Photographer in Colorado

Saturday saw the two of us down by the Platte River. Angela headed south on her recently acquired bike. I headed north towards Overland Pond. This pond is set back from the Platte River by a few hundred feet, and is popular with anglers attempting to catch some fish — the fish are probably too smart to be caught in this location. Being backlit, I decided to give this image the HDR (or High Dynamic Range Treatment), so that I could capture the full range of tones.

Overland Pond Reflections hdr

I picked picked out some more detail of the reflections here.

Overland Pond Reflection

Walking around to the far side, nearest the river, I found this composition of the reflections of branches arching out over the pond.

Overland Pond Reflection, No 2

Continuing around the lake, I encountered a Night Heron standing on a sunken branch. Close by was a Great Blue Heron, hiding in the bushes at the shore. A beaver was also to be found swimming out towards the center of the pond. I captured these reflections of branches that had fallen into the pond.

Reflections In The Pond

There was a lot of greenery along the banks of the Platte River and around the pond. I had to find some more colors to reduce the monotony! Walking along the Platte River, the footpath passed under this bridge. Here was a Canada goose, who was sitting at the side of the path, tormenting passers-by with hissing. I setup under the bridge to capture another HDR image that reveals the range of tones under the bridge and along the river banks.

Platte River Bridge

The sun was getting very low in the sky, hiding behind the distant clouds as it headed down behind the mountains. Beside the footpath is Sante Fe Drive. Here is located an RV dealership and a billboard announcing “Coaster-Rific”. With the huge range of tones at sunset in the scene, this image got another HDR treatment.

Coaster-Rific Lakeside Sunset

If you want to find more information on HDR, you can look on the Naturescapes website, Trey Radcliffe’s HDR Tutorial and the Photomatix site. Also, search Flickr for more HDR images.

Last weekend was July 4 weekend, when we celebrate our Independence from England. This day commemorates the Declaration of Independence way back in 1776. In Denver, the Cherry Creek Arts Festival is held close to this weekend every year. After Angela returned from work on Saturday, we headed to the festival. After visiting many booths, we took a break to rest our tired feet behind this artist’s colorful booth — there were 230 artists exhibiting this year. The artists work in many different media, including painting, photography, sculpture, jewelry, woodwork and fiber. The lady in this booth was exhibiting woven rugs and mats.

Red Artist Booth

There always seems to be a storm when we visit the arts festival. On this day the weather was no exception and usually provides welcome relief from the heat of the day — but probably creates havoc for the artists. The street lights were illuminated automatically as the skies darkened.

Cherry Creek Street Lamp And Storm

After resting, we continued to browse through the artwork. The sky provided a dark backdrop to this booth.

Custom Floral And Storm

Continuing on, there was a party in full force at “Canvas and Cocktails“.  This is a group painting session led by an artist. The leader guides the remaining artists by creating the same image on canvas, giving tips on how to paint.

Canvas And Cocktails

Outside one of the planter’s was already decked with the Stars and Stripes to celebrate the upcoming Independence Day.

Ready For Independence Day

The streets at Cherry Creek are closed to traffic for the duration of the festival to make way for the artists booths, food stages and music stages. This sign announces for all to see.

Alley Closed For The Festival

During the last two weeks, I made extensive use of my bike during my daily commute. As we exited the festival, above a nearby doorway, a bike was mounted and illuminated with rope lights.

Bicycle Lights

This bike reminded me of my daily commute. An adjacent doorway announced a smile for all to see.

Brite Smile

As mentioned last week, I broke my truck while attempting maintenance. This provided an opportunity to ride the bike and take a walk. What a concept! On Saturday, a storm passed through accompanied with welcome rain showers. After the storm cleared, I strolled out for a fast-food dinner. The tail-end of the passing storm contained mammatus clouds with a rainbow that formed a complete arch. I captured this image near one end of the rainbow with my iPhone. Later, I applied the ShockMyPic app that I have been trying out recently.

Mammatus Storm Clouds And Rainbow

On my return from fast-food, I passed by this Chevy truck. It looks like the painted hood has suffered from some heat damage.

Chevy Truck Grill

Here is another image of this same truck. The original image was not as sharp as I would like — probably a result of the iPhone auto-focus. However, after the GlowMe app helped to improve the image.

Glowing Chevy Truck

Here is one puddle of water that also received some shocking treatment.

Puddle After The Storm

As the sun was setting, the clouds behind this house were lit up. The burnt out highlights are compromise caused by auto-exposure.

House After The Storm

The “shock” treatment helped to improve this image.

This week, it seems that I have got ahead of the calendar again — it is still week 25. Here are some different images made with an iPhone. While having breakfast on Saturday, I took out my iPhone to make an image of my favorite coffee cup.

Favorite Coffee Cup

To echo Chase Jarvis, “The best camera is the one with you”. Here is an unusual view of the underside of the saucer sitting on the patio table.

Under The Saucer

This glass plate was a recent home for some muffins, before being liberated by breakfast! Here is another view of the patio table with the glass plate. The short focal length of the lens and the small image sensor gives a huge depth of field.

Glass Plate On Table

The apps on the iPhone, allow some creative processing to be done. Here is that glass plate with a few remaining crumbs from recently consumed muffins.

Glass Plate

Here is a “Shocked” variation that was created with ShockMyPic. The app’s help screen calls this “coherence enhancing shockfiltering”. This gives the appearance of image created with paint brush strokes with a large paintbrush.

Shocked Glass Plate

Here is another treatment done with GlowMe. This app performs edge detection and does coloring. With the right choice of subject, the app will render an attractive colorful image.

Glowing Glass Plate

After finishing breakfast, I resumed my task of replacing oil lines on the truck. Unfortunately I damaged a critical component that rendered the truck immobile for now. That is another story.

Today we watched the World Cup match between USA and England that ended in a 1-1 draw – Go USA!. Following the match, we headed to the Annual Summer Market held by the Art Students League of Denver.  Many artists exhibit their work for sale at this event. Our daughter, Nicola, also attends classes here regularly. She publishes her exploits on her blog Plum2Paint. During the night and this morning we had several inches of rain, so we did not know what to expect at the market.

Along the way, we met Marygael. Angela thought she may be in a hazmat suit! But no, there were bees “swarming” in the neighborhood, according to one of the residents. She had arrived to remove the bees.

Marygael

Here is the tree that was wrapped in bees.

Wrapped By The Bees

Marygael proceeded to give us interesting information about bees. She is a member of the Bee Keeping Society. You can find more information at DenverBee.org. The bees had wrapped around the tree due to the cold weather — they were most probably looking for a suitable place to setup a hive. Here is the vacuum cleaner with hoses that is used to recover the bees.

Vacuum Cleaner And Hoses

Marygael attached the hood and donned a pair of gloves.

Marygael Suiting Up

Earlier this week, she had cleared out the bees from speakers at the Sting concert at Red Rocks Amphitheater, where she needed to use the small hose. Here, she removed the small hose and proceeded to vacuum the bees with the larger diameter hose.

Vacuuming The Bees

After completing the operation, Marygael recovered two of the bees; a worker and a drone. The drone is the larger of the two bees and is a male that fertilizes females — they do not have a stinger. The workers are female bees and do have stings.

Drone And Worker

The bees were vacuumed into the vacuum cleaner. Marygael opened the box to reveal the bees, safely sucked into their temporary home.

Bees Safely Stowed

There are an estimated 14,000 bees here that Marygael will relocate near Fort Collins. We said goodbye to Marygael and proceeded to view the artwork and meet the artists at the market.

Last Saturday, I was looking for the spare set of car keys — looked all over the house but could not find them. So all that pile of empty boxes and other stuff in the basement got my attention. Maybe they are somewhere around there? After sorting the stuff out, most of it went into the recycle bins. But still no keys. I got the camera bag and headed up to Mount Evans, the closest 14’er to Denver. Also, the highest paved road in the US.

By the time I got to Mount Evans, storm clouds had moved in. There were still snowbanks at the side of the road with interesting textures that were picked out by the mountain light. I got out of the truck and proceeded to hike back to the snowbank. Along the way, I was distracted by the reflections of the clouds in Lincoln Lake, a few hundred feet below the road. The clouds were moving from right to left, reflecting off the deep dark blue of the water.

Cloud Reflections In Lincoln Lake

The skies were filled with amazing atmospherics. A gap in the clouds allowed the sun to shine on the city — that’s Denver in the distance.

That's Denver In The Distance

Back to the snowbanks… The snow was gradually melting, forming long laminar streams of water running off the snow. This was one of the more interesting images that I managed to capture.

Mountain Snow Melt

Back towards the summit, the storm clouds had been building up, with patches of blue sky. That white line near the bottom of the image is the route that the road takes up the mountain, accompanied by a snowbank.

Distant Storm At Mount Evans

I proceeded up to Summit Lake, which was still partially covered by ice. There were few open patches of water. I maneuvered around to an open patch to pick off reflections from the clouds in the blue sky and waited until the evening breeze calm down, to capture the golden reflections from the approaching sunset.

Cloud Reflections In Summit Lake

By this time is was getting late. I did manage to capture this image of the sunset on the back of Mount Evans. The low angle of the sun at this elevation allowed for some golden red light to reflect off the storm clouds. We don’t often see the deep reds of the sunset in Denver, because the mountains obscure the sun before we get the red colors when the sun sets.

Sunset Behind Mount Evans

It would be about an hour to drive back home, delayed by construction work. Highway 6 was closed for construction of a bridge.

After leaving Corfe, we arrived at Weymouth to discover that we had the wrong destination for the youth hostel. The hostel was not scheduled to open until the following day. Realizing our error, we had dinner and then proceeded to the hostel at Lulworth cove. The next morning, I made my way over the fields and the ridge that separates the hostel from the ocean. Looking down from the ridge, one can admire the view of the eastern arm of the cove. In centuries gone by, this cove was popular with smugglers!

To the left of this image is a fence that demarcates the boundaries of an army firing range. Flags were flying to indicate that the area is off limits to hikers.

Lulworth Cove

Returning to the hostel, we had breakfast and then set out for the day. We headed to Lulworth Cove and then hiked to Durdle Door. There are some strange names for various landmarks and villages in England! Looking through “the door”, one can see the headland of Portland in the distance.

Durdle Door

Later that evening, we enjoyed another dinner at one of the local pubs. After dinner, we headed outside. “These Chess Pieces Are Not Toys” proclaimed the sign on the wall behind the chess board.

These Chess Pieces Are Not Toys

These tables had been vacated by earlier visitors to the pub that were lit by outdoor lighting.

Outside The Pub

We headed down to the cove passing the chess pieces again.

More Chess Pieces

At the cove, we watched some folks launching some miniature hot air balloons before turning in for the night.