Another thing I did this weekend was go cross country skiing with my friend Paul! This is the first year I have gotten a ski pass so I’ve been itching to get out there and use it. Turns out I am extremely out of shape in the skiing area but that is okay because now with my pass, I can go a lot more frequently! Plus Paul was an excellent skiing buddy/teacher! Annnnnyway, as you can see, I also brought along my travel buddy Scrarmpl. I love taking him skiing with me… though I am not sure he feels the same way judging by the look on his face. The last time I took him skiing, he tried to escape from my coat pocket so this time, he was securely fastened to my backpack. He still got a bit wet/cold for his comfort I think…
Author: iampotassium
Portrait: Friends forever
This weekend, my friends Janet and Meghana asked me if I wanted to practice taking portrait shots. Of course I said YES! So we went out into the crisp cool air of Boulder in January and took a bunch of pictures. Janet and Meghana are such good sports, having to put up with me as their awkward photographer, still getting used to what settings I want to use and then having to decide what I want my models to do on top of all of that… Plus I got to play around with switching up the lenses. I usually take pictures with my trusty 18-70 mm zoom lens but I decided to try out my mom’s 50 mm lens too, even though I had to manually focus everything (so this picture is not autofocused). This picture turned out especially nice though I feel a little awkward about the white background. It’s funny that the sky was so bright at the time of this picture that it got completely washed out – but the girls are so nicely lit… I guess that would make it easier for me to put Janet, Meghana, and the strange statue they are hanging out with on some completely different background (ahahaha).
Anyway, I hope you are looking forward to seeing more pictures from our photoshoot soon! :)
Cell Phone Picture: Snowy Sunset
I have had the opportunity to live in places with beautiful sunsets but I have to say that there are few sunsets that are more beautiful than a sunset over the snow covered mountains. It snowed a lot on Sunday and then was so cold for the rest of the week that the snow just stuck around. I was torn because it was so beautiful but also so cold. So on my way home from work the other day, I managed to slip my gloves off for just long enough to take this picture on my cell phone.
Hiding in Plain Sight
Anyone who has ever been to the Denver Art Museum should recognize this exhibit. This is “Fox Games” by Sandy Skoglund and I love it. The room is all red (as you can obviously see right here) and it is full of gray foxes prowling around. But then there is this one red fox that totally blends in with the room – the sneakiest of all the foxes. It is pretty fantastic to walk through the room to let your eyes adjust to all the red and then look at the red fox… That is what I tried to capture here in this picture. This is a must see for any of you who live in the Denver area and have not gone to the art museum. :)
Black and White: Curious cat
As I was going through my pictures to figure out what I wanted to post for today, I came across this picture of my cat Patti, Smokey’s sister. I love it. I love how you totally don’t even need color to know what a beautiful cat Patti is. I also love the way she is looking up (and not at me) in this picture so you can really see her whiskers and her profile. I also love the way her ears are tilted back just a little bit as if she is trying to figure out what she wants to do with whatever she is looking at. I am pretty sure that I was snapping my fingers (that’s what she’s looking at) and she was trying to decide whether it was worth it to expend the energy to jump up to get petted (there’s a car just out of sight on the left) or if she should just stay on the ground and make me bend down to her level and pet her there… You can probably guess what happened next… She decided that she was too good to jump up to my level and I had to kneel down and pet her on hers… Ohhhhh cats… ;)
Regal Cat
This is a picture of my cat Smokey. I think I promised to post this picture like 2 weeks ago so I apologize for the epic delay. I am sure Smokey is pretty upset about it all. ;)
Anyway, I am pretty proud of the way this picture turned out because Smokey is ridiculously hard to photograph. She would much rather you pet her than take pictures of her. She doesn’t understand why you keep walking away from her! Every time I’d back up to try to get a pic of her, she’d meow and come running. So… with this picture, we were walking down the street with her trotting along at my side. As I walked, I held my DSLR behind me and pointed it in Smokey’s direction. I snapped a few pictures like that – without even looking through the viewfinder or focusing (yes… this picture was definitely taken with autofocus). And it came out so well! I was so pleased.
Portrait: Now don’t pay attention to those folks over there
They are some crazy people! Look at them with all their cameras out!
This weekend, Cobalt and I headed to the Denver Art Museum to check out the art (well I don’t know what else one does at an art museum but in case you were thinking of something else, nope. We looked at art). These cows are chillin’ in front of the museum waiting to have their pictures taken. So how could I say no?!
Cell Phone Picture: Tickets for Two, Please!
Last night, Cobalt and I got dressed up all fancy and went to go see the musical Next to Normal at the Denver Performing Arts Center. Next to Normal is a story about a family dealing with mental illness but the music and the story are both incredible – despite the emotionally intense theme. I highly recommend the show to anyone who gets a chance to see it. It was really fun evening and probably just what we needed since we have been reading some plays together and dreaming about going to see more plays. So I would like to thank my friend Chris for giving us the discount code to make going to this performance possible. :)
I hope you all have great weekends! I know I have some fun plans up ahead…
Quilt Love
I know there have been many self portraits on my blog recently but this is not one of them. My Dad took this picture for me using my DSLR. This is a picture of the T shirt quilt top my mom and I designed and sewed over the break. I like to give myself little projects to work on when I have time for them and this quilt top was this year’s winter break top priority project. Basically, I took a bunch of shirts I used to wear in high school and in undergrad and cut them up (I know… sounds painful… it was for a few of the shirts… I had to keep reminding myself that I was getting them back in quilt form…). Then I sewed them into quilt squares and connected them together to make the quilt top. I am impressed that we got this far on my quilt project! Next step, making the back! :D
Black and White: Waiting out the Rain
I thought I would do another self portrait for today. Like Sunday’s picture, I also took this one with the DSLR on manual focus. This picture comes from when Cobalt and I were visiting Trinidad Lake in Southern Colorado (like you can almost see New Mexico across the lake). We brought our fake glasses, my guitar, and his ukulele to the beach of the lake and tried to take some pictures that looked like indie rock band album covers (hence the black and white… and the glasses…). Ha! At one point, it started raining and we didn’t want our instruments or my camera to get wet so we hid in the car. While in the car, I took this picture.
Potassium Photography 