Motorcycle Riding Pictures

You know, it occurred to me the other day that I hadn't written or posted anything here for far too long. I guess that's the price of trying to keep up with four different blogs.

Anywho, last weekend I took some pictures while out riding motorcycles with some friends. The trip was an overnighter and I didn't bring my dSLR because I didn't think we'd be stopping as much as we did, but I did have my handy-dandy Note II and GoPro.

If you want to read about the ride, click this link

This was our group at the top of Independence Pass between Leadville and Aspen, CO. This was actually one of those happy accidents that seem to pop up now and again and bring some unexpected joy into our lives. I had the GoPro mounted to the front of the motorcycle to record the winding twisties up and down the pass only to have it take this still instead of recording video. I still don't know what caused that since the camera is set to default to video, but it happened and it turned out pretty gritty and real. It's a fave shot on our club website.

Another of my favorite shots was this one of Sydney's bike on the side of the highway. She's parked it there while some of us pulled on colder weather gear and I happened to catch it with perfect light - perfect everything. I gave it a little edit with Snapseed to give it this vintage photo look. 

There are some of our bikes parked out in front of a restuarant - okay, okay, a saloon - in Leadville, Colorado. Leadville is considered the hightest city in the country if not the world and is a shadow of it's former self. Aside from passers-through, there really isn't much to this old mining town but some 19th century buildings and old west memorabilia. The black bike 'up front' is mine, the blue one belongs to Deb and the red is the same one from the image above. What I love about this image is the symbology: horses lined up in front a saloon. Modern internal combustion technology in front of a building built in the late 1880s. Dichotomy is amazing. 

  For fun, here's another edit of the CBR from above.

Not a Fire

Grabbed this little gem while out walking my dog. Once again I didn't have my dSLR on me and had to grab this with my Android.

The image is of a dead tree's branches reaching for the sky.

This was treated with Snapseed, as usual for photography on the go.

Reaching the Sky

This is a tree I photographed with my Android while out walking the dogs at the dog park. Edited on the go with Snapseed.

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.