Ended up tone mapping this photo in an effort to recover the tools in the storage shed as they were lost in shadow. I recommend clicking to embiggen.

Aha! An opportunity to decrease clarity and crank up the vibrance in Lightroom.

Late afternoon of my last day in Denver was spent at the Denver Botanic Gardens. Which ended up being much fancier than I had expected.

A large amount of time, money, and effort has been poured into this place and it shows. Lots of areas to explore, sculptures to admire, and out of focus photos to take.

Interestingly; all of the water features contained some kind of blackish dye. Which really helped with the water reflections. Not sure if that was the intended purpose, or whether it was to stop you seeing the normal mess that is the bottom. I’m guessing the later.

There is currently a large number of sculptures around the grounds that are part of a Henry Moore exhibit. Turns out that he first designs and creates a miniature piece of his work. Then gets one of his apprentices to create a much larger version of it for him.

I think I need to find myself some apprentices…

Another one of those right place at the right time moments.

Spent half a day attempting to hike to Sky Pond in the Rocky Mountains National Park in Colorado. Unfortunately the weather started to close in and we weren’t properly prepared for that. We did however, make it as far as The Loch before turning around.

Which was definitely worthwhile.

Stumbled across an Airshow while in Colorado for the weekend. We only got to see the last of the vintage aircraft, but it was still impressive.

I like the texturing in this shot, and decree that the rule of thirds does not apply.

There was a reptile expo being held at the Santa Clara fairgrounds a couple of weekends ago. Where you could go and check out a large variety of reptiles, get tips, and bring home an enclosure filled with your new cute and cuddly pet scorpion¹.

Admittedly I did have thoughts of buying a pet turtle or lizard (you can keep the snakes and spiders). However, it turns out that looking after these things is quite the commitment. They require an environment, specialized lighting, regular cleaning, and of course food.

I on the other hand, can barely keep my one plant alive.

Maybe I’ll get a fish and bootstrap my way from there…

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1. To be fair; I only noticed one of the vendors selling scorpions.

Aircraft carrier check list:

• Control tower with large heavy bits that spin
• Numerous crew members
• Bouncy castle and slide
• Random fighter jet

Wait… what was that second to last one?