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.

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.