Sunday, August 7, 2011

New Friends.....

I have been blessed in the friends dept. lately, NLC photo group helped me meet Chris G. A wonderful, knowledgeable photographer who is helping me understand the Not "auto" settings of my Nikon... so Manual is now my new challenge.

While at Starbucks, waiting for Chris......
I couldn't resist the Venus Fly Trap plant. Yes...its alive, I got the buds to close.


I then tried to apply my new lesson and went out and parked at UCCS Recreation center to shoot the Garden of the God's road.....and a cool rainstorm arrived, and the sun came out at same time......



Then..Saturday I was on Facebook and a lady named Dina was asking if anyone wanted to hang out and perhaps show her how to set her camera to capture the beauty of Colorado. She is visiting from Idaho.

We met at Village Inn and chatted for a long time, and then headed to retake some Garden of The God's photos, then Manitou Springs, Down through Rte 24 to Woodland Park and onto Rte 67 towards the Hayman Fire grounds.
(The Hayman Fire was a forest fire that started 35 miles (56 km) northwest of Colorado Springs on June 8, 2002, and became the largest fire in the state's recorded history.)

 and then Today.. I meet up w/ other photographer's.... a few named Try, Brian, Tony and my 2 friends Chris and Dina, and many others I will get to know in a Manitou Springs Photography Club. Can't wait!

Well, off to get some pics edited to upload the FB page for the club meeting tonight at 5PM. See ya later!

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Photo Study - Shadows... and some bonus shots.

I am in 2 Photography clubs now... and the one for NLC meets every Thursday at Starbucks.
This week we were given a homework assignment...
Shadows!

Now... I am not good w/ purposely finding a subject... they usually find me....
But I did (in a 2 day span) capture some potential shadow shots......


Some of these will be shown tonight at my Club get together.

I went to Palmer Lake and Spring Valley areas... and tried some more geocaches.
Now, I loaded 5 geocaches in to find... found 1 immediately in Spring Valley area near the schoolhouse I shot on Lorraine Rd.
The Colorado Spirit Quest series took me to Spring Valley Cemetery...I feel so bad for the unmarked graves... no one knows who they are? No one comes to pay respect?
Got a cute geocache here (nestled into a small cornucopia) and I walked around for about 20 mins in all directions because my stupid GPS had an attitude.

Just some macros I tried...

Now after driving to a geocache in a small area of Palmer Lake down a 1 lane, 1 sided switchback road... I looked for a cache w/ a difficulty of a 4. Guess what?? I didn't find it, and I was in the 2PM sun...

I gave up... and drove around P.Lake... and stopped for a few minutes (45 actually) at an ice cream spot. 
Rock House Ice Cream... I had Cake Batter in a sugar cone... Mmmmmm
These 2 shots were just "Fun!"


I drove to a remote spot to spot a Virtual Cache (no container or log book) to spy a "Safari" animal....
I got to the spot, it rained hard on me, spent 20 mins looking at the area in question, and later I e-mailed the cache creator and guessed... I was right. I can't say  what it was in here due to other cachers who may read this and want to go there to spy it themselves.

I finally captured a few more shots in areas...


above.... Tiny chapel is at Ponderosa Conference and Recreation Center

Greenland Open Space area.
Train was not coming to run me over.. It was "parked" the whole time I was in that area.

Well that is all for now... as I need to upload these to a USB port to bring to the club gathering tonight. 
Thanks for looking!