Front Matter

These are my photos of October 11th windstorm and the evening of October 12th. These pictures are more experimental than many of mine so far.

On Sunday the 11th, I was trying to capture an in-coming windstorm which resulted in many extreme telephoto shots to visualize the haze from dust and debris. Interestingly these were all hand shot and fast shutter speeds but focus is variable with foreground buildings in focus, intermediate distance buildings out and further out buildings yet still seeming in focus. I will need to understand how to focus better for these shots and likely rely on manual focus for them. Some fun things to note are noted with the distance shots.

On Monday the 12th, I was unable to get out of the house before the sun was all but gone. As such these photos were all shot with my fastest lens, my 50mm f/1.8. One interesting issue I have found shooting the DSLR at night versus my old style of very contrasty black and white film pushed very hard is that my 50mm f/1.8 lens has more ghosts and flares than a haunted house. I found many images unusable from the number of lens flares from street lamps and and ghosts from other city lighting. Some of these photos had flares but were corrected; can you see where? Also due to the after dark shooting some of my photos proved quite difficult to shoot with focus being difficult to attain automatically (and the focus ring of my 50mm being a super short throw for manual work) and with the depth of field being incredibly small with many shots done at f/1.8 or nearly. Thanks to my compositing being not as focused these images resulted in more post-processing. Effects ranged from an obvious split-toning to a number of defocused shots to add drama, anonymize folks passing by or simply provide a boost to otherwise sloppy composition and many targeted density shifts to pull down lights and provide focus on interesting aspects of the image.

Sunday October 11th

Zooming in here is a great wealth of murals on the sides of LoDo buildings, I could read a Toshiba sign and recognize the Union Pacific logo on fuel tanks north of 38th Avenue.

Zooming in here is interesting, I could read a Toshiba sign and recognize the Union Pacific logo on fuel tanks north of 38th Avenue.

Zooming in here is more of a field of pleasing tree repetition but I think one can see the old Elitch Gardens theater or a church on one of the ridges before a fade to rolling treed hills. The foothills beyond Rocky Mountain Regional Airport are barely visible next to the Hines Building wall too.

Monday October 12th

The only image which could be used straight from the camera all night.

I found it fortuitous this fellow decided to provide me a mystery silhouette to add some fun interest here.

Mild defocusing added in post-production.

The number of folks out with cameras was surprising. This pedestrian was a fellow photographer who stopped to say Hi! I asked if he'd be willing to be a model for me to add an actual, real, live person to a shot and he nicely accepted.

This is a physically impossible photo with a reasonable lens but the well-fed folks walking by added a fun juxtaposition to the gritty road and stark condo building sign; though they shouldn't be identifiable out of reasonableness so we have an odd focus plane that comes and goes here.

Overland Sheepskin has been in business since '73 selling quite impressively priced goods; but here's a fun advertisement piece with the lights and colors of Larimer Square behind.

No, this was not a mugging but I wish I got a more clear shot of this very fun dressed theatrical trio.