Old San Juan

Old San Juan, Puerto Rico

Calibration

The sun rises on the distance peak behind the ruins of an abandoned mine near Leadville, CO.

What color is this photo? On my home system, it is a nice Sepia toned image. At work, its a bit of a sickly radioactive green color... Hopefully the monitor at home is the correctly calibrated monitor! Perhaps its time to get the necessary hardware to properly calibrate my monitor.

In other news, I'll be out in the sticks in and around Glacier National Park all next week. So, I will not be able to post anything next week (I can almost hear the wife cheering). But, hopefully, once I return, I'll have lots of new photos. Have a great week everyone!

Be sure to visit Sepia Scenes!

Dawn of a New Age

Old mine structure near Leadville, Co.

I've been playing with Photomatix (software for creating HDR images) for awhile. This is one of my better attempts. There are a rather complicated and bewildering assortment of adjustments used to control the effect.  I still learning which types of images and situations that I think work well with HDR and how best to process them.

This shot was made up of 3 images taken at -1, 0, and 1 EV.  One interesting side effect is that the clouds are very soft due to the movement between shots.  I find the sharpness of the building against the softness of the clouds rather pleasing.

Be sure to visit Skywatch Fridays.

From Deep Within

Leadville has had long history of mining in Colorado that continues to this day. All around Leadville are lots of ruins, mine tailings, and other debris.

This week's Thursday Challenge is "EARTH" (Sky, Clouds, Mountains, Rivers, Trees, Plants, Flowers, Rocks, Soil,...)

Five Minutes More

This morning finds me in Albuquerque, NM to visit family. It's been years since I've seen my cousins. And I've never meet their kids. I can't wait!

I was supposed to wake up much earlier today to go for a run and scout out some sunrise locations for tomorrow. I got in way to late for that. Now I've got to go eat some terrific New Mexican food at Weck's with out the benefit of pre-burning the calories. If you ever find yourself in Albuquerque, I highly recommend a breakfast at Weck's.

Yesterday the sunset in Northern New Mexico was absolutely spectacular. I couldn't bring myself to pull of the freeway and find a good vantage point. Sometimes I'm way to goal oriented, and last night my goal was to get to Albuquerque. I guess I should have taken the time since I wimped out on an early rise this morning. Hopefully this evening is as amazing.

This picture is from the archives and was taken near Crested Butte, CO along the Rocky Brook Rd.

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The amount of sleep required by the average person is five minutes more.
~Wilson Mizener

Is that a camera in your pocket?

One of the first things we did during our recent vacation was to take my parents to the Mollie Kathleen mine near Cripple Creek, Co for a tour. You can ride down a very packed elevator car down 1000 feet (305 meters) and have a guided tour through the mines. And I do mean packed. We had 6 people crammed into this tiny elevator. Luckily I knew three of the people already. The other two, I soon became acquainted with during the two minute descent.

It was really an interesting tour. I found the demonstrations of the machinery really interesting. They also played a recording of how the blasting would sound in the mine. Very spooky. I've been on a number of mine tours, and this was by far the best.

Even through I drive by it fairly often, I have never before stopped at the Mollie Kathleen. It's funny how one ignores local attractions until visitors arrive.

This photo is an old truck left in the mines lot. According to the paint on the door, it once belonged to the Woodland Garage of Woodland Park, CO.

Be sure to visit Sepia Scenes for more great sepia images.

The fun is just starting!

I'm back from vacation. We had a great time. I really enjoyed getting away from it all. Later in the week I read no emails, had not one cell phone call, nothing!

Now I'm back in the real world. I've got a bazillion emails to catch up with at work (as well as meetings - ugh!).

I've also have a lot of blogs to catch up on, as well as comments in my blog. Please excuse me if it takes me awhile...

While on my travels, I took over 1000 photos. I hope to spend some time over the next few weeks removing the chaff. Hopefully there is one or two really good shots in there somewhere.

This photo is the only picture from that set that I've worked on. It is of a store front in downtown Leadville, Co. EDIT: Apparently, I've forgotten how to do this while I was away - I left off the photo on the original post!

Check out Monochrome Maniacs for more monochrome images.

Devil's Head

Today, I'm trying something a little different. I've been restricting myself to showing, at most, a single picture a day. Today, I’ll post a little series.

On Saturday I went to Roxborough State Park to catch a sunrise shot. I got a few, and by 7:00AM I was done. Instead of driving home via the Interstate, I took the Rampart Range road – a 60-mile gravel road from the town of Sedalia to the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs.

Along the way, I stopped at the Devil’s Head trail. The trail is about 1.4 miles climbing up about 950ft to the historic Devil’s Head Lookout Tower. It was built in 1921 and is the last remaining of 11 original Front Range lookout towers.

Once you reach the cabin where the ranger stays, you can climb up the 143 steps to get the lookout. The tower is a small glass-enclosed building with lots of lightning protection. I’d love to ride out a storm up there – what a sight that would be!

From the top, you have a great 360 degree view. According to the USDA National Forest site, one can see mountain peaks over 100 miles on a clear day.

If you're ever in the area, it’s a great hike with an interesting destination. But, bring water!

I’ll share some of the other photos in a future post.

That’s My World! Go to My World Tuesday for more.