Sunset at the Arapaho Bend Nature area. Taken while sitting on the ground and fighting mosquitoes. I lost. This is a composite of three images and processed with HDR Efex Pro then tweaked in Lightroom 4. It’s different.
Last Nights Sunset
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Front Range Sunset -
Enjoy Your Weekend
The Coffee Bean HDR image of the Coffee Bean coffee shop in Old Town Fort Collins. Enjoy your weekend.
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Inspiration
Sunrise Along County Road 13 It’s my belief passionate photographers have a voice inside that suggests ideas for images. These ideas randomly present themselves at the strangest moments: driving the car, taking a shower, dreams in the middle of the night, scrambling eggs, reading a book, etc. Some we remember and some fade off in the darkness of forgotten moments. Some inspirational moments are to motivate us, make us take action. The above image was just such an inspiration.
The inspiration came to me on a Saturday afternoon. The Idea was for a Sunday morning sunrise shoot. I knew about where on County Road 13 I wanted to setup and what time I needed to be there. Other than that I did not have any specific vision. I knew there were trees and fence posts that I could include in the image. I would not know what I’d come home with but I needed an image. It was also about experiencing a morning sunrise not. Probably more importantly, I needed to take action of that voice. As these small trees are on private land I needed to shoot from the bar ditch or road. I walk up and down the dirt road for places to setup. The temperature was a warm 34 degrees compared to the single digits we had the previous week. The cold was invigorating even though my fingers were aching when I finished. It’s not an image I will print but it was just what I needed. I followed the inspiration.
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Hundreds of Times
Golden Sunset “Landscape photographers should have a sense of adventure. Get out there yourself and explore. Stay off the beaten path and be instantly better by being different than the rest. Creativity can’t be taught by someone. It comes from doing, observing the results, analyzing them and doing it all over again, dozens or even hundreds of times.” Dan Jurak
A few years ago I coached in a midget football program for 5th to 8th graders and had a blast. Our goal was to teach them the basics of the sport: stance, blocking, tackling and sportsmanship. But one of the most interesting aspects was the difference each individual had in learning. There were those who had it the first time, those who were not going to get it and those who were going to need hundreds of times. I learned I belong in the later category: hundreds of times?
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Morning Colors
Morning at Arapaho Bend Nature Area I’m one of those “morning” people who rises before the sun and on most mornings have a cheerful mood about me. It seems I always have been. Those few times I slept in late were during younger years when the party life, booze and loose women were the priorities of my life. After experiencing the suffering each of them offers, I’ve wised up and no longer consider the party life or booze to be that important. Loose women, well there seems to be the need for more suffering in that area.
Anyway, the gist of this post is about morning colors. I enjoy the whole experience of a morning sunrise. Being there, taking it all in. Getting soaked. Hearing the sounds of nature awaking. Smelling the musty woods around me. The expectations of the colors as the sun breaks over the horizon. But, sometimes there are no colors or they’re more subdued. Well, a couple days ago I rose at 4:40 am and headed to the Arapaho Bend nature area. If you look closely, just behind the trees, you can see just a bit of orange glow. Ah, morning colors!
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Taking Action
February Sunset Examine the lives of people who have truly excelled in any of the arts – music, theater, dance, sculpture – and they have one characteristic in common: the capacity to commit themselves wholeheartedly to their chosen disciplines. They do it every day. No excuses. A dancer, for example, cannot compete at even the lowest level without years of daily exercising; a pianist cannot perform at a concert after having taken a nine-month break; actors are not given roles in a Shakespeare play because they fell they should be. So why should photographers expect to reseive one-person exhibitions or publications without similar dedication? Are the standards in photography so low that success can be archieved with so little effort? Of course not. – David Hurn
I mentioned in a previous post that one of the components of motivation is getting “active.” None of us will succeed at attaining a goal unless we get in gear and become active. For someone like me who considers himself a dreamer, it requires a major effort to take steps and get active on those dreams. Don’t get me wrong as I’m not a couch potato and do get active on many fronts of my life. It seems I falter when the dreams are about my creative side.
I can find a hundred excuses for not taking action on inspirations and not one of them holds much weight. It is easier for me to just dream about ideas or projects. That way they are a success but only in my imagination. Taking action requires effort and time plus the possibility it may not turn out the way I dreamed: failure. And I am aware that those failures are vital steps to improving. After a period of little action, I finally spent almost two full days shooting. My simple action accomplished more than one objective. The thought of failure was gone. My creative juices were flowing. I felt good inside. I also put a few miles on the car, testing it in the snow and mud, which it did pretty good. So, I guess this post is about getting off my tush and taking action otherwise my dreams and inspirations are only unfulfilled fantasies. Now, to clean the car and the bathroom. 🙁
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Surreal
Two Trees at Sunrise This is one of the surreal presets found in HDR Effects Pro. Again, it is three images at on stop. I chose HDR effects Pro because it felt their presets were not as surreal and closer to the natural feel. I’m not a fan of the surreal images we see done with HDR but as with most people I have to also play around with the software.