Day 294: Happy Reformation Day!

Thank the good Lord! I am finally caught up! I've been over a month behind in recent day's because of homework, but I have caught up and shall not again fall behind! I'm so near the end of my project, I can't stop now :D

This was taken at the bonfire, I was again too busy to take pictures today. I went Trick-or-Treat-ing (NO! I'm not too old for that. Get with the times people) with Jordan, Tali, and Abi and we had a blast. It was hilarious. Over the course of the night we:
1. got an M80 thrown at us from a rooftop.
2. Sang "Happy Birthday" "Oh When the Saints" and "Silent Night" countless times and even said "Happy Reformation Day" rather than the usual "Trick-or-Treat!"
3. Nearly got run over by a Jeep going in reverse.
4. Frightened the populous in general with our crazy schemes.
5. Switched "McCain * Palin" and "Obama/Biden" signs which were on opposite sides of the street. That should result in some upset neighbors by tomorrow :D
6. Walked probably more than 3 miles over the course of our journey.
7. Got a freakin' huge load of candy.

The picture of course has nothing to do with any of it because I got 0 good pictures of it all. I would still recommend the full view however. It's a very cool fire picture.

Day 293: Gates Of Hell

This was also taken in the bonfire, I've been really busy this week because Wednesday was a moodle day, so there was no time for picture-taking. I had about 10 hours of homework that day. Fun stuff.

Anyway, this picture in particular reminded me of a burning gate, and where else would you find one of those but hell? Hence, the title. Haha

And just for good measure, and because I can: Matthew 16:18 "And I say also to you, That you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

Day 292: Hungry Inferno

This was taken at the bonfire Tuesday night. I'm trying to sort out which days are which here, so bare with me. I'm about to finally catch up (it's the 1st of November when I post this.) Anyway, in past years I've had fairly incapable cameras at the bonfire, and I focused on the overall fire, and of course friend pictures. This year I focused on friend pictures, but there weren't many people there so I was left with a lot of time for just fire photography. Most of the time I had my 50mm lens on due to the whole low light situation, so my zoom level was fixed and most of the fire pictures turned out somewhere kind of close up. This resulted in some pretty cool detail in the pictures, and this one was taken right when a new fence-like piece of wood was thrown on. Very cool through-the-fence patterns going on, and at f/1.8 the depth of field is pretty cool too.

Day 291: Favorite Sunset

As I said yesterday, yesterday's sunset was really extra-unique. It had these different stages and it looked different every 15 minutes. The actual red and orange and pink tones hung around for about 30 minutes though, so it lasted an unusually long time compared to a typical sunset.

I'm loving the fact that my Day names are getting less and less creative. I'll try to think harder next time. haha

Day 290: Fire Sword

This picture of a sunset (I couldn't control myself, I like sunset pictures, what can I say...) reminds me very much of a fiery sword. Tonight's was a very unique sunset, it went through about 5 unique stages. Tomorrow's picture will show another part of it.

Day 289: Trails in Wood

Today Yesterday (I think I'm off by a day... for the last 2 pictures. That's ok though) I went on a 3-4 hour tour of pretty much every Tourist spot in all of Garden of the Gods, plus a little hike off into the side trails. Elisabeth and I both had nothing to do with our Saturday, so we decided hanging out at GoG with our cameras and taking pictures might by fun. I'm pretty sure I got something around 600 pictures, and I had a blast.

Day 288: Champagne-Colored Sky

This is the sky just before another Colorado sunset. I'm still amazed by how often we get such spectacular sunsets. I'm probably boring everyone with so many sunset pictures. I'll stop :P

Day 287: Computer Parts

Dad had me take pictures today for a project that he's been working on which he is submitting to a contest. I got distracted for a little while and went off taking macro pictures of his work. What you see here is a Parallax Propeller chip. It has eight 80-something MHz processors in one chip, and is thus pretty powerful for most micro-controller type applications. Not that any of you know what that means...

Day 286: Spooky Forest

This was also taken at Fairish. It's really a great place for photography, assuming you have a military ID and can get in... This part of the road kind of reminded me of middle earth. you'd have to see the rest of it. It was very spooky. Yeah. Cool stuff.

Day 285: Inverted Reflections

I know how well Day 238 went over with all of my blog followers, so I decided to try to repeat the feat. I think this one is different enough that you should all like it. If nothing else it's certainly an intriguing perspective no?

Day 284: Reflectionary

Today I drove out to woodland park with my mother. We were originally going to see the trees, but were kind of a week or two late. It seemed all the leaves were gone. Then she had the idea to go visit Fairish. It's a military camp ground type place that has 3 beautiful lakes. I really like the reflections in such still lakes. It's cool how much detail you can see in the reflection.

Day 283: Orb of Sun

This was a cool pattern I saw in the clouds just before the sunset yesterday. I really like the shape of the burst of light the sun made in the clouds. It reminds me of a mirage you might see in the desert.

Day 282: Sunset Gradient

This is a sunset, as seen zoomed in from the 3-story-tall rock in our back yard. Have I mentioned how much I love Colorado sunsets?

Day 281: Fallen Leaves

This was taken in a little grassy area of our school parking lot after school today. it's been pretty much buried in leaves over the last few days, and I figured I'd get a picture. It's where we usually eat lunch, until recently because of the cold.

Day 280: Game Ball

This is a football. The picture was taken at the Powder Puff game yesterday. My friends tried to convince me this would be a cool picture, and so to humor them I've posted it. I edited it to be a bit more yellow and intense than it would be normally, just trying something different.

Day 279: Junior Year

Today was the powder puff game! We won! again. Our class has won the powder puff games annually since freshman year, and we are the only class in the history of our school to have made it 3 and 0 all the way to junior year. I'm sure we'll have no problem defeating the juniors as seniors next year. Buahaha!

Anyway, this was our teams flag at the game. I brought my camera and got some pretty cool action shots. Let me tell you, that was one intense game of flag-football.

Day 278: American Icon of Fruit

This is the new Apple store in Colorado Springs. I stopped by to check out the new mac books, and they are fantabulous. Anyway, being the nerd I am, I had to get a picture. I was in a hurry though, so I didn't really focus on quality or composition... oh well. I think it turned out ok...

Day 277: American Passtime

This was behind out mailbox. I took this near the end of my little jaunt with mother. It looks pretty bashed up, and unfortunately I couldn't manage to get a better picture of it that wasn't blurry. Haha, that's my luck.

Day 276: Magical Plant

This is a very confusing plant. It doesn't seem natural. Anyway, mother dear and I took a walk around our neighbor hood today and really had a blast. It was cool to get some pictures of things we see every day on our various driving trips, and getting pictures of it all was even better. Sometimes we take the places we live in too much for granted. Example A: I never would have noticed how odd this plant is driving by, but while walking it really stood out. pretty awesome.

Day 275: I Kill You!

This picture reminds me very much of Jeff Dunham's Achmed the Dead Terrorist for some reason. Anyway, this is Gabe. I did his family portraits a while back and probably forgot to mention it here. This is his angry face, and it also evokes the feeling of a Kung Foo master who wants to kill you. I edited his eye to be a little more saturated and bright, then desaturated the rest. I like the effect it caused.

Day 274: The Back Yard Leaves

This is my back yard. It's full of scrub oaks. Pretty fun stuff, especially in Autumn. I have so many memories of running through the variable forest of scrub oak trees playing with water guns or just chasing my friends back in the elementary school days. I do like my back yard :D Good times.

Day 273: Old School

I hung out with Elisa for 2 hours before the game today. We had a blast messing around outside of the school with Brandon, and later on we went and took pictures in the baseball field near the football field where our team would be playing. We had a blast and it was a pretty cool adventure overall that ended when we met up with a bunch of others at the tailgate party before the game. These are her shoes, and this was taken in the aforementioned baseball field. I tried to edit it to look a little yellowish-red and over exposed to give it an older-camera/retro feel. I really like it, it's certainly a change from my usual over-saturated and well white-balanced color pictures.

Day 272: Up Close and Personal

This is a macro picture of a blade of grass on our school lawn... Taken with my close-up filters. This was actually captured on the 10th... which hasn't happened yet... SShhh! don't tell anybody I can time travel. Wait! You too can time travel. Let's break all the rules and give you a link to the future: Day 273!

Day 271: Orb of Lush Grassyness

Wow. That was a failed attempt at a synonym for "green" Oh well...

This was taken back on the 4th or "Day 267" as we call it around here. I went up to Denver to help out with the Colorado First Lego League Rookie Booster with Dad. We worked on a presentation the day before hand and gave said 50-minute presentation 3 times that day. It was a lot of fun and we got to "boost" the rookie's knowledge of programming with the LEGO NXT Mindstorms system. Anyway, as it turns out our little presentation room was right next to the space exhibit which has very interesting overhead lighting. This is one of those "interesting" lights.

Day 270: Flares and Rays

This is another beautiful Colorado sunset. I suppose this is what sunsets look like when there aren't many clouds to participate in the festivities.

Day 269: Car Paint

This is the rather unappealing car foam-stuff Kelsey used to decorate her car... It says "Marry Me John Horton" and has hearts all over it (I'll admit to being a little offended by all that as her homecoming date ;) but I got over it... haha) and frankly I think she's left it on so long that she stands no hope of ever getting it off now :P This is one of said hearts, and the blue artistic flame-looking thing off to the left is the reflection of my camera flash.

Day 268: HomeComing 2008

This is me. Well, obviously not my face. Anyway, this is how I was dressed for homecoming... My tie matched Kelsey's dress nearly perfectly, which is pretty good I suppose seeing as the only description of her dress I had received was "it's kinda green/turquoise" :D I think it's kind of narcissistic of me to post a picture of only myself for homecoming, but I try not to post faces on the internet too openly, which means a picture of the two of us wouldn't do. I'm sure she would be offended if i cut off our heads too :P

Day 267: Lake reflections

I hung out with Rach for about two hours before Ice Skating today. I would have like to have taken more pictures, but as it turns out there apparently wasn't much to photograph at 5PM on a cloudy day to be honest. Other than this lake, of course. This happens to be the same lake pictured in Day 238 by the way, and it turns out it's just as reflective on a severely cloudy day! haha

Day 266: Jumbo Jet

From what my dad has told me, this is one of the biggest jets the US Air Force imploys in it's service, and for that matter likely one of the biggest in the world. It's the replacement for the C5 Galaxy, which you would know about if you happened to be an Air Traffic Controller at a USAF base in Britain in the 70's like my father was. Go dad! So we were eating breakfast out on the back deck, and this thing flew over about 5 times. Luckily by the fifth time around, I was ready with my camera. This was taken at 135mm zoom level, and cropped to 100% (look at the full size) but you can pretty much see how big this jet was, and on top of that it was at a pretty high altitude.

Day 265: Golf with Leaves

A few friends and I went golfing today, We had a fantastic time. Elisa and I pretty much took pictures the whole time. There was barely room for golfing between all the shutter sounds. It was so much fun. This is one of the less-silly more-artsy pictures I got today.

Day 264: Leaves Fall

This is one of the beautiful color-changing sets of leaves in our back yard. You just can't beat a back yard full of Scrub Oak's in Autumn. Gorgeous colors.