I posted some infra red photographs at Samson Park. This week, let’s see how the park looks with regular falls colors. Walking down from light rail in the morning, I was greeted by the fall colors against the blue sky.

Fall Colors, Greenwood Village

After work, I stopped off at Samson Park before the sun set. This summer, a dome-like sculpture constructed from vines was completed. The park is home to several rabbits that scampered everywhere as I strolled through. However, the rabbit below was quite happy munching away at the grass while I was making photographs.

Vines With Rabbit

Walking around the pond, I reached the black fence at the southern end.

Black Fence At Samson Park

The hedge of burning bushes have turned to the burning red fall color. The Ciber buiding was reflected in the pond in the light of the setting sun. I used the burning bushes to frame the building’s reflection.

Ciber Reflection In Samson Park

The last rays of the sun lit the dome and the grass at its base. These were reflected in the still surface of the pond.

Dome Reflection

There is an interesting wind sculpture that moves as it catches a breeze. Here it takes the appearance of a mohawk. I like the way the sun is reflecting off the vanes.

Mohawk Wind Sculpture

The sun was almost on the horizon. I laid down on the ground under the dome. I groveled around until the sun was obscured by the vines to form a silhouette as the sun was setting.

Vine Silhouette, Samson Park

Last weekend I visited Red Rocks park. There are several spots among the rolling hills in the park where sumac bushes may be found. Around this time of year, sumac leaves turn a burning red. Many times, in previous years, either I missed the optimum color or the weather was bad. Near the entrance to the park, I parked and took a walk along the road. At the roadside, I was greeted by these fall colors.

Fall Colors At Redrocks

Further up the road, I noticed a field of red. This day was cloudy with the sun coming out periodically. When the sun came out, the sumac glowed red in the sunlight. I got down low so that the red sumac could fill the frame.

Field Of Sumac At Redrocks

I found another single sumac growing at the roadside. These leaves were burning red in the sunlight.

Sumac, "On Fire"

Close by, I found some muted fall colors on one of the bushes.

Autumn Leaves

Soon after, I headed towards the northern entrance to the park. Red Rocks gets its name from the red sandstones that are the most distinctive feature of the park. I stopped by one tree that was growing in front of the sandstone cliffs. This tree had the full range of colors from greens and yellows to red.

Fall Colors At Redrocks, No 2

It is difficult to include more of the sandstone backdrop at this location — there is an ugly power line that is located just above this tree. Finally, here is another view of this same tree. This time with a green backdrop from another tree that had not started to turn.

Fall Colors At Redrocks, No 3