Any Colour You Like Part II

Another weekend, another hike. Got a surprise very warm day, close to 80. Nice, but it was pretty windy all day. I even managed a little sunburn. Gotta not miss the spots with the sunscreen! I was hoping for some great color. And it was - ok. The colors were actually kind of muted and dull. I wonder if the cool wet summer causes that.

So, I made fall by pumping up the colors in Photoshop some. NOW it looks more like fall!

Taking a break from a nice high vantage point. Still quite a mix - trees with no leaves, trees turning, and trees that are still green. Strange fall.

Another view from my high vantage point. Got a little more color in this shot.

Care for a swim? Not me, thanks. It's muddy marshy and shallow. Quite a few dragonflys around enjoying it though. While it lasts...

Picked up a little hitchhiker while I was hiking. Just wanted to say 'Hi' I guess.

Enjoy the fall colors while they last. Cold weather is getting closer. So it won't be long before all the leaves are gone and the most amazing time of the year (in my opinion) is gone. Then, the cold white blanket returns.

Any Colour You Like

As long as it's fallish. Because it's fall. And it's time to collect some of those fall color photos for they year, before they all fade away. Was out in the hills today, seeing how things look. In a lot of places there's a lot of yellow, but a lot is just changing or still green even. So 'peak color' is a week or two out. Supposed to be cold enough for snow in the hills in a day or two. That might speed up the color change.

A mix of yellows and greens.

No big wildlife sightings this time. Little ones like this spider. But no big ones. Too bad, since I had the big camera with me!

Don't fence me in!

More to come as more colors change for their brief but beautiful show...

Wild Wildlife

Back in my neck of the woods, and decided to go out into the woods! Both to get out in the country, and see if there are any fall colors yet. The answer is no. None at all yet. But it won't be long. While hiking an area I usually don't hike, ran into some company-

Looking back at me through the trees is a young moose. Didn't hang around to long.

Mr Moose ambled off into the trees and out of sight. Nice to occasionally run across some interesting wildlife. Wish I'd gotten better pictures. But they're usually not much for posing.
A dying pine. The colors on this are nice. But there seems to be more beetle infested pines that are dying around here. Thats not a good thing.

While hiking I also came across two deer. Got a photo of the second one. The next big wildlife sighting! More than I usually see. Otherwise, the creatures were mostly grasshoppers. Lots and lots and lots of grasshoppers. At least the mosquitoes seem to be mostly gone.

My shack in the mountains! It's in my price range. Today I didn't need the shelter, believe it or not. I went hiking, and didn't get rained on once! Not even a sprinkle! About time! Since Fall is right around the corner.

Urtle River Tate Park

I've been on vacation visiting family in NoDak. And got to spend a couple days with my brother. We both like cycling. But don't get to spend much time doing it together since we live so far apart. But for now we get together when we can. Unfortunately the weather (I think it's summer) was not very cooperative. Either overcast and very humid and raining. Or cloudy, cold and windy. We finally took off on monday to Urtle River Tate Park. That's what the sign says, so it must be true!
See? We're only 20 miles or so from my brother's place. Nice area with trails and a river, mostly through trees and parkland, some prairie spots. Not a huge park, but its nice. I'm more used to trails with rocks, pines, steeper hills and such from where I live. This is actually easier to ride for me. Lance Armstrong and those like him got nothing to fear from my cycling ability.

Even though it was a mostly cloudy and cool day, still had to keep hydrated.

I wonder what's in that bottle?

Must be Superman juice!

Got an awesome tat! How about that?

Ok, so it's really just a grease mark on my leg from the chainring. But it does look like a tatoo!

A shot of the ubercyclist wannabes. We had a great time, just wish we could do more. Thanks for putting me up and the cycling lil' bro! And check his blog, I know he'll be posting on our ride as well.

Le Tour

Lest you think I haven't been riding the bike, oh, how wrong you are. I ride it fairly frequently, though mostly just shorter rides on the bike paths around town. But it is generally not very exciting or photo-worthy.

Me showing off my mad biking skillz of....sitting on a bench! Yeah! Just out for a spin on my hot-rodded up cruiser bike.

Photowalkin'

Saturday the 18th was a big day. A worldwide, organized photowalk day. Where people everywhere interested in photography went out for a couple hours together to shoot photos around their location. Started by Scott Kelby, who is the head honcho of NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals).

This year there were somewhere around 32,000 people in around 900 cities all over the world. And I was in our Cheyenne group. We had maybe 35 people, though a lot seemed to wander off or just quit early. Besides it being a pretty warm summer day here, Frontier Days was also going on. Which is a big western Yee-Haa rodeo festival. If you're into that sort of thing. Which I'm not.

But it was a very interesting day at any rate. Got some interesting shots. Two are entered in our cities walk for consideration of a win, and going on to the main competition. One winning photo from each city entered for some pretty big prizes. Which of the following two did I enter???

A sky shot with some teepees in the Indian Village. Part of the Frontier Days activity. I worked on the cloud some, added a little darkness to add to the drama of it.

It's the Bee-52! It was a huge bee. About thumb sized. The photo is pretty good, but background was a little too busy. So I gave it some zoom blur to artsy it up a little.

Shot near the bee shot. Just a cluster of yellow flowers. But these ones really grouped together nicely, with no distracting background. And I really like how the depth of field turned out on this.

Now we're downtown. For the main part of the walk. For whatever reason I kept coming back to this shot of the lamp. I just like how it looks. It's not as sharp as I'd like. This was shot with my long zoom lens, zoomed in, and handheld. If I'd had a tripod it coulda been better. But I still like it a lot.

A B&W shot of the Capitol building. I worked on the contrasts quite a bit.

A shot near the end. Nice spelling! Ok, I won't terspass! I promsie!

Went back in the evening (it was a long day) to shoot the carnival at night. Hard to do without a tripod. But this shot on a carousel wasn't bad, after quite a bit of photoshop work.

Our Photowalk:

http://worldwidephotowalk.com/cheyenne-wy-usa/

It was an interesting, fun day. Nice to see what other people shot at the same time.

Which two did I enter? The two yellow flowers and the lamp on the building.

Third Time's

the charm. Or not. We'll see. Took off for another hike today. At Vedauwoo. Another popular nearby spot. Mainly for it's many large rock formations, that lots of people climb. Not me. If it takes cables and ropes and such, I pass. If I can climb it myself with just my hands and feet and it's not too crazy steep, then it's ok. Gotta protect the camera equipment!

The most surprising thing - the swarms of mosquitoes! They are normally a very rare sight in this climate/area. But not this year! They were THICK! Fortunately, I had brought a small bug spray with. And it didn't take me long to break it out!

Here's one of many rock formations. And that little white spot on it is somebody climbing the vertical rock face. Just like I said! I actually shot this from climbing on top of another nearby rock formation, but it's very easy to get on top of. Long as you aren't afraid of heights or walking near the edge!
Found this jumpy guy at a little stream along the trail. He can blow bubbles! I think this is the first frog I've seen out here. Maybe this is also part of the very wet year we're having.

A small waterfall area along the trail. There's a big loop hiking trail around this whole area that is also heavily used. It has quite a variety of scenery from rocks to meadows and ponds to aspens, pines and lots more rocks.
Just like Pole Mountain (which is very closeby), there are wildflowers everywhere this year. Here's a little natural bouquet of some large flowers!

Goodbye, blue sky. So, the day was pretty nice. Fairly warm, little humid. Got cloudier as the day went on, of course. As I was heading back to the car, started thundering. And started sprinkling lightly soon after. I'm really getting good at this going hiking in the rain thing. At least this time I was in the car before the heavier rain started. The obvious message: Don't hike in the rain? NO! Get a better rain coat? YES!

Boom Boom

Flash go the lights!

Must mean it's time for the big fireworks show! Time to celebrate our Independence. Or Dependence, as it seems primarily these days. But I digress...

It was storming and raining for a couple hours before the show. Quit about 45 minutes before the fireworks. So the turnout was kinda light. It was very damp, humid, and the air was very still.
A nice big burst with a few smaller ones at the same time.

One of the many big kaboom single bursts.

I'm not sure what this was. I was experimenting with a multiple exposure technique, and this may be some of the result. The air was almost foggy. And the still air caused the smoke from the fireworks to really just hang there for a long time.

I think this is one of my favorite captures. Not sure what to call it, but it kind of looks like some kind of big scary insect or a bunch of spiders. Looks cool whatever it is!

Fireworks are always interesting to shoot. They're not hard, once you have the camera set up right. But the randomness of it means you never really know what you'll get. And you can't stop to look at them while the show is going on - you just keep shooting! Reviewing is for after the show!

Soup R Day

Saturday was Superday. The once a year event in the park with a variety of events. Mostly themed around kids and activities for them. Games, music, food, etc. Lots of vendors selling arts & crafts as well as stuff for grownups. There's a big bike race ( I didn't enter) and a car show. Which I did visit. Here's a cross-section of cars at the show.

A number of old, stock antique cars like this old Ford.

There were some Street Rod customs of old cars like this old Studebaker.

A mixture of stock and modified classics like this T-bird.

Always a collection of Corvettes.

Here's a more modern car, considerably modified. A 73 GMC Sprint converted to a 4x4. My first car was a 75 Sprint. Which was the GMC version of an El Camino. Mine was definitely not like this!

Lots of 60s-70s musclecars, like these two Mopars.

And my vote for best car in the show. A 1970 AMC AMX 390 in Big Bad Orange with Shadow Mask paint option (the black part). The AMC musclecars were always my favorites for their style, wild colors, and just because they were just a little different than the cars from the Big 3. Very nice, rare car.

But there's one more part to Superday. The free evening concert! This year - a big name!

Are you ready to rock?

I said, ARE YOU READY TO ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's Blue Oyster Cult! I saw BOC once before. In 1982. That was, ummm, twenty seven (27) years ago! Since their heyday was probably the later 70s, well, they aren't exactly the youngest band around. The show was alright, with just a hint of cowbell. I recognized about half of the songs. But they didn't have the big animated Godzilla! Folly of man indeed! Bummer.

Don't Fear The Geezers!

The Wet Way Part Deux

Finally, after too many lousy weather weekends, it was finally looking nice enough (on one day anyway) to go try a hike again. Back to Pole Mountain, where I got rained out last month.

Just an along the path shot. Day started out mostly clear, and warm. But there were a few clouds lurking to the west....

Thanks to one of the wettest spring/summers I can remember here, there are lots of small wildflowers throughout the open areas. Nice to see. Usually its just grass and the scrubby plants.

There's even some nice, larger wildflowers. I don't know what it is, but I like it.

The sight of grass growing inside the remains of a long dead and hollow tree stump is just kind of interesting to me.

Those clouds I mentioned earlier? They got together, had a talk, and decided let's rain a little! So they did. But then they left. Mr. Sun came back. But an hour later, the clouds had regrouped.

This time they brought their friends thunder and lighting. Along with BB sized hail and a little more rain. Sounds bad, but it was actually much less rain than last month.

A big pano of the second band of storms after it passed. It was getting late enough in the day so I headed for home. Besides, the clouds were grouping up for round three behind me. All in all, not a bad day. Only got mildly damp instead of soaked!