Brownies!

The warm and very dry year continued through the summer. More forest fires, more dry grass, etc.

This photo looks kinda like a big brownie. But its the bottom of a pond. Very dried out and cracked.

Normally, this large pond would have a foot or so of water standing in it throughout the whole year. This year its been bone dry for a long time. Normally muddy and gooey, I was able to walk around on it no problem. As hard as the walking trail. Guess we need a wet fall/winter/spring.

The Shadow People

Whoa, creepy!

No, not really. Just a shadow me while out on a hike.

On a big, big rock!

Burnin' Down the Road

We've had a very dry spring. And what does that bring? Not a lot of spring flowers. But spring fires, oh yes!

Huge fire started just to the south of us in Colorado foothills, near Fort Collins.

Burned for quite a while and caused a fair amount of damage. Not to mention a whole lot of smoke for many days.

This was a panographic photo made from about 5 different shots. It's a little distorted, but had to be to see all the smoke!

Colorful Christmas

Took several interesting photos over Christmas this year during a trip.

Got 2 nice sunsets, and one light shot of some christmas lighting. I always enjoy interesting light shots of any kind.

A beautiful sunset, taken on Christmas day. Heavenly!

A light motion shot of some outdoor Christmas lights. You always get some wild images when you have so many small colored light sources to play with.

A dramatic sunset on the trip back home.

Photowalkin, Part II

The annual Worldwide Photowalk event came around, and I decided to go again this year, after taking last year off from it. There was a new walk leader, and the walk itself was the first weekend in October instead of the middle of summer. A little cooler than mid July, but it was still about 80 degrees! Good thing it wasn't a week later, it was snowing like crazy then.

Lots going on during the weekend with a Farmer's Market, a Zombie walk event, some sort of Oktoberfest, and the Photowalk. Quite a crowd. But I still got some interesting pictures, most of which I Photoshopped a lot because they were a bit dull until I 'tweaked' them some.

This was my entry in the competition. My 'best' photo. A shot of a sign, broken up as a reflection in some stacked mirrors. But it didn't win. What did? More on that in a bit...

This is the hood ornament on a mid 50's Cadillac. It wasn't in the best shape, so I decide to go with the dramatic contrasty look, cropped it, cleaned up some spots, and I think it turned out pretty nice.

This was a nice but boring shot of a big railroad radio antenna against a plain blue sky. I had the idea it could look kind of spacey, so I turned the sky into a kind of Martian look and now I like the image a lot more than the original.

I messed with this a lot trying to come up with something. It is a shot of an old car dealership downtown, and some clouds in the sky. I added the lamp from another shot I took during the day. I turned the sky black&white plus used an infrared filter, and added a little text and some light effect off the lamp. Turned out ok for just experimenting with some ideas.

This one changed a lot. It was originally the blue sky reflected in the glass door of the Wyoming Business Council. I took out a number of other things reflected in the glass, changed the sky color and worked on it to add more texture to the background. I also added some effects to make the text pop out a little more. I think it almost looks like an illustration now.

This is a neat old, but currently empty building downtown. Since it has kind of an old look inside, with a lot of wood, I decided to make it look a lot older. Like a weathered old photo from the cowboy days. It turned out pretty good, but could be even more 'aged'. I took out all the modern features visible in the shot before adding all the aging to it.

The tin man is a long time fixture in an old shop downtown. I didn't do a lot to this other than making it black and white (except for the 2 color areas), adding contract, and doing a LOT of cleanup of spots, reflections and other distractions in the image.

This shot of a Harley was pretty simple. I cleaned up a few things before playing with the contrast, colors and some filters to make it a little more artsy, but still obviously a Harley.

This fisheye shot of the Depot was pretty uninteresting, but I did some simple fixes, and added a faked HDR effect to it, and that made it a lot better.

I shot a lot of other photos, these were my best. Some still look like photos. Some have been changed so much they don't look like original photos obviously. But hey, it's art too!

The competition? Of about 50 participants, only 10 entered photos. The page for the competition has been removed, but this flickr page has many other shots from the day - https://www.flickr.com/groups/1743959@N25/
Most were NOT entered in the competition.
 

Do I think mine should have won? Not necessarily - but it was certainly in the top of the 10 entered for our walk. The winner is also on the flickr page. Look for 'Reflection'. Wouldn't have been my choice. But then I wasn't the judge, so what do I know?

The competition is worldwide, with the ONE best from each walk entered. 1,116 different walks this year. Looking at the past winners, there are many awesome photos. And the Cheyenne walk had several good photos. That could have at least been in the running for the competition.

But our winner? Huh? What? Why the judges picked that, I and several others have NO idea. Their choice for our 'winner' was,  in my opinion, either 9th or 10th place in our entries. Nothing against the photographer, but the judging I find rather questionable. For a worldwide competition against a ton of really talented people, they picked a totally throwawy cutesy snapshot photo with nothing to recommened from any standpoint of photography or competition. Very disappointing. That entry will IMMEDIATELY be thrown in the trash of the Worldwide Photowalk competition.  

The walk was a fun and interesting event at any rate. But the next time I do one, I gotta go to one with some better judging. The two I've done so far have both left a lot to be desired in that department.