Canon City, CO and Thereabouts

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's width for people to actually travel upon: Youtube video (NOT MINE). 

I love geology and even thought about studying it in college, so when I see these sorts of layers in the rock I become a little excited. 

Also up there are the underside of some donosaur footprints. You don't see the impression in the the rock, what you see are the underside which looks like a bunch of rock-bubbles clinging on. It's very surreal, especially at this height, reminding us that this wasn't always a ridge and some animals traversed here regularly.

While at the top, I pointed the camera back out towards the valley and snapped a surprisingly good image of the road winding it's way westward.

The day we left was the worst day, by far, weather-wise. It had rained all night and off and on throughout the day. We wanted to see the world famous Royal Gorge suspension bridge before leaving but as luck would have it, the earlier Colorado wildfires ravaged the area and the bridge was closed to visitors. Instead, we hiked up a small trail where we could see the bridge from afar.

Same Road / Different Photo

This is a couple of photos of the road as you come into Roxborough State Park taken from different points.

One I treated in black and white while the other seems like a march made in heaven for sepia tones.

Both of them are Android shots and edited with Snapseed.

A Few More Pics from the Dog Park

I went ahead and edited some more pictures from yesterday's outing to the dog park. All of these are edited with Snapseed and were captured with my Note II.

Cherry Creek State Park given a, what I hope is, an old timey vintage look.

Charlie being Regal

Rufus, Being Rufus

Charlie in the Creek

Rufus Trying to Figure Out What's so Important That I have to Kneel down in Front of Him With My Camera

Cloudy Afternoon at the Park

Rufus Found a Crawdad (well, I Found a Crawdad, but Rufus Took it From Me and it Pinched Him)

More Cloudy Skies and Sandy Shores

Rufus

I Already Posted This Image, but in Color. I like the BW as Well.

At the Dog Park

For the first time in weeks I brought Dumb and Dumber to the dog park. They're having a blast however neither one of them wanted to model for me. Plus this Android's camera is slow.

Here are a couple of shot of the two dogs, edited with Snapseed, for your comedic pleasure.

Rufus Hating the Camera in his Face

Rufus in Black and White

Looking Down on Charlie

Charlie Sitting Pretty

After the Flood

Here are a couple of pictures from the hail storm that rolled through eastern Denver/western Aurora, CO this afternoon.

The water in this is actually a park that flooded with more than 6 feet of water height, going so far as to cover signs and guard rails. The sidewalks were, and are, underwater, however the water covering the playground has since receded.

As always, these were edited with Snapseed.

Rufus looking for ducks, or something else to kill

The mist forming from the warmer water hitting the cooler air, with a old photo twist

A young girl separated from the playground by flood waters

Rufus of the Mists

Google+'s New Photo Editing Features

Google decided to roll out new old features to their cloud photo editing options. To be honest, I'm not sure if they retired PicNik or just buried it somewhere else, but the new features are desktop (well, Chrome-top) versions of their popular on-the-go Android app, Snapseed. Why Chrome-top? Apparently the feature is not available unless you're using the Chrome web browser, or presumably the ChromeOS.

 Maybe the Picnik features are still available to other browser users? I'll have to check and update this post.

To find this feature, using Chrome, log into your Google+ account. On the left hand side, choose Photos and then a photo. Once the individual image is open in the lightbox, there should be an Edit option on the top row above the picture. Then edit away... just like Snapseed.

Here's the first image I decided to test this feature on and below I'll post the image from when I edited this with Snapseed on the go many, many, many moons ago:

Originally, I edited this image using the Snapseed app on my Note II.

And here's the unedited original Android shot:

Fire in the Sky

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.