Five Sunsets in a Row

The last few days have been generous in terms of providing what I would call nice sunsets here in the great state of Colorado.

Here are the best ones, by day....hope you like them.

Monday, February 15

Tuesday, February 16

Wednesday, February 17

Thursday, February 18

Friday, February 19

Valentine's Day Sunset after a visit from family.

My brother Carlos, his lovely wife Ling and their two sons, my California nephews: Evan and Nathan spent most of the weekend visiting us here in Colorado.

A good time was had by all.  The boys got a bit more video game time than usual, we had some good talks among the adults, did some fun low key activities such as playing in the local school park and going swimming at the indoor pool in the nearby recreation center.

 Evan and Nathan playing Mario Brothers Chess

Here's a Then and Now shot, the cousins together about seven years ago:

The cousins, today:

 It proved quite difficult, getting all four boys to smile AND look 

at the camera at the same time.  

extended Chang Gang....

My brother and his family left us at 11:00 AM to go catch their flight at 1:30 PM back to their home in California.  The rest of the day was spent by us just hanging about the house.

Around 4:45 PM, I took a look to the west and the cloud formations promised a nice sunset.  I geared up and Scarlett and I motored to our usual sunset viewing spot near the Grasslands Preservation Center on Quincy avenue.

 Sunset Pano

A fitting end to a very nice and mellow weekend.  

Golden Sunset

This is my 1600th posting.

Yesterday evening we got another golden sunset here in the great state of Colorado.

I took Scarlett out for a test drive to make sure the pusher wheel stayed on while riding.  You see, I'd had the inner tube replaced yesterday morning.  I didn't do it myself due to work and time constraints.  The guys at performancecycle did it in 20 minutes where it would have taken me perhaps and hour and a half.

Good news, I put the wheel back in place correctly, it didn't come off as we motored to the usual sunset viewing point.

Here's Thursday's sunset, in time sequence, this time I am also including shots of the sunset behind the rig.  Mostly for a friend of mine, Brian B....aka El Guapo who routinely tells me my sunset shots are ruined by the inclusion of motorcycles in the foreground.

Lunch Riding - Views of Mount Evans

It's been over a week since Winter Storm Kayla swept through Colorado, depositing at least ten inches of snow in the metro areas, more to the south of Denver in the Colorado Springs area but enough to cover the landscape with pretty white snow.

All our roads, including the tertiary neighborhood roads are basically clear.  I even managed to get Brigitta out for a ride today during lunch.

Yesterday, Scarlett and I went out during lunch to work on getting better pictures of nearby Mount Evans, framed within the near foreground scenery of the ranching neighborhood I like to frequent.

Bright, bright, bright sunshine conditions led to shadowy portions in the pictures so there was more post-processing than usual in the below shots, still they came out OK.

Different focal lengths and angles: (A sharpening mask was used to "bring out" Scarlett and still get some kind of focus on Mount Evans itself.  Previous attempts at using a long focal length setting had proved unsatisfactory.

If only I could shot the scene above from further away without losing sight of the rig or the mountains being blocked by the trees.  Alas, the terrain won't permit that in terms of sight angles.

 Heavy use of masking to bring out the details in the snow and

lightening the shadows on the rig.

Here's the best shot of Brigitta that I got while posing her near the parking area near Buckley Air Force Base: