The Dark Side

Here are the next two entries in the ongoing saga of the Hunt. The abstract image is ‘Technical’, and is the backside to a computer motherboard. It is actually the same board featured in my previous Technical Photo, just the other side. The second photo is ‘Pop’. The director of the gallery said that this is his favorite Pop photo of all the entries, so that’s pretty cool.

My business cards that I’ve been giving out lately still have my old website tagline ‘Photos, Bikes, Photos of Bikes’. I’ve had to explain that the cards are old and there really isn’t quite so much about bikes these days here in the depths of the snowiest winter I’ve ever experienced. Here are a couple photos involving bicycles for old times sake.

Wingnut is turning old on Friday. His birthday party night conveniently coincides with Steve G’s art opening, it’s going to be an epic night. If you are wondering what to get him, I’ll give you a tip; he likes booze.

This is my favorite Pair of platform shoes. Yes I have more than one pair. Yes I really can dance in them. Just pretend that they just stomped the shit out of those boring old black dress shoes in the background.

Word of the day from the Hunt galley is the word Texture. This is a colorful patch of moss or lichen from the desert of Utah.

I’ve decided to start doubling up on the Hunt Photos with a vertical orientation for graphic layout reasons. You can click on them for a slightly larger view. The Close photo is of a kangaroo rat at Canyonlands National Park. I already blogged about him last October. He was so tame that he would come right up to my hand looking for handouts. The other photo is of my nephew Travis last summer. I would pretty much sum up his expression as Glee! OK I don’t have too much else to say about these, so, see you tomorrow!

Today in Washington, President Bush announced a plan to try and reverse the declining public opinion of the Republican Party. As the death toll continues to climb in Iraq, Bush announced a new War, the fight against Extraterrestrials. Bush was quoted as saying, “I’ve never trusted aliens since ET stole that shopping cart from a hard working corporate supermarket chain.” Democrats called the move a blatant deflection tactic.

OK so I’ve been asked to explain this photo. The explanation is I’m a nutjob. To elaborate, this photo started way back in 2003 (more…)

I’m going to continue to post the photos from the Hunt gallery, but I’ll intersperse them with new photos that I’m working on. I went out in the snow yesterday morning to get some more sunrise shots. I got a cool factory shot that makes Boulder look like a polluted wasteland! I just posted an industrial plant shot so I think I’ll hold off on that one. The snow on the ground was super light and flaky, and clung to all the dead vegetation in the fields. Something about the fractal-esque nature of close up snowflake and snow crystals does it for me.>

They claim that it is ‘as fast as a car’. Check out the video interview, it shows him driving the think. I can’t imagine going 50 in that thing in traffic, what a kook! LINK

I’ve used this picture on this blog before, but just pretend that you haven’t seen it. This is sunrise at Canyonlands Island In The Sky District on my trip to Moab this past October. These desert landforms symbolize the Old West to me. I love the colors in this photo, the depth, the shadows, and the repetitive shapes of the monuments.

Some entertaining videos I found on Knick-Knack

HERE is a video of crazy car crashes from a Portland ice storm.  I’ve never seen cars sliding perpendicular to the road, or people jumping from their cars to avoid the inevitable impact.

HERE is a video of a crazy human slingshot ride.

Here is the first photo from the Hunt Gallery Show I blogged about previously. The subject of the photo is Red. I got the idea to do a spinning siren on a fire truck. When I got to the station, I found out that all the sirens on the fire trucks these days are LEDs that just blink. Fortunately, some fire psychologist somewhere determined that fireman perform high speed driving maneuvers better when they are all pumped up by the hypnotics of those spinning lights so they still install an old school incandescent light inside the cab on the roof.

Wingnut and I headed up to Helldora for some infamous bulletproof ice edge training today. Despite having the 3rd largest base in the state, the wind capital of Boulder County never ceases to underwhelm. Fortunately, I had a second agenda, which was to shoot product photography for my friend Davidson, mad scientist creator of Ecologic Designs. He has some cool snowboard bags made from vinyl billboards and goggle straps made from inner tubes. Well he has a bunch of other products in addition to those, but those two are the snow related ones. Another bonus was some balmy weather that came out of nowhere that made it easy to shoot while I was on the lift. I tweaked the image to give the illusion that it was a glorious day on slopes. Ha! We spent a lot of time making up songs about the day, Helldora! Where the snow is yellow and the wind blows strong, Helldora!

So there I was, hanging out on my roof this morning, taking pictures of the shingles. Taking pleasure in my foolish climbing on a snowy roof with breath visible in the early light. Taking in the magesty of the snow-crusted Flatirons glowing in the sunrise. Taking solace in my diversity, and the fact that the neighbors must think I’m bizarre, if they even notice me amidst rushing off to their daily grind. Taking ordinary objects and using perspective to reveal their beauty. Then I turned the camera on myself, and captured the moment. Starting next month I will be renting a studio, and I am looking forward to doing more shooting of people in the near future. Want to shoot with me?

I am in a photo gallery opening on Friday.  The gallery is located in the Belmar area of Lakewood and is called Flash.  The show is called Hunt; where we were given 12 words, and we had to come up with a photograph for each word. The words are western, close, mini, essential, pop, pair, texture, distaste, technical, red, glee, and incomprehensible.

In the days leading up to my backcountry hut trip, Aspen got pounded with snow.  Apparently the hike into the hut involves traversing below some pretty huge slide runout paths.  So we were unable to go, as it was too risky, with a fresh two feet on top of sun crust.  I only found out 12 hours before we were going to leave.  Oh well.  I was already in Vail, so I just kept on skiing the resorts for the rest of the weekend.  Without my camera.  So I’ll keep working through the pics I took before leaving.

Hey well I managed to find some bike content amidst the freezing cold weather! I’ve been a real wimp this year as far as winter commuting goes. I don’t think I’ve ever driven my car around town so much since I’ve been in Boulder. I think I’ll enter one of these photos in the Velonews photo contest, which do you like better?