Downtown train station

In downtown Colorado Springs the old train station still exists. Presently it seems to be some kind of convention center. This morning I decided to photograph it, and some scenes around it. I've went there to photograph it before, just not with the Fuji SLR like I have now. Also not with the way I see things now.
If you were expecting fireworks images. Sorry. Didn't take any as of yet.
I've included the links to where they are posted on Viewbug.

Here are the train tracks behind the station.

 http://www.viewbug.com/photo/66982659

The cupola was interesting to me. I tried it from the back side, and from the front side. I liked the front side better because of the lighting.

 http://www.viewbug.com/photo/66982662

This is one of the benches out front of the train station.

 http://www.viewbug.com/photo/66982702

They placed one of the switches on display out front of the station.

 http://www.viewbug.com/photo/66982697

On my way to work I stopped by a park. The slides have always looked pretty cool.

 http://www.viewbug.com/photo/66982723

This is pretty close to work. Where the trail is at used to be train tracks a long time ago. They were removed and now where they were is part of a city wide bike trail.

http://www.viewbug.com/photo/66983905

Tonight we probably will go see a few fireworks go off. I'll photograph them and post them if we do.

Have a great day and enjoy your 4th of July.

New glasses

We did have plans to go somewhere today but now we're getting a lot of rain. Sorry, no pictures to post yet. Soon though I'll be getting the camera out and taking a few images. At a minimum maybe the thistles which all seem to be in bloom. They actually look pretty even though I wouldn't recommend them grow in your yard.

Earlier today I cleaned out some of the gutters. We also defrosted one of the freezers. I also ordered new glasses today and they are bifocals. It'll probably take me a little bit to get used to them as I've never had bifocals before.

It will be about a month from now I should be getting my dentures. It's been a whole bunch of changes this year. Not all changes are good but I think the ones I'm having happen are.

Have a great day and try to enjoy life a bit.

Creek near Fillmore

I've done many shots of Fountain Creek over the years. This section, however, was not one of them. Yesterday morning before work I stopped by and did a shoot. It turns out about 7 am is probably not the best time of day because of where the sun is in the sky. You get a lot of glare off the water especially shooting up the creek. Despite that I still made an effort to get a few usable images and I think I managed to.
Here they are, enjoy.

I did try to step out on to one of the sand bars as I was going to try for a slightly different composition for the fourth image. Usually the sand bars are rather firm and you can pretty much walk out to the middle of the creek. Not this year. We've gotten too much rain and I instantly began sinking to my chagrin. All day I had wet feet therefore.
Oh well, I still got a bit of what I wanted at any rate.

Have a great day and try to enjoy life a bit as you go through your day.

Fountain Creek Downtown

I drive by this section of Fountain Creek every day on my way to work. It's right next to I-25 and is a short distance from the MLK bypass. I never took the time to photograph it however until this morning at just after 7 am.

I dropped my camera the other day and since then at some focal lengths it doesn't focus properly now. The strap end separated and the camera slipped off. Especially above 480mm. You can notice it in this picture at the center. 

This is a 1.5 second exposure at ISO 100.

This is the same view at 1/30 of a second at an ISO of 640.

All in all the lighting was perfect for what I wanted.
Have a great day.

Palmer Lake again.

We went up to Palmer Lake again. After we got there this storm started blowing up and it began to get cloudy. It was rather difficult to row the boat across the lake with fighting the wind which was blowing us toward the north end of the lake. 

It was a little choppy at times too which didn't help.
Really not the best environment for composing images but I work with what I have available to me at the moment.
In this image you see a fence on the left side. That's the border for a wildlife preserve that's closed to the public and they don't allow anyone in. Anyway that wasn't intended as the subject. The pathway, and the lake was. So were the clouds which seemed to add a foreboding element to the composition.

Then I had to take a couple of images of the clouds themselves.

This is a bit of the wildlife preserve.

I tried doing a rather slow image of the water by the dam. I was hoping it would smooth out the water to make it a bit glasslike and that the trees on the shoreline would reflect on it. Still, it ended up being a rather cool composition.

Have a great day. I'll get out again soon and capture a few more images to share with you.

Seven Bridges Trail

Today we went up to North Cheyenne Canyon Park. It's a wonderful, wild, scenic area where scenic images are available by the score. Through the park runs several trails, one of which is Gold Camp Road, now mostly a trail. Motorized vehicles are not allowed on this road. Back in the late 1800's it was where the railroad to Cripple Creek was. 

The image below is a guy walking his two dogs on Gold Camp Road.

This is near the beginning of Seven Bridges which branches off of Gold Camp Road. I wanted to test out what I was planning to use, the ND8, and ND4 filters stacked. The first two were done with the ND8 alone and are 2 second exposures.

This one is an 8 second exposure and I was stacking the ND4 also. From there I continued to shoot with the two filters stacked. Lengthening out the shutter speed like that makes the flowing water look ghostly. It's cool. For most of these the minimum shutter speed is 5 seconds.

For this one I also stacked the 2ND filter on top of the others. Oh, I did find out my maximum shutter time is 8 seconds. This image was an 8 second one.

IDK why but I've always thought these kinds of plants are cool. Every once in a while I'll photograph one.

Hope you enjoyed this little getaway. You should go on one of your own now. We all get too caught up in every day events that are usually beyond our control and we can do little about. These days there's all of that nasty political stuff too.
Have a great day and try to enjoy your life a bit.

Palmer Lake redux

Susan finished her billiards finals today. Afterward we went up to Palmer Lake again. This time with an inflatable boat I just bought. We crossed the lake and since I haven't rowed a boat for a long time it was an exercise in patience. I wasn't doing a good job at first of getting it to go where I wanted it to.

Once Susan started fishing I went wandering off and tried to find something to photograph. There really wasn't much however until I came upon these Canadian geese, with a full set of goslings in the grass of an adjoining wildlife refuge. 

Normally they would spend the summer in Canada, and Minnesota, but there is one pair that likes it here. Apparently living is really good because they had five goslings. Normally they would have two, or three, goslings at the most. My understanding is a pair will mate for life. Usually for the winter they south to South America. It's amazing journey of about 22,000 miles.

In the first frame is right after I spotted them in the grass, and then I followed them as they went. I didn't want to get too close, and yet, I couldn't help myself but get a bit closer. A couple of these images I can't wait to get up on Viewbug. It was definitely the bright spot of the day and now I'm sharing them with you dear reader, and viewer. I hope you enjoy the show.

Have a great day.