Virginia goes to Denver!

So last weekend while Aaron was taking artsy pictures, I got to fly to Denver and visit with Nat and Erin. This visit was prompted by an excellent suggestion from Martha that we try to meet up while she was at a conference in Denver. Luckily Nat and Erin had a few days off for President’s Weekend, so it worked out perfectly.

When I flew in on Friday I got to see the Rockies. They are pretty impressive.

Nat picked me up at the airport with the faithful Oliver dog, Jethro. Then we got to pick-up M from her hotel in downtown Denver. Nat and Erin live in an ‘up-in-coming’ neighborhood not far from the downtown. It has some amazing Mexican restaurants. One of the best treats of Denver was Nat’s breakfast burritos made with green chili and insanely good flour tortillas. The tortillas were so good that I had to bring some back for Aaron.

As for green chili, if you are a east-coaster like me, you may think of chili as something made in a Crockpot with meat, beans, and tomatoes. But green chili is more of a sauce that goes on anything and everything from eggs to french fries. Here’s a website I found with more info. for the curious foodies out there: http://denvergreenchili.com/default.aspx

After lunch with Nat and M we got a quick tour of Nat and Erin’s house before going to pick up the lady of the house from work.

The entrance

The kitchen

Awesome polka dot room.

Fairy princess guest room.

TV room.

Nat is a woodworker, so they have converted the garage into a shop for him.

  They also have an awesome backyard and patio where we soaked up the Denver sun.

Besides being awesome friends and green chili eaters. Nat and Erin have the whole outdoorsy, gardening, composing, good life going for them. Erin made sure that we at least went on a walk every day, so we balanced the delicious Denver food and beer.

On Saturday, sadly Erin had to go to class, but Nat took us to Red Rock for a little hike.

 

It’s a beautiful place and we were lucky enough to have beautiful weather too.

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On Saturday night, Mom and Dad Page treated us all to a belated birthday dinner for M. We went to Jonesy’s Eat Bar in downtown Denver. They have amazing fries and sliders. We got thai chili fries, mac and chese fries, buffalo fries, and truffle parmesean fries. As for the sliders: shrimp po boys, falafel, lamby joes, and traditional blue cheese and bacon. DELICIOUS!

After dinner we played pool. Because every classy restaurant should have a pool table.

 

That night a giant snow storm hit Minneapolis, so lucky for us, Martha got stuck in Denver for an extra day. We spent Sunday lounging around and since Nat and Erin didn’t have school on Monday, we got to play a bar quiz game, Geeks who Drink. I definitely recommend.

So those are some of the highlights of the trip. We also watched a lot of Buffy and gave Jethro lots of love and attention. I have to say, Denver was a pretty fabulous place and I’m looking forward to hopefully seeing Martha, Nat, and Erin again sometime soon.

Mid February quick update…

Well, the month is still going on strong…. between the newspaper, classes, the internship, and various other commitments, time really doesn’t exist… so, I really haven’t gotten to do any fun shooting for a long while.. so, this past weekend, while Virginia was in Denver (She’ll do a blog update later) I finally got to go out and do some shooting… well… first I had to go shoot a local “Tough Man Competition”

So… the above is about what I was thinking… I was thinking that a Tough-Man competition would be a mouth-piece and some tape on the hands / wrists…. then, they’d get out there and beat each other senseless…. I was picturing sweat and blood flying.. broken noses… good old American fun. However, I was mistaken.

Now… yeah.. that guy is getting punched in the face… but they’re wearing 16oz gloves and headgear…. not to mention the groin protector… I’m not saying that boxing isn’t tough… boxing is hard-core, and it takes someone who’s in great physical condition to last more than a few seconds in the ring.. but… I wouldn’t call boxing a tough-man competition… Also, you may notice that the above pictures are.. horrible… well, the “Arena” was the local National Guard Armory… which was horribly lit… and, we “press” members had to sit at tables that were pushed up against the ring…  meaning that we had to attempt to shoot through the ropes, and that’s never fun.

There were a few opportunities for some tighter shots…  but not very many… and while there’s a little blood on this guy, I wouldn’t exactly say that there was a lot of blood flowing outside of the bodies…

There were a few decent hits though… some that were enough to make people take a little nap on the mat for a while…

So, after the boxing, Zack and I hopped in the car to go take a few pictures… of course, at the time, it was dark.. so, that made for some interesting pictures….

It was a full moon… so I couldn’t pull crazy long exposures.. for most, it seemed that the magic number was somewhere between 4-10 minutes….

The moon made some pretty cool shadows… and the clouds made some cool streaks in the sky…

We ended Saturday night by spending some time shooting this awesome old bus.. I think that the bus has been converted to a home.. or, it may possibly be the start of a hippie commune… note the stove-pipe coming out of the front window, and the plywood replacing the front windshield… So… another short note on the bus.. this bus is off the Parkway a little bit… over a few fences and a hike up a hill…. now… this was a decently steep hill…. you can stand on top of the hill, look around 360 degrees, and it’s like you’re above everything… you can see for miles and miles… but, the hill is steep.. on all sides. There’s no way this thing was driven up the hill under its own power. So, I have no other logical explanation other than to say that the bus was dropped on top of that hill by aliens. So… after a few shots of the bus, I ended up back at home at about 3AM.

Saturday, I woke up at 7… got a shower… and drove in to pick up Zack. We then headed up to Shady Valley, where I was helping out Zack with some motorcycle photography… It was supposed to be in the 70’s on Saturday… but that didn’t happen. What did happen is that I got sunburned.  It got up to about 50. So, we only saw half a dozen motorcycles in about 4 hours… so, I drove Zack back to his dorm, and went out to do a little Recon for the shoot we wanted to do Saturday night… This found me up on the Parkway again… but after a short time, I found what I was looking for (More on that below) So, I gave Josh a call, and he agreed to come meet me at the intersection of 221 and 421… so, since I happened to be driving past the Park and Ride at the time, I pulled in, put the car in park, and absolutely passed out. Josh says he had to beat on the window about 3-4 times to get me to wake up and unlock the door for him… it was only a 10 minute nap… but man… it felt amazing.

So, then Josh and I grabbed a quick meal… picked Zack up again… and by about 6:30 we were on our way out to the Dark Sky Observatory, which is an observatory owned by the University. We have been planning on doing this for a long time… and finally got around to it, even though the conditions weren’t the best… Sure, it was decently warm and the sky was clear, but this past weekend was a full moon. So, we knew that the moon was going to rise at about 9:30.. so we got there around 7 and figured we could beat the moonrise…

So, pointing at Polaris gives those nice tight circles over about a 30 minute exposure…. however, we realized that perhaps we weren’t at “the” observatory… so, we went for a quick walk… we discovered a much larger building up the road just a bit, and I came back down to the above shot and cut the exposure short….

I had this awesome shot lined up… right through the center of the dome… and the dang thing moved in the middle of the shot…

And the same thing happened here…. but… I think the effect on this one isn’t as bad, since it’s not such a tight shot on the dome itself…

Here’s another challenge of shooting during a full moon… in the foreground, you can see the shadow of my tripod…. once again, it doesn’t bother me too much… but I’d prefer if it wasn’t there….

There were all sorts of interesting photo opportunities at the observatory…. but we really wanted to be there for the star trails… so once the moon made that no longer an option, we headed out towards other places….

Is there any better place to be at 10pm than a graveyard during a full moon? I think not… here you see the headstones directly ahead… the shadows created by the full moon… and behind the fence, a bit of evening traffic coming through….

The church really had all sorts of interesting shots… and it was a neat looking church in general…

So.. all in all, the weekend was great for some non-required photography…. I had a blast out shooting… and a I learned some great techniques…  Until next time…. ….

Also… a quick update of just pictures….

I forgot to mention this.. but on campus, we recently just did the polar plunge as well… and by “we” and “did” I mean “we photographers”  “took pictures” …. so..without further ado… Pictures.

 

Ahhh February…

So… the blog has been a bit… we’ll say… “lacking” lately… but, in our defense, Boone has been sucky lately. It’s been cold, and snowing, and horrible. And cold. And snowing. So, since the past few blog posts were about the horrible snow, I didn’t think adding more about the snow would do anyone any good… plus, those may be memories that we’d just as soon forget. …

 

So, on to today… we decided to go for a hike! It was in the lower 50’s… so after a little internet searching, we decided on a place to go, and took off… there’s got to be no better way to enjoy a sunny day than with a hike, and with only the faintest remnants of snow remaining, what better way to celebrate the warmth?

Well crap. But, the hike was still rather wonderful… the air burned my lungs… and the ground was soggy in the sunny areas, and covered in snow in the shady areas….

But… we were actually kind of hoping for these conditions… because the main purpose of the trip was to visit the Crab Orchard Waterfall.

The waterfall looked pretty awesome with the snow and ice all over it… so, to add a little more awesomeness to the mix, I set up the tripod and did a 25 second exposure of the lower section of the falls…

I tried to get a similar long exposure with Virginia in the shot… but… she has a problem standing still for much more than 2 seconds….

but… I did manage to get a few decent shot with both of us…

You can see here…. even though there is snow on the ground… Virginia is in a light jacket…. and … and….. she even has it unzipped!!!

Finally…. tomorrow is Valentine’s Day… in celebration, Virginia and I had some friends over for dinner Saturday night… since… for some unknown reason, Valentine’s Day is on a Monday… what kind of horrible idea is that? I was talking about holidays falling on useless days of the week with my mother today… Valentine’s Day should be one of those floating holidays like Thanksgiving… it should always be on a Friday or Saturday… but… in any case… have a nice Monday.

On another note… I ‘m a big fan of certain seasonal candies…. Candy Corn, Jelly Beans, Candy Canes, and of course… Conversation Hearts… but… this year… conversation hearts are a bit difficult to find… why? why can’t I find these magical, chalky little hearts with cheesy saying written on them??? well… here’s why:  http://www.newser.com/story/111315/12-year-old-shocked-by-naughty-conversation-heart.html