Nomadic Pursuits

You know by now that I am a fan of blue hour, and bokeh, so here I combined the two!  Why not?  Pure blur or complete bokeh is fun to experiment with, and I find that I am always examining a scene through a blurred lens to see if it will work.  This was taken on Lake Austin, looking at some boats that were docked and there were some colored lights strung around the area, which I find it a requirement for those beautiful little colored bokeh balls...

I was walking around just outside my hotel in downtown Denver and saw several of these red parking meters.  The red color caught my eye, so I thought I would try and get a shot or two of them.  It wasn’t until I looked a little closer that I realized this wasn’t your normal parking meter - it’s a way to collect money for the homeless in Denver.  What a great idea!  I read about it online later and it seems to be working, so that is great news for those that need the assistance.  I cannot imagine having to deal with winter in Denver without a place to stay warm.  Hats off to Denver for being creative and best of luck with this program! 

Sort of an abstract shot from atop the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.  I walked up on the bridge, after spending a bit of time taking photos from below at Fort Point.  It was a bit windy up there!  Anyways, I liked the look of the city off in the distance and that one pier jutting out, but by itself it was a pretty boring shot.  As I walked past one of these sets of cables that are supporting the bridge, I figured why not try including that for a little foreground interest?  So, does it work?  The cool thing is that without even reading this, I bet you could tell it was the Golden Gate Bridge, right?

Ok, back to blue hour!  This is the 4th and final shot in a mini-series of 4 photos of the W Austin Hotel taken at various times (and various light conditions) on the 4th of July - and this one is by far my favorite.  I obviously have a bias towards blue hour, as you can tell from my previous posts, but all the street lights, building lights, soft sunset colors in the sky and everything else just made this shot for me.  Thanks for visiting!

This was taken a while back at Mandola's Winery in Austin, which is a nice place.  Unfortunately I could not get any closer to these barrels, as this room was "eyes only" - in other words, I was shooting this through some glass.  Fortunately I didn't get any glare.  I liked the look of the tanks in the background, all covered in frost, while the barrels up front were just waiting around.