Category: Nature

Is Fall here yet?

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Hey! I hope you all had great weekends! In honor of the holiday weekend, I think I will be posting on Tuesday and Thursday this week instead of my usual MWF posts (maybe you’ll get a Friday post too… who knows). Anyway, today has some pictures from this weekend. On Saturday, Cobalt and I went up into the mountains to see if fall had arrived yet (yeahhhh… we’re getting a little tired of the hot Colorado summer days). We were checking out the aspen trees to see if they’d turned the gorgeous shade of yellow they turn in the fall. The results: sommmmeeeee aspen trees turned…

Bottom picture: on our journey, we found this random Ford hubcap so I decided to take some cool grungy shots too. :D

Anyway, Cobalt and I had a very productive weekend. Our apartment is starting to look like a real apartment! Yay!!!! Did you guys do anything fun?!

The calm before the storm

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M, me, Cobalt, and my wee at the beach. I think I look weird taking the picture… At least you can see the tail shadow cast by my raptor hoodie… Yesssssss… :)

Last Wedding Wednesday ever (at least prewedding…)! Craziness!

Things are looking good. This past weekend, Cobalt and I got everything that needed be printed at Kinko’s (table seating assignments, etc) ready and then on Monday, we printed everything out AND ran our epic shopping trips to Costco, Target, etc. We paid the caterer her final check so we have now officially paid everything off. We are pretty much ready to sit back and watch everything just fall into place now… Yay! Let’s go!

Things got a little interesting on Monday when one of the groomsmen found out that he was actually flying to CA on Tuesday instead of today (we actually can’t decide if he chose the wrong day or if the airline totally just screwed him over) but everything seems to have worked out great! We picked him up Tuesday morning and then he and Cobalt ran errands while my mom, my sister (who came in Monday night! Yay!), and I went out and did girly things, like playing with makeup and shopping for jewelry. Then Cobalt, M (groomsman), wee (sis), and I took off for the beach to relax a little.

It was amazing out there. I am always in awe of the ocean whenever I see it (living in a landlocked state has totally intensified this feeling) but today just seemed perfect. The weather was perfect (not too hot, not too cold), there were seals and pelicans out playing around in the water for us to see (see below), and it was just a nice calm before the storm hanging out there with Cobalt and two people who are also very important to me.

Look at that pelican! Flapping away…
Dive pelican, dive! You should have seen them! They were dive bombing the ocean and as soon as one pelican found something, all these ducks, other pelicans, and seals would show up to try to grab it…

I’m signing off for a while. Friends and family are coming in today (safe travels everyone!), the bachelorette/bachelor parties are tomorrow, craziness Friday, and then WE GET MARRIED on SATURDAY!!!! Maybe I will be back next Wednesday for a wedding recap? Maybe the Wednesday after that… Only time will tell…

Sharks N Stuff

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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?

Ribbit?

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This weekend, Cobalt and I went to the Denver Botanic Gardens as part of his birthday adventures and we had a really good time. The gardens are kind of awesome (except the plains one which, in our opinion, seemed a little plain… :-/). It was all overcast and wet outside, which apparently inspired me to be really creative with my photography. I took so many cool pictures with my DSLR… it was awesome. As soon as I can pick out which pictures I like best, maybe I will post some cool flower pictures on here. Today’s pictures come from the rainforest part of the garden (verrrrry humid in there…) where they had some poison dart frogs. The frogs were being a little antisocial and hiding behind the plants in the darker parts of their aquarium so it made taking their pictures kind of challenging (working at really low exposure speeds and f stops…). Which is your favorite?

I like that his little toes are in focus in this one…

One without a flash…

Chicken Plus Cactus = Love?

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Today’s post is about nicknames. They’re fun and endearing generally. The nickname Potassium is actually one I gave myself back in high school (Really… at any given time since I was 17, I have had at least one website or blog, etc with “Potassium” in the name) but Cobalt has taken to calling me Chicken. I like it. For some reason I find it really endearing when he goes “What’s up Chicken?” or “You’re my favorite chicken…” because it’s so weird and also cute. It’s been really hard for me to come up with a cute but similarly endearing nickname for him. He mostly just makes weird faces and vetoes my suggestions… The other day, I told him his face was prickly like a prickly pear cactus and then said “Cactus….” and he didn’t seem too upset. So maybe? Cactus and Chicken?

What about you? Do people have fun, yet endearing, nicknames for you? Do you have fun, yet endearing, nicknames for others? Is there a nickname that you absolutely can’t stand when people use? :-/

About the pic: We actually do have cacti that grow here in Colorado but generally they are all wrinkled and depressing looking. This little guy is looking pretty good though. Maybe he’s protected by the pinecones in the grass surrounding him…

Soaring back to photography

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Last weekend was full of fun and friends! We got to see a bunch of friends we haven't seen in a while and there was much catching up. Speaking of catching up, I also got to the chance to catch up with my DSLR (and my photography friends here in Boulder too). My poor Nikon D80 hasn't been on a shooting adventure in ages so this weekend, we headed up a trail by our houses and took our cameras for a spin.
It was interesting trying to get the creative juices flowing after not doing shooting adventures in a while. I definitely have gotten better at using my camera (I was shooting in manual mode the whole time and was decent at figuring out good settings for the lighting conditions around) but I was thinking waaaaay too much instead of just taking pictures! Part of it is that I really want my pictures to have a signature or a particular style. I feel like right now my pictures are just pictures. I want people to look at my pictures and go "yeah… Potassium took these pictures…" but I don't know how to do that. I guess just keep taking pictures… No more months between photo outings for me!

So yeah… this picture. I was creeping up to these birds in a bush (they were totally aware of me so I wouldn't actually call it "creeping" I guess…) and they kept hopping farther away from me. Eventually, they got tired of my seemingly endless interest in them and this one took off, conveniently flying past my friend G on the way. I like that G is not totally in focus, but enough in focus that you can get his facial expression…

What do you guys think? How do you get a "signature" for your art? How do you keep working at your hobby when you aren't feeling super creative? :)

Leaf Kicker

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A while ago, Cobalt showed me some movie screenshots that he thought I might want to emulate with my photographs. One of the movies, Citizen Kane, had some shots with the camera in the floor so you could see all the floor leading up to the characters in the shot. I thought it was a really interesting idea! So here is a picture where I am trying to emulate that. Cobalt and I were hiking around southern Ohio when he started to kick at something on the ground. I literally just put my camera on the ground and took the picture. I had no idea how it would turn out but I think it turned out neat, don’t you think?

Hey Buddy, Whacha Doin’?

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Went on a walk on the trails by my house this weekend and played with my baby camera. It’s a bit frustrating actually to go from where you control all the settings even down to what the camera focuses on with the DSLR to having pretty much no control and trusting that the camera is smart enough to figure out what to focus on. I was having a lot of issues with the macro mode especially. Oh well, I guess it requires more playing…
Anyway, I thought this picture was kind of neat not only because the butterfly on the flower is in awesome focus but also because of the blurry butterfly in the corner flying into the picture. He looks like he’s like “Hey friend! Wat’s goin’ on?!?!” Fun.

Black and White: Green screen or not?

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Today’s picture comes from the 4th of July! Cobalt and I didn’t have time for our annual hike so instead we just headed up to Boulder Falls for a quick bit. It’s pretty much the shortest hike you could ever go on but look at the result! CRAZY FALLS!!! Woooo. Reminded me of my family’s yearly vacations to Yosemite so that was happy. Anyway, I brought along the Nikon D80 and my 50 mm lens (prolly should have brought the zoom lens, crazy Potassium…) and we took a few fun pictures at the falls. Crazily, they kind of look like we photoshopped Cobalt and me into a picture of the Boulder falls. I promise these are real and we were not in front of a green screen!

Los Alamos

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If you don’t immediately associate today’s post with the Las Conchas fire or with evacuation and possibly losing your home, you should probably go google the “Las Conchas fire” near Los Alamos, NM. I feel so helpless here in Colorado, far away from everything crazy going on down there. So this is my way of showing support to those who have been evacuated and those who are working hard to contain this crazy wildfire. Seriously, if there is anything I can actually do to help, please let me know. *goes and does a rain dance*
I think this is one of the most beautiful places in the world. See for yourself: