Wulf photography

Just a few shots to toss up here. It’s been a little while since I’ve thought about this blog and felt it needed a little attention.

One from the end of Fall around here at Fountain Creek. Another of Garden of the Gods using my 85mm. Last one is of me practicing lighting. Hope the day is going well for you.

Fall is arriving with a vengeance here. I’ve been out a couple of times now after work shooting leaves. Can’t go too far afield since the light only lasts till around 5:40 or so in a lot of spots. Hoping to get out further this weekend for some really nice views. Did these with the X100. Put it on a tripod and took multiple exposures. Combined them in Lightroom using Photomatix. You can come up with some really nice looking photos this way. Here are a few examples from Farish this year. I’ve been focusing on this place just to see how much of it I can capture. Hope you enjoy these.

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Here’s a couple tries at shooting some nice looking star fields. Nothing spectacular compared to some of the work I’ve seen out there but I”m happy with what I got. Something I’ve been meaning to do and just never have before. Went up to the Crags and stopped on the side of the road. Nice and dark out there. Been about a year probably since I’ve seen this many stars. Does one good to go out where it’s dark and look up at the sky.

Spent a little time up in the High Country today checking out the Aspens. Starting to turn but probably another week before they start to near their peak. Still looks like we might have a decent crop of Fall color. We had some snow up on the peaks with the last storm that went through. Here’s a view of Pikes Peak from the North. Snow really adds to the photo.

Just a quick post on this program. I use this plugin with Lightroom mostly. Really enjoy working with it. Gives me a little sense of working in a darkroom with the control I have. Of course, I’m much better with this than I ever was in the darkroom. You can get some really beautiful tones out of this that just make you happy to see. This one is barely toned, very subtle. Has a slight chocolate feel to me. Hope you enjoy it.

Just out walking the dogs in Palmer Park the other day and noticed the S shape to this part of the trail. Shot this with the Fuji. Fun little camera that I enjoy carrying around. Fixed focal length is actually a joy to use once you quit fighting it and just let it happen.

Monday at the Balloon Classic and winds were good and blowing in the right direction. People lined the lake snapping shots as the balloons cleared the trees from the take off area and floated over the lake. Multiple balloons were able to get back down and drop their baskets into the water accompanied by the cheers of the onlookers all around the lake. The geese were out swimming their patrols watching all the antics also. This is my favorite picture that I got this year. Again, all I was using was my little Fuji X100. Had to work harder to get a shot I liked. Without zoom capability you have to wait for the picture to come to you if you can’t go to the picture. Have lots of pictures with tiny little balloons in them. This one came out really well. Hope you enjoy it and hope to see you at next years Balloon Classic.

Weather allowed the balloons to lift off this morning, yay! Had a blast shooting them with my little Fuji X100. It’s like being a kid in a candy store. Color every direction you look. The Fuji really seems to fit my style. Here a few from this morning for you to enjoy.

Went to the balloon glow last night. I got there a little after eight and they were already taking down balloons so didn’t get much. Did get a few shots though. Here are one or two shots I made last night.

Woke up this morning to an overcast sky and blowing winds. Went back to bed! Got up a little later and headed down to the Balloon Classic to see if anything was going on. I knew that with the winds we had this morning there would be no launches. Just no way to get a balloon up in the air. They would be flying over New Mexico in no time! Here’s a shot of what it looked like this morning. You’ll notice something missing, no balloons. Hopefully the weather will be nicer tomorrow morning giving them a chance to launch. We’ll see if tonight allows a balloon glow or not.

Headed up 24 today. Wanted to check out Catamount Falls since I have never been there before. Last time I went to Green Mountain Falls was years ago in the winter. Did some ice skating on the pond there. Nice day today. Somewhere around 90 degrees. Seems you can’t park at the trail head so you have to park down near Lake Ave. It’s a little bit of a walk just to get up to the trail head and it’s pretty steep almost all the way. Fortunately the falls aren’t very far once you get on the trail. Probably do this one again and actually walk the trail once it cools off a little more and traffic is less so the dogs can run free. Anyways, here’s a couple of shots of the falls that I got today. Hope you enjoy them. Oh, also got a picture of a brick that I really like for some reason. I’ll toss that one in here also. Later!

Spent a few hours today baking in the hot sun while roaming around Garden of the Gods. It really is a beautiful place to visit. Parking is a bear right now with all the tourists visiting the Garden. It was only about 1 in the afternoon so the light really wasn’t the greatest. I’ll tell you one thing though. Throw some light at the Fuji X100 and it will come right back at you with tons of color. Especially the skies it does. The shot below was actually done in RAW and converted to jpeg. Wanted to see if I could see any difference between the cameras jpegs and my rendition of the RAW file in Lightroom. I think I got a little more contrast and color than the jpeg versions I took but honestly couldn’t see any difference in the levels of detail. Tells you just how good a job this camera does creating jpegs.

Messing around later I took this shot of my front door. The dogs weren’t very happy that I was outside and they couldn’t come with. The big guy will just take off running all around the neighborhood if I let him out. Holly will just follow blindly along.

Cleaned the bathroom last night so figured I’d get a shot of it. Old bathroom, old sink. Shot it at ISO 4000 with the Fuji. Shot has a nice grain to it in the out of focus areas. Sink is “pretty” clean. I’ve always been of the opinion that life is too short to be too retentive about cleaning! You know the other word that goes in that last sentence!

I usually have company when processing my photos. The dogs seem to switch out and take turns as to who gets the bed so they can be right beside me. Today was Holly’s turn.

This is a shoot I’ve been meaning to do for a while. Frankly, I’ve been a little lazy about bout getting round to it. I bought this bag of various sized nuts a while back from Lowes. Saw them the other night sitting there and just took out a handful and dropped them on the sidebar of my desk. Light was just ambient light from the overhead ceiling light and also light coming from the bathroom door to the right. No setup, no fuss, just having fun shooting a little abstract macro. Processed them in Lightroom and Silver Efex Pro 2 for the black and whites. Enjoy!

Had a productive evening shooting up at Farish Recreation Area. It’s a military/DOD campground above Woodland Park. Spent a few hours with the dogs just walking around seeing what there was to see. Tried to rain a couple of times, had to keep the camera inside my raincoat to protect it since the X100 isn’t weather proof. Camera performed really well today. Just keep getting more impressed with this thing as I learn to use it. It isn’t perfect but it is a joy to shoot. One shot I really liked is one of my two Chocolate Labs, Holly and Chester. Holly is still a puppy about 10 months now. She’ll be a year in October. Complete bundle of energy. She looks like a Gazelle running through the woods the way she jumps over things. The color version of this is really vivid but I prefer the black and white version because they seem to pop out of the photo a little more. It has a good 3D look. I ran it through Lightroom and then Silver Efex Pro 2 to convert to black and white.

This light was kind of flat for most of the shooting I was doing. I was hoping that the sun would drop below the clouds before it set or at least get a hole to shine through. Kind of got both together just as I was leaving to head home so I grabbed this shot of Pikes Peak with the sun low to the right. Had a lot of nice foreground to fill the picture up with. Since the X100 does not have a zoom you have to work its focal length to get a good shot. I think this one turned out pretty well.

Have more shots which I posted on my Flickr page if you are interested.
Flickr