New Mexico

Here are a couple of bugs I saw on the Piedras Lisa Trail in Albuquerque yesterday. I have more but I have been re-developing my Mountain Ayre web site. This blog will soon be moving over there.

Bee Sunflower

Here's another picture from the Baroness' garden.

Garden Pictures

Here are some pictures I took at the Baroness Pannonica Von Munchmeister's palatial estate over in Nixon Valley.
Thank, Baroness. More to come.

MY Sunflower

I removed a picture from yesterday's post because the landlord of the property where I took the picture demanded a copy.
I don't like to give away pictures except to friends, people I'm doing business with or can otherwise trust.
Here is a sunflower from our garden, which is owned by Allen Klimeck, a cool landlord.

Cosmo

and here is a cosmo outside our store.

new pictures

Sorry to have been away for so long again-I took these pictures today. Now I gotta run and make dinner

Cracks

Just a few pictures I took today-that's the girls having a relaxing Labor Day-like that's any different from any other day. What kind of flowers are those again, Lynn? I honestly did not notice the track-I think it's a bobcat-in the center of the cracks of this picture I was taking for backgrounds on MountainAyreStudio.com.

Here are two pictures I took this morning with the "big" camera at the shop-this are probably my main "successes" in the garden this year-I've had a hard time with the plants lately. Heather got me a gig doing photographs for a book she and a few others are writing. That's pretty exciting-I guess I am a professional now!

Falls

These are falls not far from Mount Evans. That's Heather in the background.

Lazy lazy lazy

Here are two photos I took at the store this morning with my point and shoot. I am going to try to remember to bring the big camera and do these right tomorrow when the light is good and the wind (hopefully) hasn't started to blow.
I feel very lazy about blog entries lately.

Spruce Mountain

Took a little break today (still bustin' it on MountainAyreStudio.com) and went for a bike ride over on Spruce Mountain on the other side of the divide from Monument. What a beautiful place! That's Cheyenne Mountain over Colorado Springs in the background.

So sorry....

Well, once again I feel bad about not having posted anything in so long I can't even remember when the last post was. Here is a sunflower from outside the door of the shop.




















I have been doing battle with Adobe Dreamweaver-trying to educate myself on web site building-I should have a beautiful web site up and running very soon-I'll let everyone know when it is there.
Meanwhile, here is a picture I took in Estes Park Wednesday evening.

Psychodelic Ranch

Here is an image (actually two images I pasted together in Photoshop) of the Cadillac Ranch.

I did some heavy manipulating on this one.

Still more ranch...

This is a panorama created from two images I took from the porch of cousin Amy's cabin last week.

More Ranch....

Trying to find a different way to present this work of art.

Meanwhile back at the...

Here is a turkey vulture enjoying the sunset at my cousin Amy's cabin on the Pedernales River near Austin. The place is known as "The Ranch." Many ranches in TX.

Meanwhile, back at the...

Sorry to have been gone so long-we were staying at a place in TX with no internet.

I took this at the world famous Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo this morning. There are more to come.

The ranch is a very cool work of art that has been added to by countless graffiti artists over the years. The garbage in the foreground is from someone who was adding to the work as I photographed.

And that's the moon up there in the sky.

kipps loop pond

One way to get around a lower mega-pixel camera is to create "vertical panoramas." I took this picture on Kipps Loop on the other side of the hill here yesterday. It is actually two vertical pictures that I stitched together in Photoshop. So two 7 mp pictures become one 14 mp picture!!

Out the Back Door

This is out our back door this evening. Nice, dramatic sunset, and yes, I took a few Photoshop liberties with it.

Poppies

These poppies are growing in planters outside the front door of our store.

Orange Columbine

Can't think of the name of this columbine and I'm to lazy to go out in the garden and check. I got it at the fancy southwest native plant nursery in NM and I was afraid they wouldn't bloom this season, but at least one has popped out.
They're gonna be really nice next year.

Salida Pics

Took these pictures yesterday on a day trip to Salida. The window was at the bike shop in town and the graveyard was on the south side.

Columbines

Just took this picture this evening on our back porch. The light's been getting nice and yellow in the evening lately.

And Voila

Faithful blogateers should remember part of this picture, an old shot of the entrance to the cemetery in Gallisteo NM. The sky washed out in the original picture and I keep replacing it, this time with the moon set from two nights ago (and my last blog entry), with my trusty Photoshop.

Happy fourth

I stepped outside with the intention of photographing the fireworks at Palmer Lake this evening, and this was the best thing I saw.
The fireworks were okay, the Air Force Academy's looked pretty impressive, but I'm pretty happy with this picture.
I will probably combine it with another picture at some point-something with an interesting foreground but blah sky.

Me Quilter???

People ask me if I quilt, and the answer is, well, no. I have actually done one quilt. This is called Kind of Blue, and it is some of my favorite jazz album covers printed on fabric and thrown together into a quilt. I'm not sure if it's a wall or throw size-it's about 4x6 feet.
I stole the idea from my sister Chris, who had made a similar quilt for my nephew Matt with his favorite (very different) album covers.
Heather helped me with it, but the only thing she did for me was the binding.
I was photographing some quilts today and realized I hadn't done this one.

Vertical Panorama?

Don't know why I never tried this before, but this is two shots stitched together in Photoshop of Monument Rock taken today while I was riding.
It was easy and it came out pretty nice-you don't have the problems with light changing as you pan the camera when you are going vertical.
I'll have to try it with a sunset.

Back to the Backyard

I've had a hard time photographing the desert columbines (also known as Denver columbines) in my back yard. The color has been coming out kind of dull.
Then yesterday evening the sunset cast that beautiful yellow light on everything, and I was ready and got these results.

Trees for the Forest

Starting to run out of pictures from last week. Here are some more forest pictures.

Lake?

Here are a few more images from last weekend. I can't remember the name of the lake, and the mountain? Forget about it.

Little waterfall

This was in the Wild Basin area of RMNP. The falls were only about a foot, and I handheld with an exposure of about 3/4 second with the help of my trusty monopod.
And another picture of the crystal in the kitchen (dirty) window of our cabin.

More shots from RNMP