Jasonisms

While out at the Sand Dunes in November I was able to capture this image of a man pointing his camera at the setting sun. The image was a last minute one that I hadn't planned on shooting, but the man's silhouette just sold the scene for me. Instead of merely a darkening sky and the reflections of the creek breaking up the blackened foreground, I have a man enjoying one of the country's great wonders at dusk. I didn't catch his name, or if I did, I can't recall his name, but I did give him the address to this blog, so perhaps he'll peruse on by one day and see himself the way my camera saw him. Dusk at the Dunes

Zombie Girl with a Flower There's a not-so secret in Denver, Colorado. Every year, for one day only, a feral outbreak hits the city, spreading a plague of the undead across the Mile High City, specifically along the 16th Street Mall and Skyline Park. For eight years now, the EyeHeartBrains.com zombie crawl has traversed the core of downtown Denver, bringing record breaking numbers of zombies to the city and leaving blood and bloody carcasses in it's wake. Zombies of all shapes and sizes, ages and backgrounds crawled along the walking outdoor mall and where there are zombies there are zombie hunters, survivalists and, yes, looky-loos. I, once again, was one of those looky-loos. Camera in hand -- this is a photography blog after all -- I buttoned up my courage and drove downtown to the heart of the outbreak. As it turns out, there's a zombie for just about everything: zombie Star Wars characters, zombie Jesus', zombie fishermen and a plethora of zombie nurses.  Below a...

As the saying goes, there's gold in  them thar hills and last week I had a chance to grab a  few shots of the changing leaves. Years ago, I used to head into the mountains regularly, at least a few times a month, but when gas prices started becoming ridiculously high and employment started becoming ridiculously scarce, spending $60 just to drive into the mountains became a luxury, not a necessity. Let me be clear, $60 doesn't fill my 28 gallon gas tank, it merely provides enough gas for me to drive up and drive back and doesn't include any food I might purchase, lift tickets or overnight stays, etc. Beer City Mountain A year ago I took the motorcycle with me, thus reducing the overhead costs significantly, but I couldn't bring along my tripod or dogs, so this year I decided to take my truck, improving my capacity to bring long canine companions, extra gear, food and drinks. Normally, I'd ask to borrow a friend's extra car, since it gets roughly 25 miles to the ...

A few months ago I went to Canon City, CO to go camping in the area with a friend. Naturally, I grabbed my dSLR and brought it along, but unfortunately there were more days of bad light than good light. What's "bad light" you might ask? Well, Timmy, "bad light" is flat and boring.  Fortunately, though, I was able to grab a couple of decent images, even more fortunate are the others I was able to save with some creative editing. Click Collage to go to Album My friend had plans our first day in the area and I was left to my own devices. I took the truck and the dogs up into them thar hills and lucked across this old GMC sitting in someone's front yard. I pulled over and snapped a couple of shots quickly before jumping back into the Explorer and moving on.  One our way back to the campsite from the city my friend suggested taking this very short very scenic   route along some sort of ridge . The top might have been three car lanes wide, leaving only one lane...

I went out to catch something completely different from this, but once I saw the rays of light shooting up under the dark clouds, I couldn't help but turn the camera towards the mountains. That darker straight line is the Cherry Creek Dam and those mountains are more than 30 miles away. Where the dam meets the water, off to the left of the image, is the Cherry Creek marina and if you zoom into the image you can see the boats floating there as they spend another night tethered to the piers. I really wish I would have known the sunset was going to be this magnificent as I would have sought out a better view. As it was, this was a happy accident. My only wish was the dam wasn't in the image. However, the walk back to the truck plus drive time, would not have given me enough time to catch this with the rays shooting up and out like they are and that made all the difference between this sunset and hundreds of others.

Finally had a chance to take the K5 out for a few shot this morning. Wow. Compared to my *IstDS it is amazing. Sort of like a Ferrari compared to a 1977 Ford Bronco. Here are some images from today. None of them are special, I was just practicing with the knobs and buttons.

First image with the new K5. Yes, this is my dog, Rufus. He is a very unwilling model so I had to stuff his Kong with elk meat. This image is SOOC ( s traight o ut o f the c amera). In other words, no post processing, no cropping, no nothing at all. I know, it's not a great image, but I wanted to use the camera!

Arrival of the K5 was as simple as opening the door to the UPS man. I unpacked the box (the deal I got had a lot of extras)  and while the battery is charging, I am reading the manual. About 350 pages! I've read novels with less pages! This camera has many many many more features and options than my poor *Ist DS does. The the DS has very basic features, nearly the same as one would find on a film SLR camera. The K5 seems to have so many more options! I better not lose the manual.