Fall Out 1

Fall has been as unusual as the rest of the year. After a cooler, wetter summer than normal, fall has been slow to arrive. Even though we had a surprise visit from winter with about an inch of snow a little over a week ago.

Where were the fall colors? Everything was staying green. Then, almost overnight, colors started popping out everywhere. One weekend out in the hills was solid green. Then it started changing in turbo mode. One week later we were deep into color!

So I decided I better go hiking and shooting. I'm guessing with this sudden appearance, it may disappear just as quickly.

Tromping off the main trails a ways got me back to a nice rocky overlook with a lot of colorful trees below.

Lots of leaves - on what? A still section of a stream. They are all just floating there, around a rock in the center. Most of the leaves are still on the trees, but considering how fast they are changing, maybe not for long.

Lots of colorful aspens either yellow or orange-ish everywhere. There were still areas where the trees were totally green, but most were either fully changed or somewhere between green and yellow.

The day was like summer - up to around 80, almost no breeze and clear almost all day. Finally had a few clouds float through in the later afternoon. This was near the end of the day, time to head home.

If the weather holds, I'll head out again next weekend to a different spot, see how things look there!

Picture-esque

On a vacation trip. Lots of miles of empty, empty landscape to drive through.

But there were some nice clouds, and then I thought "Hey, I should snap a few of these clouds while I'm driving in HDR mode!"

So I did! This one is one of the better ones. Its a little out of focus, but with the HDR effect it makes a nice artsy looking shot of a otherwise kind of plain rolling prairie.

Sonic Boom

Last night was July 4th. And I went out to capture some of it again in the camera.

Took the new camera and the older DSLR. Both were shooting at the same time, running off the same remote. Most of the pictures I'm using here came from the DSLR, two from the new camera.

Fireworks is always a lot of luck, but I got some interesting shots. Played with focus on some of the shots as you'll see.

 A big purple flower burst to kick this set of photos off.

Kind of a neat little circular shape with layers to it.

Some focus adjustment during exposure on this big red flowery burst.

A collection of shots going off at once.

Got a bunch of little 'starburst' effects in this one.

More playing with focus. You can see that I managed to move the camera slightly while adjusting focus (it was on a tripod), but I still like all the colors and effects going on in this one. Crazy colorful.

The finale. Something new this year - all those little light bursts in the center, didn't create a lot of visual effect, but they made a MASSIVE amount of noise, and they were rapid-fire non-stop for maybe 20 seconds. It was a real 'blast' of an ending. It wasn't very windy, and afterwards the smoke settled to the ground like a fog. That smelled like burnt powder. Not a real long show, but a pretty impressive one for sure.

That's all the fireworks for now. Have to come up with something new to try next time.

Welcome to The Machine

Today was Superday, the annual big day of kids events, music, food, etc in town. And as always, I go mostly just for the car show. Used the new camera. A nice warm sunny day with a breeze but no storms, after a week of bad weather so that was nice.

I took quite a few closeups of cars/details rather than all full body shots, as those can often be more interesting. Some I did very little to, others got Photoshopped a bit more.

Starting off with a pretty rare car - a 1970 AMC Rebel Machine in standard red/white/blue color. A very low production car, with a lot of horsepower. Almost stock except for the wheels. A pretty neat and unique musclecar.

The fender badge from a first generation Ford Mustang convertible. Apparently only 50 Mustangs were made for the Rocky Mountain region with this 'High Country Special' designation. So that makes this a really rare car.

The front fender of an early Corvette, with all the neat little details.

Part of the hood scoop on a nice old Dodge Challenger in a bright metallic orange paint.

A full shot of an old-school looking hot rod, a mid-50s Buick. Very nicely detailed.

A shiny V8 emblem on the front of an old Ford coupe.

A early 70's Corvette Stingray emblem, with a lot of Photoshop. Many of these photos had to have some work done to them because it was so bright out, and everything is so reflective I could see myself in many of the photos. Which I didn't really want!

And finally, with any car show photos, I have to include a DHCBWOCHO (Dramatic High Contrast Black & White Old Car Hood Ornament) if there are any to be found. There really wasn't anything very unique as I'd hoped. But I did a couple anyway!

A 1964 Plymouth Sport Fury. Left the color on the emblem itself. The car was bronze colored.

A 1955 Chevy Bel Air coupe. This car was light green.

That's all for the car show. But coming up soon - July 4th and some fireworks!

Trampin' for the So(u)l

Went out for a hike today, on the summer solstice. Temps in upper 70s-low 80s, medium humidity, overcast to kinda cloudy to partly cloudy to almost clear. A rain sprinkle. Some wind, no wind, some gusty wind.

The weather was kinda all over. Not surprising I guess - it's been an unusual year for weather, and has been cooler and wetter than normal by a noticeable amount, as I think much of the country has also experienced.

As for hiking, it also means more bugs! I used my sunscreen/bug repellent combo. Worked mostly, couple mosquitoes were pretty persistent. Took along the new camera for some shots in the field.

Not much for wildlife sightings. Though I did run across this little guy while having my lunch. A marmot I believe.

Of course I had to play with the extreme HDR again. Another wild sky shot!

Looking for a snack. One thing the wetter weather has brought out is wildflowers everywhere. The insects must be happy this year. Following - even more flower photos!

A big white flowering plant.

Tons of these yellow flowers to be found. A lot of big dandelions also.

Nice purple flower with spikes. Saw quite a few of these also. The yellow flower above was probably the most common sight everywhere I went today.

One other side effect of the wet year - the trails in some areas were super wet gumbo muddy. Might have to let that dry out a little. If it stops raining. Then maybe there'll be a few less bugs too.