Super Sparkly

Weather was pretty decent so went out to the annual Christmas parade again, trying to get a few good photos.

As always, that's about it. Its too dark, things moving to fast, etc. Even though I used the newest camera, and cranked up the ISO, most still looked a tad blurry. But I included a few here, just to prove I did get a few photos!

 One of the very well lighted big trucks in the parade. As always there was anything from people walking to people on bikes to cars to floats to really big trucks. This was one of the more lit up examples.

Another well lit truck, with a big chimney! This was probably one of my 'clearest' shots of the night.

At least this shot of the Capitol building didn't move! I mostly B&W converted it, had some funny coloring from the lighting. Now it looks a little ominous almost!

Colorized

Spent a little time wandering around the park in town, late in the season. Still a bit of fall color but not for much longer. Just wanted something to do so went out with the camera!

 A big pot of plants by the Botanic Garden. Nothing left to do here but mulch it for next season

 A ornate heavy  gate hinge, which I pumped the color up on a bit just to liven it up.

 A nice geometric metal sculpture in a garden area.

The Freedom Area - with the Statue of Liberty Replica and important documents relating to the founding of the country like the 10 Commandments, the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, etc. To many people these are considered 'controversial' or worse documents today. Those people are clueless, mindless idiots. Period. I kept the statue and the two tablets normal, applied an oil paint effect to the background.

Fall Out 2

Another nice weekend, another hike. Gotta get 'em in while the conditions permit. Headed for a different spot than last week, again to enjoy the nice day and see some fall color.

It's still pretty much everywhere, but in some spots it had almost all come down already, So its disappearing as quickly as it appeared. Looks like I made a good guess after all!

Weather was better than last week. Equally warm, but a nice breeze kept it from feeling too hot. Mostly cloudless all day. Colder wetter cloudy weather due tomorrow. On to the hike!

Got my 'best shot' of the day almost immediately.

That's one big dragonfly! I noticed a helicopter out flying around on my way there. I think the Guard was training or practicing or something, not searching for anyone. Once I got on the trail, I took a couple photos just to get started. I was about to keep going when I looked back down this valley and saw the chopper coming right at me over the tree tops. I just waited, and it flew almost right over me. Wish I'd shot a little video of it!

A nice area full of aspens. Most were very yellow, these ones were kind of reddish/orange. Which was a nice variation of color.

A petroglyph? Carving? No, just a piece of wood, with lots of interesting trails cut into it by insects I believe. Actually used as a part of a erosion control timber.

A shot from way out on the trail. I was hiking around for close to 8 hours this time, and my legs were complaining about it! This was way south of where I started. Got a little of the far off clouds on the horizon. Shot in HDR.

Heading back into the deeper forest. A carpet of leaves on the trail, winding off into the trees. Where does it go...

Last shot of a long gone tree, artsied up in Photoshop a little to make it more colorful. This tree last lost it leaves many years ago. But it still stands there in the sun, the rain, the snow and the wind. Year after year. Holding on.

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.

New Kid on the Block

After my little pocket digital camera literally went to pieces, I decided to get a new small camera. Too many choices out there, but since I'm partial to Pentax, I looked at and ended up getting a new Pentax MX-1. For a pretty good price. It's a little too big for 'pocket' status, but takes considerably better pictures than the old camera. Bigger, better sensor, more modes and features, vastly better movie mode, etc.

It's also better than my old Canon Powershot G6, which its technically similar to in many ways. But since its many years newer, it definitely outclasses the old G6 thanks to improved technology. No big surprise. I considered a new G16 Powershot which is also a great camera, but it was a little more than $200 more than the MX-1. So that settled that. Shall we get on to a handful of photos all taken with the new camera?

Some purple flowers, shot pretty close and with a short depth of field. This camera has a pretty good macro capability, I need to work some more with that.

A wooden Blacksmith sign. Sun was just over the edge of the sign.

This camera has a couple modes of built-in HDR capture also. The lower level settings aren't dramatically different than normal, but the 'Strong 2' setting is just that - STRONG! Yowza! All the HDR shots are as they look out of the camera other than cropping/straightening and misc cleanup of the image.

True Love will never fade. Well, this one shouldn't - its ceramic tile. Just don't break it! This is HDR, but maybe not quite as obvious. How about this -

A roof overhang, definitely showing some of the HDR effect. It was a bit shadowy in here when I took the picture. Really popped out the shadowy areas. Finally, this next image of an ordinary sunny day shot shows the strong HDR effect best.

Those are some bright clouds. This is definitely a use it only once in a while for dramatic effect setting. I need to experiment more with the lower HDR settings to see where I could use them.

That's all for the new gadget now. More interesting images as they appear!

Caution, Big Boy!

After a couple year hiatus from Depot Days, I decided to go back this year. Only because we have a new attraction in town - a second Union Pacific Big Boy Locomotive - the largest steam locomotive ever built.

Photo of the locomotive as it was pulled into town. Taken by the local newspaper - not my photo.

 A park in town near the railyard has Big Boy 4004 on display, where its been sitting since the early 60's. Just a little over a week ago, the UP brought Big Boy 4014 into town from a where it had been on display in California.

Diesel 4014 pulling Big Boy 4014 on the approach to town. Taken by the local newspaper - not my photo.

Why is it here? Because the UP wants to get it back into operating condition, and add it to it's 'Heritage Fleet' of operating steam engines. There are currently two old steam locomotives maintained here, #844 'Living Legend' and #3985 'Challenger'. They hope to have this Big Boy ready to roll within 5 years. I hope they pull it off. It would be quite a sight to see this beast moving under its own power.

There were 25 Big Boys built, 8 are still in existence. The 4014 from California was considered the best overall condition for a restoration, that's why it was used, instead of the 4004 here in town.

So, on to the Depot Days and my photos. Having skipped Depot Days for the past couple years, they have changed several things. And none of them am I a fan of! More on that later.

A closeup of the front end of 4014, inside the Steam shop. No work has begun on it yet, but I suspect it'll begin soon after the open house.

4014 on the left, 844 on the right. 844 is currently having some maintenance work done. Really hard to capture the size of this locomotive all tucked away inside the building. Inside it was between the 844 and the other side of it was roped off, so you really couldn't see a whole lot of it. Plus there was a pretty good sized crowd, and there were always people in the way. Shot with my fisheye lens.

Outside of the Steam Shop. There was enough clearance for me!

All aboard the 401! Next stop.......Oblivion. This engine won't ever travel the rails again. But maybe parts of it will - there are a couple other restored engines in the yard just like this one.

Caution! This old locomotive has always been sitting in the Roundhouse, never moved. It looks to be in decent condition, but since it never moves and nothing is ever done with it, maybe its in worse shape than it looks.

Now the changes I mentioned. All the times I attended this event previously, going to the trainyard was free. Not anymore. Ten bucks a person. Grumble!

Displays were all look - don't touch! In the past you could climb into the engines, the couple really neat restored passenger cars, etc. Now - nada. Everything closed up. The limited view of the 4014 I don't understand - that should really have been outside in my opinion at least for the weekend so you could walk around it up close. Cause once they start tearing it apart its not gonna move again for YEARS. Even the 3985 Challenger - it was stored in the Roundhouse, but as far away from the viewing area as possible. Is this a train show or what? Gripe!!

My biggest complaint - all the damn yellow Caution tape EVERYWHERE. Inside the Roundhouse and Steam shop, severely limiting where you could go. Outside - nightmare! My favorite part of this whole event BY FAR has been wandering the scrapyard area outside the Roundhouse, with old cabooses, passenger cars, engines, boxcars, snowplow and other railroad bits and pieces. ALL OFF LIMITS with the tape. I loved wandering through that, finding interesting things to photograph, seeing the insides of the old worn out trains. No more. I know its a 'liability' issue now apparently. But I still really really don't like it. Complain!!!

So the Big Boy train adventure ends for now. Considering all the restrictions, I doubt I'll be going back anytime soon. Just nothing interesting left to see. Maybe when the Big Boy is ready to roll again...