Day 263: Light and Dark

This is one of the last summer-ish flowers to bloom near our driveway. The lighting is at sunset.

Day 262: Damaged Lives

This is another picture from the burnt Town Homes I mentioned in yesterday's post. This is what is left of one of the walls between apartments.

Day 261: Vehicular Arson

The Rockrimmon Town Homes burned down last Friday. We didn't find out until last night, and so our first chore this morning was to head straight down there, as it just happens that we own a unit in that apartment complex. Thankfully ours wasn't damaged, but 8 were completely demolished, and we got to talk to some of the residents and owners. As you can imagine, they were pretty devastated. The complex plans to rebuild soon. This is a picture of two of the cars that had already been marked for towing by the authorities. The area was surrounded by police tape when I got there.

Day 260: Purple

These are some really uniquely colored flowers! I love the contrast between the green and purple in this picture, and the water drops just add to the coolness factor.

Day 259: 3G

It's high speed wireless networking! For a football score! How dang convenient!

You won't get this picture if you're completely un-involved in the technological side of things, but maybe you've heard of he new 3G iPhone. That refers to it's fast internet connection. That's why this sign is so funny. one of the parts of the zero fell over inside the sign... so it made a G

Day 258: Respectfully Watching

I would be one terminally bored cheerleader. Course I'm a boy, but still, they spend half of the time at these games just staring at the home-team's butts. I suppose the girls like that though. Whatever floats their boat eh? Either way, the time they do spend cheering is very entertaining. Our school has a pretty dang impressive cheer squad. I think we won state...or came in second in the cheer competitions last year... not that I pay attention to that or anything...haha

Day 257: Home of the Creeper

I'm not a creeper. It would just seem that this little tangle of spider-stuff would be better placed at a haunted house than my deck. But it's not my fault the spider has exterior decorating issues.

Day 256: I'll Have The Usual

Haha, that sounds like something you'd want to say walking into a bar, or a frequented breakfast joint. Good stuff...

Anyway, this picture is the typical Pikes Peak picture. I see this very view every morning as I put my back pack in the car. Beat that people-who-live-in-Kansas!

Day 255: Miniature Wanabes

These are the little flowers just off our front porch. They're about 1/50th of the size of my sunflowers. It's pretty sad, but when you look closely, they have just as much detail and beauty. I think microscopes are under appreciated. yay for almost-macro pictures!

Day 254: Then there were two...

This is just another picture of that second sunflower. I love the detail of the pedal texture. It's a shame flowers don't last long. I assume these will begin to wilt in about a week.

Day 253: FoTS II

That stands for "Flower of the Sun the Second" because this is my second sunflower picture, and because it is of the second of my sunflowers to bloom. Here we are 7 days after the first one, and BAM a new sunflower. So now there are two.

Day 252: Da' Mascot

This is our school mascot. Well, it's the helmet of the lion suit anyway. I think Stefan is under it. I yelled "STEFAN!!!" about halfway through the game, and the lion totally twitched and almost turned around. It was epic. After that I think my nagging perturbed him. This was him trying to look angry. Note: the lion suit doesn't change expressions, so it always kinda looks angry. Or stupid. Depends on the angle.

Day 251: Flares of Glory

This was taken heading home from German class today. Colorado sunsets amaze me. The rays from this cloud looked even cooler in person.

Day 250: Once Again...

Here is a picture of the moon. I'm still impressed by how common this sight is, and how much we take it for granted, when it is something so alien. I just think it's odd that there's this huge rock orbiting our home planet. Humans wondered just what it was for all of history, and it hasn't been until relatively recently in our history as a species that we know just exactly what it is, but that doesn't make it any less cool.

Day 249: Autumn Falls

These are some of the first leaves in our back yard to change. Mom has a thing for making me get pictures of these, and I completely enjoy it. I assume you'll see more of these types of pictures as autumn progresses.

Day 248: Gradient by Sun

This was a kind of last-minute picture. It's not particularly great because I was in a hurry to get a picture. Once again the homework load keeps the creative process at bay.

Day 247: Reverse III

I got the three backwards, hence the title. I was working under pressure and trying to write backwards! It was past 11 at night, Mom was yelling at me because I should have been in bed, yet I was downstairs playing with a blue glow stick. Glow sticks pose a challenge to photography in that they don't turn off. So you're forced to write in a kind of cursive, or just make incoherent patterns of light. Personally either look pretty cool.

Day 246: Flower of the Sun

This picture portrays the first of my 3 sunflowers to bloom. All of them are doing quite well. We first noticed this one was headed for a-flowerin' about a week ago, and here it is. One beautiful homegrown sunflower!

Day 245: Riding on Air

This was a demonstration held shortly after the Balloon Fest in a field across the street. It was pretty great. Powered hang-gliding is my new dream-job. Sign me up.

Day 244: The Mayflower

Now there's irony. I guess. Today is of course 9/11, the date on which out nation endured one of the worst attacks on it's soil in history. This is a picture of the mayflower, or at least a representation of it on a balloon. It sailed to America with a bunch of Pilgrims long ago. Thanks to it we have thanksgiving. This is the last hot air balloon picture you will see on this blog ever. It's over. relax. I just had to pick one more because I didn't take any pictures today.

Day 243: Twenty Dollars

This is a $20 bill. It's old, so it looks much cooler than the ones you're used to. Pretty sweet lighting eh? It's the good 'ol Vivitar 285HV about 2 inches above (picture wise) the frame. It was taken with the 50mm lens af F/1.8 so the depth of field is really narrow, like that matters when you're taking a picture of a piece of paper straight-on lol. I like the detail visible because of the lighting angle.

Day 242: Blood and Steel

This is human blood in a steel beaker of terror.

Actually it's NyQuil in a measuring cup. I've been using a lot of it lately, and I have a pretty nasty cough. I took this to delay doing my homework that much longer. It worked

Day 241: Blue Peak

Another pikes peak picture, taken from my house at sunset. I edited it to only include the colder colors, which defeats the whole sunset look, but in my opinion preserves the coolness (horrible pun).

Day 240: The Peoples

This is a picture taken from just less than 12 feet off the ground. I am about 5'8" and my tripod, fully extended is about 6' so this pretty much reached over everyone's heads. Pretty sweet. This constitutes about 1/16th of all the people that attended this fest. It was crazy full of 'em. I like that the balloons are clearly visible in the background. (click full view? eh? eh? It's worth it!)

Oh and the dude in the bottom left corner has a Nikon D300! WHOO! And the lady in front of him has a clearly visible Nikon neck strap around her neck!

See Day 233 for more info on why there are sooooo many balloon pictures. Oh, and this is the last of them...for now!

Day 239: Peak-a-'lloon!

Sorry. That's a horrible title. And it's way too similar to Day 103...

Despite that however, I really like the brilliance of the reflection on the balloon and the saturation of the colors in the mountains. Post production worked wonders on this one. Probably one of my favorite pictures of Pikes Peak.

See Day 233 for more info on why there are sooooo many balloon pictures.

Day 238: The Lake of Chrominance

I'll bet Tom doesn't even know that word. Well he didn't until he clicked this link anyway...

This picture was a lot of fun to edit, and probably (warning: spoiler) my favorite out of all the balloon pictures. It is certainly a cool idea eh?

See Day 233 for more info on why there are sooooo many balloon pictures.

Day 237: Size Differentiation

This is a picture consisting of two hot air balloons and one blue sky and approximately a lot of clouds. I hope you enjoy it. Comments are appreciated people!

See Day 233 for more info on why there are sooooo many balloon pictures.

Day 236: Perfectly Centered

Now here is a perspective of an air balloon that I don't believe I have ever seen in another photograph. I particularly like the symmetricallity. This was taken about half way through the balloon festivities. The sky is purposefully extra blue, again... because I can.


See Day 233 for more info on why there are soooo many balloon pictures.

Day 235: Flying Fowl Flew Flightfully Forward!

Here is another not-quite-balloon focused picture from the fest. These were fowl that flew over the lake as I photographed. I was lucky enough for my camera to focus in time to get a few good photographs.


see Day 233 for more info on why there are soooo many balloon (lol) pictures.

Day 234: Flag in the Sun

This picture really struck my attention only after I had played around editing it for a while. What is so unique about this picture is that the bright part of the flag is so over exposed that it maxed out the brightness value in the pic, so I was able to darken the rest of it without the brightness being affected at all. In reality there was NO selective editing used at all! It's a mystery! I love the impact it put on the flag though, A pretty good picture to start out the set if I do say so myself.

see Day 233 for more info on why there are (or will be) soooo many balloon pictures.