Aspens
Took this photo this afternoon at Benson Sculpture Garden. It looks more like a pencil sketch, an effect that’s especially pronounced in the crop below. I assume this is just from pixelation and color noise in the iPhone image—maybe someone else can tell me more. I color-corrected and sharpened slightly.
Aspens cropped
Iridescent
Even in winter the sun is intense here in Colorado and can really heat up a room. This curtain, which puts me in mind of butterfly wings, was keeping the sunlight out of the hair salon I go to, which has a southern exposure. I cropped the photograph and increased saturation slightly.
Two different versions of the same shot; wondering which one people will prefer. When I opened the original photograph onscreen I was struck by the resemblance to aspen bark. Besides a little extra saturation to the blue, the top version is just as the camera captured it. Later it struck me that a cropped version, rotated 90 degrees, appeared (to me) like a night landscape. There is so much to see even in a parking lot.
Fake aspen
Starry night/under the snow
Tempest
Teal and magenta abstract
Red stroke
When I’m painting (which I don’t do often enough), I use a pie tin for mixing the acrylics. After the paint is dry in the tin I can usually peel it off in large pieces, which I then photograph. This is my favorite of the palette photographs I’ve taken. It’s what I’d like to achieve in painting, but haven’t figured out how to do.
Orchid palette
Angles
At an office building in Broomfield, Colorado.
On a bar of a grate on a bridge…
This super-saturated photo is of a peeling bar on a grate on a bridge on the Beartooth Scenic Byway.
It’s the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Like every town in America, Loveland has blossomed out with Christmas lights. Tonight I saw that the Outlet Shops of Loveland have assembled their annual Twelve Days of Christmas display, in which the hens and the maids and the drummers are outlined by strings of lights. From side angles the hubbub appears as a bright chaos, but as you drive along, the apparent disorder resolves into figures—78 in all, which certainly should be enough to satisfy any holiday shopper or child.
The lords a-leaping immediately put me in mind of one of America’s favorite musicals. Take a look. Except for what appears to be a fatuous grin on the face of the red-shirted guy, I see the Jets here, or maybe the Sharks. Jerome Robbins lives in Christmas lights!
Lords a-leapiing
The five gold rings weren’t any great shakes, but I very much liked the seven swans a-swimming and the six geese a-laying. One of the swans appears to be het up about something. Note that apparently only one of the geese a-laying has produced eggs, but she’s balancing atop 21 of them, which is quite an achievement. Whoever designed this display had a sense of humor. One of the eggless geese is looking back with envy, or possibly pique, or maybe just grudging admiration.
Swans a-swimming
Geese a-laying
These iPhone photographs aren’t very good, alas. It was cold, and I opted for taking pictures from the warmth of the car. The technique definitely suffered (there was actually no “technique” to speak of, and almost nothing in the way of composition either). But my fingers stayed warm.
VAPOR AND FLOW 