The Dark Side

I’m ringing in the New Year down in Key West Florida. It has been really warm, in the low 80s. It sure doesn’t feel like Christmas, and in celebration of that folks decorate their trees with a sense of humor down here.

A funny thing about being a photographer is that when you go on vacation it’s easy to just keep on working. New scenery is inspiring, and leads to more and more shooting. Usually there is not enough time to edit all the photos that you take while traveling, so when you get home you have even more work than when you left! But when you have the opportunity to take pictures like the one above … a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do!

I am doing a beach engagement shoot while I’m here for a very big wedding that I booked at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach Florida in December 2008. Being from Colorado, I’ve never actually shot on the beach before, so I wanted to do a practice run before this important client. So I found Eugenia to help me out with some modeling. She’s never actually done any modeling before, so she should be happy with the way these came out!

Eugenia brought a friend along with her to the shoot at Honeymoon Island Beach. As it turns out, her friend Amber is in need of some engagement pictures, but her fiance is in the military and was only going to be in town for 2 more days. Luckily I was free, and was able to shoot them the next day for some extra vacation spending money! Sweet!

More images posted after the page break … (more…)

I’ve been shooting some nature photos interspersed within and between my mountain biking adventures. It has been nice to get away from the routine and to spend some time wandering around in the woods. The mountain bike trails are out in the Hillsborough County Park System of Morris Bridge, Flatwoods, and Trout Creek.

The trails border on the cypress swamps. The main obstacles are roots, spiders, roots, and the occasional alligator, as I mentioned yesterday.

Check out the sweet pentagonal lens flare from my fisheye lens!

Lettuce Lake park has a tower where you can check out the view from above.

I don’t have a big enough lens to take serious close up nature photos of birds and critters from a distance. Fortunately these white ibis were pretty tame. The funny part about these birds is that their neck muscles are a primary means of propulsion. When they want to walk faster they start bobbing their heads forward more furiously to speed up!

No, I don’t feel bad at all that I’m missing out on skiing. Holiday tourists, lines, icy highways … or flip flops, shorts, and short sleeves … hmmmmm. Do I look sad?  How do you like my leftover helmet from my 1996 race team?  I like it, it matches the 1995 Stumpjumper I’m on.

Some people have asked me, “How can you mountain bike in Florida?” I say it’s kindof like mountain biking in two dimensions instead of three, on an X-Y coordinate system instead of an X-Y-Z, for the math geeks amongst us. Which basically means, yeah, it’s flat. But twisty.

The ironic thing is that no one down here rides singlespeeds. We ride singlespeeds on mountainous terrain where the gear you are in is rarely the right one for the job. But down here I’ve been just picking one gear and sticking to it all day. I’ve been using the 42×20. Big ring fun! I could have used a little harder one, but the next option is the 17 which is too hard. This was the biggest climb I did all day.

There can be some technical challenges even more frightening than the log hop, however. One time I had to turn around because there was an alligator on the trail. This guy really likes this spot, he has been here all three times that I’ve ridden so far this trip. The reason he looks so happy is because I was scratching his belly just a minute before. Alligators like their bellies scratched, FYI.

But the most horrible technical challenge occurs if you ride early in the morning. If you are the first one to ride the trails, you have to break trail. See, the banana spiders build webs across the trails at night. They build them precisely at head height. So you are riding along and all of a sudden you have a face full of web. And you know that somewhere there is a spider with a body about the size of the last segment of your pinky finger.

The trails are in perfect shape right now, as it hasn’t rained much this fall. The trails border on the Hillsborough River, and the water levels normally vary cyclically. So the low trails like this one get flooded certain times of the year and are unrideable.

Most of the higher sandy trails are rideable all year long. This is the perfect time of year to ride, it has been in the low 70s all week. It gets cold enough here that leaves do fall off some of the trees, although not completely.

So this is Steve Z Sr., and this is how the Steve Z’s spent their Christmas Eve, under the canopy of the cypress swamp!

A benefit of living in a place where it never freezes is that you can grow all kinds of cool tropical plants in the backyard. Here we have a hibiscus and a staghorn fern for your viewing pleasure.

I like this photo.  It’s kinda creepy.  It reminds me of alien tentacles.

I took this picture today. Quite a difference between the previous photo, eh? Yes, I left town for the holidays, and am hanging out in sunny Tampa, Florida. Yes, I’m wearing shorts right now. :>)

I’m really enjoying the change of pace, and the change of scenery. I’ve been taking a bunch of photos since I’ve been here, and I plan on posting regularly over the next couple weeks. I’ll be posting more regularly than I have been when I’ve been 100% immersed in the business end of my photography world, and look forward to creating more artsy fartsy images than I have recently. So check back often for a warmer perspective than what you might be experiencing back in the wintery parts of the country.

Last night I attended and photographed Integrated Alliances’ 5th Annual Denver Holiday Party. It was held at the Auraria Campus Tivoli Student Center in the Turnhalle Ballroom. Were you there? I hope so, Mike O’neil stepped it up this year and included the adult beverages with the entry fee. I think he wanted to be sure that everyone was properly motivated for the 80’s dance party. Local cover band Kelli Said provided the tunes, and I even busted out a few James Brown splits on the dance floor.

Along with the fun and tunes, there was a big spread of food, a big raffle drawing, and networking networking networking!

To check out pictures from this event, head on over to my proofing website and enter 12-12-2007 as the event code.

This year’s ACA Colorado State Cyclocross Championship was held at a brand new venue in Lyons, Colorado, which is about 20 minutes north of Boulder. All the local cross freaks were undoubtedly excited to see piles of snow falling from the heavens on Saturday. The cross gods were smiling on Colorado, and ensuring that a ‘real’ cross race would go down, and not one of Colorado’s famous sunny and dry events.

The temperatures were extremely cold on Sunday, which made sure that the course stayed frozen and icy. I was a little disappointed; I was hoping for an energy sucking slop-fest. But you can’t have everything, and I’ll take any sort of adverse conditions that I can get. What we did get at our new Lyons event was sponsorship by local brewery Oskar Blues. There were generous amounts of free Dale’s Pale Ale and Old Chub Scottish Ale available, which ensured that the fans would be rowdy.

And that’s the beard of Dave from Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey. He’s a classic eccentric distiller type, who took the bus from Denver to Boulder, then rode his fixed gear bike to Lyons, then raced, then hung out and gave out samples of his awesome whiskey. I’m a whiskey on the rocks man, and Stranahan’s is some of the best that I’ve ever had. With all of these fine local beverages and a fire pit present, the fans kept warm and happy. Here is a shot of Greg from Mud and Cowbells Blogspot having about the most fun he’s ever had. He did a good job, but I could have used a little more cowbell!

And there was some racing going on too, although I had a hard time focusing. The pro men’s race was an awesome throw-down dogfight between Brandon Dwight, Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski, Danny Summerhill and Matt Pacocha.

JHK was trying to obtain a frozen beard as good as Dave’s, but I don’t think he quite did it.

And in the end it was young blood Danny S. taking the win over the veterans!

I’ve put together a slideshow of all my photos. You can view the slideshow on it’s own page by clicking HERE. Or watch it in the video window below, and enjoy the generous helping of cowbell right here in the comfort of the home page. There will be a gallery at the end where you can view individual photos, just in case I’ve captured you in all your frozen glory.

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We had our first big snowstorm of the year in Boulder this past weekend. It provided me a chance to pull The Snow Bike out of the garage. It’s main feature is studded Nokian Extreme tires. They are a lot of fun. I was ripping around town drifting in the snow and people were generally looking at me like I was nuts. It made me want to go ride my bike on some trails in the snow. One of these day’s I’ll put the tires on the Curtlo and take them out for a real mountain bike ride. I would have gone Sunday, but I went up to the Colorado State Cyclocross Championships in Lyons. Look for those photos to come next.

The picture below is just a picture of a bike that was left out on the street in front of the bar. I guess the owner doesn’t think riding bikes in the snow is as fun as I do.

Here are some engagement photos I took last month when the fall colors were still in full force. I think the color is a nice contrast to the driving white snow that is outside my window right now. Heather and Jim are going to have their wedding ceremony and reception next year at the Hotel Boulderado in downtown Boulder. I know we’re going to get some great photos; look how cute they are! Another fun thing about that wedding is that my good friend Robin Peglow will be officiating the ceremony.

This past Monday I attended the first ever Boulder edition of the Integrated Alliances Holiday Party. IA has been putting on great business networking events and parties for several years in Denver, and this year expanded to Boulder. The event was held at the Spice of Life Event Center at the Flatirons Golf Course on Arapahoe Ave. The yummy food was provided by Spice of Life Catering as well. There were many vendors displaying booths, and Club Entrepreneur was one of them. Thus, my connection to the event. Club E and IA teamed up at the Denver Angel Capital Summit, and are combining marketing efforts and sharing email lists to help Club Entrepreneur with their impending 50 city launch. This is also great news looking ahead towards the monthly Denver Club E gatherings which will be happening starting in January.

Mike O’Neil, and Tammy Mathias put on a fabulous event, and invite you to attend the 5th Annual Denver Integrated Alliances Holiday party, which will be held next Wednesday December 12 on the Auroria Campus at the Tivoli Student Center in the Historic Turnhalle Ballroom. IA promises that this will be the holiday gathering for B2B professionals, technology professionals and entrepreneurs. Additional information and registration can be found HERE.

To check out pictures from this event, head on over to my proofing website and enter 12-03-2007 as the event code.

The Scoop is a weekly email Newsletter that is put out by the Rocky Mountain News / Denver Post.  My blog will be the featured Colorado Blog this week!  With an audience of 160,000 people, I’m interested to see if I get a spike in hits after it comes out.  In addition to a link to this site, there will be a short Q and A section.  If you want to sign up to see it, you can SIGNUP HERE, and check any of the categories.  Thanks, Io, for submitting my blog to them!

Lots of people need their bedroom to be pitch black in order to sleep. For me, it doesn’t really matter. I’ve trained myself to sleep with the blinds open. I feel it aids my renowned napping skills to be able to sleep with the sunlight streaming in.

As a photographer, my senses have become attuned to ‘good light’. Sometimes I’ll be working at my computer and all of a sudden I will detect a change in light. The ambient light will shift slightly to a pink or yellow hue, and instantly I will know that a great sunset is happening, even if I’m inside and I can’t see the actual sunset. Last night’s sunset was really awesome, unfortunately I only saw it from the inside of my dirty windshield, as I was driving to an event.

My sensitivity to first and last light has grown to the point where sometimes I get woken up by the sunrise. Even with my eyes closed, I can see great light. This morning was one of those mornings. Someday I will live somewhere where I can photograph great scenic sunrise/sunsets from my bedroom. But in the meantime, this is what it looks like when I get woken up by the sunrise drifting in through my open blinds.