Enjoying the show

Posted on 27 August, 2010 by Eric

I’ve been delaying this post so I could upload and group a bunch of related images together. Well, enough waiting…

The town we live in (part of the Denver metro area) has a celebration each August called Western Welcome Week (which is actually 10 days long). It started as sort of a homecoming event, an excuse for folks that have moved away to come back to reconnect and visit with their old friends.

It’s since gained a bit of celebratory flavor — a way to remind ourselves that while we’re part of a major urban area, we’re still small-town folks at heart. So part of the shindig is an opening fireworks display — presented in a local park with all the flavor you’d expect from a small-town fireworks show. Come early for the free music, bring a lawn chair or blanket and sit in the grass, close to where the fireworks are getting launched.

If you pick your spot well, you’ll even catch some silhouettes of other spectators in your pictures!

Ready for my close-up…

Posted on 23 August, 2010 by Eric

Another fun shot from the 10th annual Colorado Dragon Boat Races here in the Denver metro area:

We were fortunate this year in that the weather was clear and bright (if a bit hot / muggy too…). Some years it’s been overcast and sporadically rainy, not so good for photography of all the wonderful color.

Dude, I’m dragon…

Posted on 16 August, 2010 by Eric

So a few weeks back, when we went to the 10th annual Denver Dragon Boat festival, I made a point of lingering along the path the dragon would take during the opening festivities. Very colorful, not something you see every day — I thought it’d present some interesting photographic opportunities.

So after firing away, taking pictures of the dragon’s passage, I was more than a little surprised myself that I’d captured this shot. One of the dragon’s carriers definitely isn’t too enthused about the whole affair…

Backlit poppy

Posted on 13 August, 2010 by Eric

A quick grab by the side of a boardwalk:

Seen at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana — we were headed from one building to another, I’m glad I stopped to get this shot!

An odd looking thing…

Posted on 9 August, 2010 by Eric

On a recent weekend jaunt to the mountains, we wandered through the Yampa River Botanic Garden in Steamboat Springs. Quite a few things were in bloom, including this unusual item:

It’s Alpine Sea Holly (Eryngium alpinum); never seen one of these before…

Yellow skirt

Posted on 4 August, 2010 by Eric

Seen on our recent Rocky Mtn. road trip:

Captured at the Lewis & Clark National Historic Trail Interpretive Center in Great Falls, Montana.

Honest Abe

Posted on 1 August, 2010 by Eric

This is a pretty simple, staple shot inside the Lincoln Memorial at night. That said, it’s a surprisingly tough shot to get…

You’re not allowed to use a tripod inside the Memorial (some say it’s because the tripod legs damage the floor, others that tripods are a tripping hazard when the place is crowded). Meanwhile, the lighting is… subdued, to say the least.

I took this shot at ISO 1000 with an aperture of f/2.0 — and still, it required a one second exposure (and some noise cleanup with Topaz Denoise afterwards). Curious how to take a decent one second exposure without a tripod? It turns out that while tripods are banned in most Washington D.C. museums, monopods aren’t — not even ones with little pop-out tripod feet.

Go figure…

Milkweed

Posted on 31 July, 2010 by Eric

On the way home from our trip to Glacier N.P. and the Canadian Rockies, it so happened that we spent a night in Great Falls, Montana. Before we left the next morning, we stopped off to check out the Lewis & Clark National Historic Trail Interpretive Center — great displays, lots of hands-on stuff for the little one to play with. Oh, and all the landscape plants around the building are historically accurate — just what the Lewis & Clark expedition would have encountered on their way through.

Like these milkweed blossoms.

Technicolor greenery

Posted on 29 July, 2010 by Eric

On our recent Rocky Mtn. road trip, we spent one night in Great Falls, Montana — just to break up the long drive home. I don’t know about you, but I never would have expected to find a scene like this in Great Falls:

This casino’s parking lot display is lined up along the side of the interstate that cuts through town, in the middle of a cluster of cheap hotels. Big hit with the interstate trucking crowd.

Sun on a cloudy day

Posted on 28 July, 2010 by Eric

Seen in front of the lodge in East Glacier, Montana:

On our Glacier National Park trip, we drove out to East Glacier to check out the storied lodge there — and were fortunate enough to actually have sporadic sunlight for our visit.

OK, we had sporadic rain too. And sporadic 40 mph gusts of wind…

But with such good scenery, we were happy to deal with the occasional annoying weather.