The city of Denver turned up their holiday lights on Friday night. We decided to make the trip into the big city on Saturday evening and have some dinner and see what our new town had to offer!

We arrived at the 16th Street Mall around 6PM and were greated by tens of thousands of white lites lining the mall. Many of the buildings were decorated in festive holiday colors as well. There was a wintery chill in the air, but I don’t think anyone noticed as they were too busy taking everything in.

As we made our way east along the mall, we noticed several decorated horse-drawn carriages. We were five this evening but maybe Tara and I will make another trip down for a carriage ride.

We were only a couple of blocks from the Capital and that’s a shot I’ve always wanted to get so we continued east. As we rounded the corner we were struck but the Denver City & County building lit up in blue, greens and red (above). We spent plenty of time on the mall capturing images and even witnessed a wedding photographer working with some happy newly weds in front of the building. What a unique photo that must have been!

I did manage to get some shots of the capital building. It wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for as it was two hours past sunset. The best time to capture nightscapes is about 15 minutes after sunset. The twilight skies are a deep dark blue and help add depth to the image.

After we had our fill of the mall, capital and county building, we headed back down 16th Street Mall and stopped at Marlowe’s Chop House and had a spectacular meal. The filet kabob was a little spicy, but I loved it!

The car ride home was real quiet as I think at least two of the riders were sleeping after a long, full day in our new home.

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Saturday morning we drove about an hour outside of Denver to Georgetown – the Silver Queen of the Rockies. Georgetown is an old silver mining town with about 1200 residents and a quaint little historic district. First stop – Breakfast!

We ate at the Happy Cooker in the historic district. Great food. Great atmosphere. And Sarah, our server, was far too perky for that early on a Saturday morning. If you ever make it there, get the home fries – they are to die for!

After hitting a couple of the shops, we made our way to our real destination – the Georgetown Loop Railroad!. Tara had purchased tickets weeks ago for Santa’s Polar Adventure. Normally, the train stops running around Halloween but this year, they decided to have special holiday season trips themed around Cris Cringle himself. We boarded about 11AM and by 11:30 we had started chugging up the narrow gauge rails towards Silver Plume.

We were lucky. Conducter Dan (shown above) was on our train and was a font of historical information not only about the Georgetown-Silver Plume loop but train knowledge in general. This really made the father-in-law happy! Round trip, our journey only took about an hour but during that time we were treated to beautiful views, warm cookies and even Santa himself!

I tried something a little different with my camera during this trip – I turned my digital SLR camera into an expensive point-and-shoot by choosing all of the automatic settings that I could. Why? Well, this trip wasn’t about taking photos to be used for prints or stock photography. This was capturing family memories. With my camera in fully automatic mode, all I had to do was point it in the general direction and push the button. Easy Peasy. I like easy. Rest assured, the auto settings will be turned off – but maybe not until after are night-time trip to Denver.

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Black Friday – the day everyone goes shopping and retail stores turn a profit. We decided to buck tradition and pile the family in the car and make the 90 minute trip to one of my favorite places – Rocky Mountain National Park!

We arrived at Sprague Lake at about 8AM. As expected, the lake was a frozen block of ice. Because the temperature was in the low 30′s however, the skies were as clear as I had ever seen them. I spent a lot of time trying to capture the streaks of light the sun was creating as it was peaking through the over-hanging branches of the resident pine trees.

Our next stop was Bear Lake. The trail to get to the lake was ice packed snow so it made the short walk more harrowing than need be, but as always, Hallets Peak didn’t disappoint.

Our last stop at the park was along Trail Ridge Road, at the overlook of Upper Beaver Meadow. It was here that we found the Steller’s Jay and his regal headdress. I put the big hardware on the camera and was able to snap off several shots of this elegant bird has he flew from branch to branch looking for some breakfast.

Our journey nearly complete, we had one more stop – Le Peep in Longmont. I’ve already waxed eloquent about the food there. Suffice it to say it didn’t disaapoint. It all added up to a great Black Friday for the entire family.

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Before

Our front yard

The view from our deck

After

Where’s the field?!?

The mountains – they’re missing!

I just shoveled this about an hour ago

Yup. It’s snowing out. So far we’ve gotten about 10″ or so. =)

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My friend Jenny has started a cupcake business in Denver called Perfect Serendipity. She needed some photos she could use for her website, marketing, advertising etc and I was glad to help out! We set up this weekend as the time for the shoot and after spending an hour or two of chasing trains (long story), I stopped off at her house to make some pictures.

Jenny had stayed up until 2AM the night before making as many different cupcakes on her menu as she could. Let me say – the kitchen was loaded with baked goods. I could see this was going to be a great day – someone would have to sample these right?

We spent about two hours taking photos of the cupcakes and then started working on a bio photo for her website. I’m not the strobist, but I like to think I’m pretty decent with artificial light. This bio shot was causing me fits though! After several different attempts, we had a few shots we liked but I could tell, I hadn’t blown anyone’s skirts up yet. It was then that James, Jenny’s boyfriend said as he was heading to the local watering hole to watch a ball game “Hey, why don’t you try one of Jenny leaning on the counter? See ya later”. Hrm – OK. We set up the shot and WOW, it came out great. Thanks James!

There were plenty of chores to do at home – like mow the lawn, clean the garage, fix one of T’s antiques – so we called it a day at about 2PM. I just got done processing the photos and sent them off to Jenny. I hope she likes them – I think they came out pretty good. =)

(Click on photo to see larger image on Flickr)

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It was a brisk 49 degrees this morning with I packed the hens in the car for a drive in the mountains, but the sun was out, the skies were clear and we were hoping to get a chance to see some fall colors for the first time in years.

We started out on Boulder Canyon Road and turned off on Sugarloaf. I had plotted out a tentative route through the mountains, hoping to find some back roads that offered some great photographic opportunities. We turned off on Switzerland trail and while we saw plenty of color, I think we were a week too early.

We took the trail all the way to Peak to Peak highway and went north. Jackpot! About halfway between Nederland and Ward we found a valley with Arapahoe Peak in the background that had plenty of yellow, green and even some orange.

After getting our fill of Peak to Peak highway colors, we turned off on Left Hand Canyon Road and found a great spot to get photos of the creek that runs alongside the road. I had my tripod, neutral density filter and polarizer with me and managed to get some pretty interesting shots of the water coursing through the stream bed.

It had been about three hours since we left the house and we needed breakfast! We stopped at a place called Le Peep in Boulder. Per their website, Le Peep is “a marvelous world of generous servings, abundant flavors and enticing aromas.” All three off us vigorously agree with that! The food was spectacular!

Enough playing around for the day. We headed home and started working on items on our collective “to-do” lists.

Panorama on Peak to Peak Highway

(Click on photo to see larger sized image on Flickr)

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We woke up early this morning and because neither of us had to work today, I convinced Tara to go for a ride to nowhere with me. We piled into the truck about 6:45 and headed yonder west to see what we could find!

My original goal was to stop at Boulder Falls and try to get some shots there, but the Falls were closed again. Apparently there are a lot of idiots (er, Coloradans) who do stupid things at the Falls and die – so to prevent that, close the attraction! I prefer natural selection but I digress…

We continued on to Nederland and decided to head towards Eldora Ski Resort. At a fork in the road I went right not having any idea where it led to and we ended up on a 1 and 1/2 car wide dirt road of ill repair. I later found out that this road is called 4th of July Road. Six miles and 3,000 feet of elevation change later we were at a trailhead/camping ground with beautiful scenic vistas. On the way up, we noticed that some of the aspens were starting to get yellow – it’s only a matter of time before we get full-fledged fall colors!

After a pit stop at the trailhead, we turned around and ventured back home to enjoy the rest of our day off. What a great way to spend the day!

Click to see panorama of Boulder, CO

(Click on photo to see larger image on Flickr)

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The Boulder County Fair was this weekend so we decided to head up and check it out. Maybe I’ve grown up a bit but the fair wasn’t anything like I remember from my youth. We managed to get some ok food and (gasp) some funnel cakes! Yummy!

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Today was the 2nd annual Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk. What’s a photowalk? A bunch of camera geeks get together and hang out for a few hours, walk around and take some pictures! Photo… geek… this is all me! To give you a sense of scope – in only it’s second year Scott Kelby has managed to get over 900 groups together today with over 30,000 participants worldwide. Very cool stuff!

Our Confluence Park walk started at 7:45AM at the REI building near 15th and Platte. Our route took us up to Larimer Square, 16th Street Mall, Blake Street, Union Station and then back to REI. The route was just over 3 miles and took almost 4 hours to complete.

After the walk, we hung out at Starbucks for awhile, had some beverages, talked to other photogs and shared some pictures. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend a beautiful Saturday morning in the mile high city! Many thanks Tim Tonge for leading our walk this year and of course, thank you Scott Kelby for making this all possible!

One last thing. This years worldwide photowalk has drawn so much attention – there are over $25,000 in prizes being awarded to some of the best photos from today – wowzers! Each participant gets to submit two photos (can you tell where this is going?). I’ve got a few photos I’m torn between – help a brother out and post a comment below letting me know which 2 photos you like the most! I have until July 25 to submit my two photos for the chance of having the best photo in our group, and a chance at the $16,000 grand prize!

(Click on photo to see larger size image on Flickr)

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Ever since we got out to Colorado my mom has wanted to go to a rodeo. Today we went to the Greeley Stampede – Giddyup!

We go to Greeley about noon and as we expected, it was much like a county fair. Corn Dogs, mean-on-a-stick, lemonade from the food family, and a ferris wheel, tilt-a-whirl and midway from the carnival family. Before we could try any of the food, Tara and mom had to buy cowboy hats. Once the hats were firmly strapped on their heads, we followed our noses. Having not eaten much all day – we sampled plenty of skewered meat. I had a couple of corndogs, mom had steak-on-a-stick and Tara had pork-on-a-stick. It was delicious.

Once we had a full stomach, we headed over to the stadium. The rodeo started at about 1:30PM and it was a fast moving event – much faster than I expected. There were several different events culminated by the Bull Ride. I think we all came away from the rodeo extremely impressed by the talent of the buck-ing cowboys, but weren’t terribly pleased with the treatment of the cattle in the roping events. I guess it’s a good thing PETA wasn’t there – some of the handling of the livestock was non-sensical in my opinion.

As soon as the cowboys were done riding the bulls, some daredevil/BMX riders took to the air and put on a spectacular show of gravity defying leaps. Those guys were definitely insane!

We couldn’t leave the grounds without first getting our funnel cake on – to heck with the diet! They were delightful in every sense of the imagination. A pretty good day all around. Sidenote: the organizers of the stampede are not as photo friendly as many events. Several times we heard that one could take as many photos as they want, but public display of said photos was prohibitted. With that in mind, no Flickr photos from today. Instead I created a special gallery that will probably fly under the rader a lot more than Flickr would.

Click here to see gallery

I’m definitely glad we went – it was a LOT of fun. I’m not sure I would go again though because as I was processing over 1000 photos from the day, I really noticed how poorly some of the animals were treated.

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