I love the Flatirons above Boulder when they are lightly dusted in snow… I think it’s my favorite version of them…
Hard to believe these guys were on fire only a few months ago…
In other news, I voted last night. Have you?
In other other news, what are you up to this weekend?! It’s Halloween weekend for us and then my mom comes to visit! :D
Busy weekend here in Boulder! I think I can safely say I got most of the stuff on my to do list done. Could always have more relaxing of course but you know…
Anyway, as mentioned in Friday’s post, we went to the pumpkin patch on Saturday! I got that epically sized pumpkin shown up there and my friend A got that normal sized pumpkin that she’s standing with. I had originally chosen a similarly sized pumpkin with the perfect orange hue but then I found that fatty and fell in love. You know how it is…
I also like him because he has such a good stem… looks like a shark fin. Wahaha… stay tuned till next week to see the carved version!
Anyway, we all got nice pumpkins and then we headed up into the mountains above Boulder for some rock climbing in the afternoon. It was a perfect day for it: warm, sunny, not too many people on the rocks. It was my first time actually bouldering outside so it was a neat experience. After we tried bouldering a little, we just scrambled around on the rocks. Here is a picture of Cobalt and our friend M staring off at Boulder.
In case you don’t believe that we were actually that high off the ground, here’s what the city of Boulder looked like from our perch. I love the colors of the trees and I love how small everything looks in this picture:
Awesomeness! I had so much fun this weekend! Can’t wait to go climbing again! And I definitely can’t wait to carve my pumpkin. I am thinking a shark because of that awesome stem but I don’t know. Anyone else have any ideas? What did you do this weekend? Something fun I hope? How’s the weather where you are? Still fall-like? We’re supposed to get some snow later this week… :-/
Craziness here in Colorado. We got our first taste of winter this weekend with lows in the 20s and highs in the 30s. Thrilling. It’s all back to “normal” now – I think it almost reached 70 yesterday! Unfortunately, I am going to be really busy this week (giving presentations at two different lab meetings and then going to a conference) so I probably won’t post much. Never fear though, I leave you with this awesome picture from this weekend. That’s Finn the shark watching A drive…
I thought I’d continue on with my zoo post from Monday today. I apologize for those of you wanting a Wedding Wednesday post. I have stuff to talk about on that front (the minimoon will make an appearance!) but I felt like talking about the zoo again today.
So when we left off in our story Monday, Cobalt, A, and I had returned to the booth where we rented out camera equipment. I went up to the guy at the Nikon table and said “What else you got?!” Not that I was unhappy with my 18-300 mm zoom lens from Monday. Mostly, I just wanted to see what else I could play with. The Nikon guy hooked me up with an 85 mm prime lens. Really, the only word you need to take away from that sentence is the word “prime” as in a fixed, non zoom lens. He told me it would be excellent for low light conditions (the 18-300 mm lens really wasn’t that great for low light conditions) and then sent us back off into the zoo.
At first, I was regretting being so bold about switching lenses. Here we were in the middle of a BRIGHT day and I had a non-zoomable lens that was good at taking pictures in low light conditions. Ohhhh greattttt. Cobalt and A were zooming in on monkeys and I was grumpily glaring at my lens. Then we came to the spider monkey up above and I realized this lens had some potential. This lens is so good in low light conditions because it can do really low f numbers – this is something that controls the amount of light that goes into the lens as well as controlling the depth of field. When you set the lens to take pictures with really low f numbers, you are asking it to let a ton of light into the camera and as a result, it has a very shallow depth of field. Shallow enough that anything you are NOT focusing on gets really blurry… like the fence in front of the spider monkey. You can’t really see it at all even though there was definitely a fence between him and me. Wahaha… The other tricky thing about the spider monkey pictures was that the holes in the fence were really small. The camera’s autofocus function couldn’t find the monkey behind the fence so I had to manually focus the lens to find him. I think it turned out pretty good!
It was at this point that I felt a challenge rising. Zooming was one way to take cool pictures of animals, what about playing with the lighting and the depth of field? Challenge accepted, prime lens!
Okay, it’s no zoom lens but to be honest, the idea of a lens that could seemingly do everything (wide angle and crazy zoomed in) left me kind of suspicious as to what it COULDN’T do. Hence the bold “what else you got?!” and the handing over of the prime lens. And by the end, I had a healthy respect for the prime lens – especially after we visited the reptile house and my lens totally ruled at getting cool pictures of those creatures that like to lurk in the dark (without using a flash)…
Really, I think if anything, this experience with the prime lens reminded me why it’s good to have a variety of lenses – a zoom lens of course for zooming in on cool things that are far away, but also a prime lens that is really good at taking pictures at that one focal length and makes me focus on the details of the picture I am taking (the lighting and the composition of the picture). Makes me happy that I do have both (an 18 to 70 mm lens – nowhere near the zooming capability of Monday’s lens – and a 50 mm prime lens)!
And now without further rambling – some more prime lens pictures!
Another one of the adorable spider monkey…
The flamingo on the left wants to be the center of attention. Ooo ooo! Look at me!
This frog looks like it knows something we don’t. Also, I love how fat he is…
Hey guys… how’s it goin’? I’m just chillin’ here… you know how it is…
And finally, a penguin for those of you who asked…
Do you have a favorite picture (either from Monday or today)? Do you like the zoom lens pictures or the prime lens pictures better? Also, I love it when a picture tells a story. You guys want to play the caption game with my pictures? Let’s go! What are all the animals saying?
This weekend, Cobalt, A and I went to the Denver zoo because Mike’s Camera, the big camera store out here was hosting a zoo day. They were out there renting out cameras, lenses, and tripods to anyone who wanted to play with photography. (In case you were wondering, this is similar to the day I spent with the butterflies at the Butterfly Pavilion). This time was awesome because both Cobalt and A rented fancy DSLR cameras too and then we all got to rent super epic lenses. So the three of us trekked around the zoo with our expensive cameras/lenses capturing the wildlife (funny story: Cobalt and I kept hearing small children being excited to see the squirrels running around the zoo… really children? You see squirrels every day… LOOK AT THAT ELEPHANT! *sigh*). I actually switched expensive fancy lenses halfway through and then ended up taking something ridiculous like 427 pictures (!!!!) between the two of them. Since I took a bunch of keepers, I decided to write two posts on the zoo day, one for the pictures taken with each lens.
So today… we discuss the amazing 18 mm by 300 mm lens I tried out first. For those of you that aren’t keen on photography terms, this lens does EVERYTHING. It can do super close ups like these creatures on today’s post or it can do your typical “wide angle” type expansive mountain shots (not shown today). So that’s pretty amazing. It was also REALLY heavy. My hand was getting tired by the time I got back to switch lenses.
One more thing I want to say about these pictures is that I want to thank Patrick for his amazing zoo pictures and his “how to” zoo picture taking guide on his blog. Really got me thinking about the best way to capture the animals at our zoo with my epic lenses…
And without further ado… more pictures…
I like this tiger pic a lot. He just seems so grand but also kitty-like.
Action shot!
I am not sure what this creature is but I like it… They were hanging out with these neat birds. Maybe I will post a picture of them later…
So, this elephant picture is really special because Mike’s Camera had a bunch of HUGE lenses set up on tripods by the elephants. You basically gave the guy your lens and then hooked your camera up to one of the epic crazy lenses. That’s why I decided to focus on this elephant’s eye. I like it… Boo that I couldn’t get rid of the fence though….
That’s all for today! I had so much fun being an epic photographer with Cobalt and A! It was awesome that all three of us got to play with cameras at the same time. Made for a great time at the zoo. Look forward to seeing more pictures from the other lens later this week!
What is your favorite zoo animal? I might be able to post a cool picture of it… :) What did you do this weekend?
Woooo this is shaping up to be an epic weekend here in Boulder. Tomorrow marks the beginning of our football season at the University of Colorado when we play the annual game against our rivals, Colorado State University. During half time for our home football games, our mascot Ralphie the buffalo, gets to run around on the football field! This picture is from Tuesday when my friend A and I took a break from science to watch them practice on the soccer field by our new science building.
Then on Sunday, President Obama will be back to visit the school as part of his campaigning tour (wooooo CO is a swing state!). Craziness. Too bad Cobalt and I will be working when they hand out the tickets… Though I did get to see him when he was at our school in April of this year…
Also, today A has her oral qualifying exam (scary 2 hour test where three professors ask you tons of questions to make sure you know the biochemistry and chemistry required to adequately do your PhD project. If you pass, you get to become an official PhD candidate) so wish her luck! I think she will do great! Go A!!! :)
So it’s green chile season here in the southwest (I know Colorado isn’t very southwestern but you can still buy fresh Hatch green chiles here so it gets to be part of the southwest for the sake of this post) and all the stores are selling fresh Hatch green chiles (some of them will even roast the chiles for you!). Cobalt and I are ridiculously green chile starved most of the year so this month or so when green chiles come to Colorado is pretty special to us. We pretty much eat green chiles for the whole month. Anyway, the point of this paragraph is that we tried making chile rellanos on the other night and they turned out pretty tasty. Yay!
Speaking of the southwest, Cobalt and I ventured down to New Mexico this weekend for a baby shower for a good friend and to see his family (and friends who didn’t get to come to our wedding). It was a very short trip but it was nice none the less. My new mother in law and I spent a good few hours watching a bunch of Friends episodes. Awesome. :)
Finally, today marks the official first day of my fifth year of grad school. Whew… We’re gettin’ up there! Still all that remains is for me to get some results to write my thesis about (and maybe publish some papers along the way… you know how these things go…). Everyone please think some awesome thoughts that my research works out so I can be starting to wrap things up by the end of this year! Yay science… :-/
Anyone have an epic weekend? Does anyone love green chiles as much as we do? Is there a food that’s special to the place you grew up in/a place you’ve lived?
Picture: Flagstaff fire on Thursday. If you look closely you can see the spot fires which are what remained of that giant smoke plume I posted on Wednesday…
I thought I would write a post about the pre evacuation we had last week now that everything has calmed down (a little… wedding in a month! Tons to do for lab and wedding and etc!! Also, remind me to post about what I have been up to in lab lately… I think it gives good insight into why I have been so insane lately…). Anyway… yes. We got pre evacuated last week. This means that we had to have everything ready to go in case the Flagstaff Fire decided to head down the mountain and into the town. At any point, we could get the reverse 911 call and be asked to leave our house.
I have never had this experience before though Cobalt unfortunately has… in fact, his house or a house he has lived at (i.e. his mom’s house) has been in a pre evacuation zone three times and has actually had to evacuate twice due to forest fires. We have already decided that while living in the mountains is pretty, we are done.
So, anyway, when we got the pre evacuation notice on Tuesday afternoon last week, we went upstairs to start packing and I found I had a bit of a dilemma. I’ve lived in four different states and have moved almost every year since I was 18, so I am really good at packing everything to move to a new house. I am also pretty good at packing things for trips. However, packing to evacuate is a different thing all together. It’s kind of like packing for a trip except that you also have to pack everything that is emotionally important to you (like a keepsake or something) and everything that is necessary for life (like your renter’s insurance policy which will pay for you to get new stuff if your apartment burns down). So in that way, it is sort of like packing to move your house… except you can’t pack EVERYTHING. The other awkward thing was that we have started to get some really nice gifts for our wedding and we have been collecting things we want to bring to CA for the wedding too. So allllll of that had to get packed too. We could barely navigate through the living room to get to the kitchen when it was all over…
Unfortunately for Cobalt and me, we actually ended up having to pack both for evacuation as well as for a trip because his grandpa died on Tuesday (in addition to the fire starting on Tuesday… Tuesday was not a good day…) so we had to pack to go to the funeral on Friday. There was a lot of just throwing random things in suitcases for the pre evacuation and throwing random outfits into a suit bag for the trip. That was all in the living room too.
Let’s fastforward to Wednesday, when we were still under pre evacuation notice and we had to get ready to fly out for the funeral on Thursday. This is when we decided we should probably move the pre evacuation stuff somewhere safe just in case we got evacuated while we were gone. We loaded up my car with all of the stuff deemed important for evacuation and drove to a friend’s house just east of the pre evacuation line. They put it all in their garage and we headed home to discover that the pre evacuation notice had just gotten lifted! We headed back to their garage and grabbed our stuff, which remained in the living room until we got back from the funeral on Saturday… the upstairs is still a mess though because both of us have been too tired/busy to unpack anything…
The Flagstaff fire is now almost 90% contained (as of Sunday afternoon, when I wrote this) but Colorado is still pretty much on fire. We have had our fireworks canceled this year and anyone found in possession of fireworks could get charged with arson… :-/ The worst of the fires is in Colorado springs; the Waldo Canyon fire has been by far the most devastating fire I have seen in a long time… :( So sad… Keep praying/hoping/etc for rain!
Picture: Cobalt’s grandpa teaching him about picture frames in his frame shop.
A word about the funeral… It was really sad (obviously) but also awesome to hear all these people honoring Cobalt’s grandpa’s life. He was such a good man… We will all really miss him. :( It was really nice to be surrounded by Cobalt’s extended family, even though it was for a sad occasion. I just loved how good it felt to be there surrounded by such a loving group of people…
I am so excited to be officially a part of this family in almost a month!
Have you ever had a week where you were just deluged by craziness? What happened? How did you deal with it?
Next up… more craziness! Our prom wedding shower! I need to acquire the pictures between now and Wednesday…
Wow… It’s hard to believe but next week, we will have ONE MONTH until our wedding. That is SO exciting (can’t wait) but also scary because there are sooooo many little details left to plan that life and grad school have decided to not give me time for… :p So we’ll see how this last […]
This past weekend, Cobalt and I went to the Denver Aquarium with the Denver regional alumni club for my undergrad university. Knowing, as you do, about my love for sea creatures, you would think that the Denver Aquarium would be a place that I would frequently visit but actually, in my 4 years of living here, I had never once set foot in the building. So when I got the invitation for the regional club event, I pretty much instantly signed Cobalt and me up.
It was kind of a neat event (and three of us from my graduating year turned up!). We got to meet an African porcupine up close and personal (see below for pictures) and we got to go on a behind the scenes tour of the aquarium! On the tour, we met some of the sea turtles who are named after the ninja turtles (even the girls); we learned all about how the animals are trained, how their food is made, how their water is made, etc; and I pretty much decided that it is time for me to get dive certified so that I can volunteer in the shark tank! Anyway, after all of that, we got to go explore all the exhibits (it was really cool to look into the shark tank and be like “wow… we were standing right there!”) which is where I took this super awesome shark picture.
For those of you who are skeptical of aquariums in land locked states like I kind of am (having grown up in CA), I think this little aquarium actually does a pretty good job (and it is bigger than the one in Albuquerque!) though I was sad that they didn’t have an octopus…
Moving on…. porcupine! So this porcupine is like 6 months old and we got to meet her! A couple of pictures for you:
Here she is!!! She got really excited about being in a new room and shuffled off behind one of the tables before the trainer could get her leash on her. It was really neat to see how she is trained to follow a target and gets positively reinforced with food and a clicker when she goes to the target. The people in the room who have never heard of this training method before thought that she was making the clicker noise… Haha… Though she does ruffle her quills together to make this weird swishing sound if she thinks you are trying to eat her (this was her response to being put on a leash too…).
I just wanted to show you what her quills looked like in more detail. Apparently if she really wanted to quill you, she would back into you. Yikes! The trainer said that she is pretty much harmless and that she, the trainer, has only gotten quilled once – when she accidentally dropped the porcupine she was holding and then tried to catch it with her knee (>_<). She said that the only thing you really have to worry about is getting your shoes eaten. Apparently this little porcupine was on the news recently and the news anchor was freaking out because the porcupine was reallllly interested in her leather shoes… Hehe… aww porcupines…
Anyway, that pretty much concludes the aquarium summary. I will leave you with an Instagram of me and a shark at the gift shop…
What did you do this weekend? Cobalt and I also saw two movies, Moonrise Kingdom and Brave. Have you seen either of them? What do you think?
Potassium Photography 