Steve-Z.com

I finally found a breakfast burrito downtown that doesn’t have eggs in it.  It’s at Two Spoons, which also has cool tables.  And I got a free cup of hot chocolate.

It took me a while to get the angle of the focus plane just right.  I like the line of focus from one corner to the other.  This is with the tilt shift rotated at around 45 degrees.  I’m getting better at it, but it takes a while to figure it all out.

The snow was supposed to have let up by now, but it is still snowing in Boulder.  We got a ton of moisture, but the temps were warm enough that a lot of the snow has melted as it has come down.  Some of the last leaves of fall are still hanging on.

I took a quick break from editing madness on a Saturday night to go check out Meniskus at the Lazy Dog AKA Brick House. I was playing with my new Nikon 35mm f/1.8G in super low light scenario. It was DARK in there! So rather than try to hide my low-ISO noise, I decided to play with it and use it as a style element. Things gettin’ crazy late at night.

Special guest Mouse Miskey gettin’ cutes on the ukelale.

Chris gettin’ rhythmic on the drums.

Eric gettin’ crazy on the mic.

Disco gettin’ soulful on the guitar.

Eric getting . . . I don’t know what this was.

No, I’m not done posting pictures of this window yet. If you were to look out through the window, you could barely make out the legs of pedestrians as they walk down the sidewalk on 13th street. The patterns and how they change as you alter your viewing angle is quite entrancing. Sometimes it gives me flashbacks, man.

This post is an oldie, but a goodie, so I’m going to recycle it!  I haven’t been posting any mountain bike pictures because I don’t have time to ride any more, so let’s just reminisce about the good old days of unemployment!

Back when I bought my first camera (a Canon 20d), I pulled it out of the box and went straight to Moab for the annual Ellsworth Owners Retreat.  I really didn’t know what I was doing at the time, but I got a pretty cool sequence anyway.  Yeah, I should have used a faster shutter speed!  Any way, this drop is really nuts!  It is way bigger looking when you are there, because the rider has to bomb down another 30+ vertical feet of steep runout past what you can see here.

Even more pics from my evening in Rocky Mountain National Park.  Nikon 14-24 f/2.8 lens FTW!

I was walking down the Pearl Street Mall the other day, and I had my super wide angle lens on the camera.  I randomly decided to shoot a little street photography, and held down the shutter button while walking past this musician playing the guitar.  I held the camera at my waist and shot it blind, so he wasn’t aware that I was shooting him. He may or may not have heard the shutter over his singing and playing, it’s hard to say.  I like the photo.

OK I’ve been posting way to many boring nature photos lately.  It’s time to get back to the normal tilt-shift randomness.  I haven’t been out shooting lately, so I needed some new material.  I’ve been looking at this subject matter every day for the last year and a half, and I was finally inspired to do something about it.

Here are some more images from my Estes Park adventure.  We ventured up to the top of Trail Ridge Road near sunset.  Here are a couple landscape photos of the bare, rocky peaks covered with a light dusting of snow.  The square topped peak is Longs Peak.

No, not shooting to kill, shooting to blog! I can’t believe it has already been two weeks since I shot these pictures. Time is just flyin’ on by.  I usually don’t like taking touristy pictures, but these beasts are just so big and cool I couldn’t help myself.

This first shot is in Moraine Park. There was a herd quite a distance away with a big buck elk watching over his ladies.

Down by sheep lakes there was a giant crowd. There was this big boy only meters from the road. It was a full on nature photography scrum! Here he is bugling!

The evening light streaming into the valley was spectacular.

I spend some time the last two weekends up in Estes Park.  My friend Io lives there so I stopped by. She has a porch.  And a dog named Amber. I have an 85mm Perspective Control Lens. And a photography problem. This is what happened.

I love aspen groves. We have a lot of pine forests in the Front Range, and they just aren’t as pretty. If an aspen tree and a pine tree got in a fight, the pine tree would probably win. Aspen trees are lovers, not fighters. In a Miss Perennial Woody Plant competition, the aspen would take the flowers for sure. In this meadow up in Lost Antler Ranch in Estes Park, the aspens and the pines are living in harmony as far as I can tell.

I found this skeleton hanging on the fence at Lost Antler Ranch. I’m not sure what animal it is . . . I’m guessing that it’s an elk?