Photographing the Denver skyline

A few weeks ago, I got into Denver on a Friday afternoon, had Day One of a two day art fair on Saturday, and Saturday night participated in a photography group that was taking pictures of the Denver skyline at night. My friend is a wonderful photographer and a member of this group, so I tagged along.  It had been a long hot day at the art fair, and my feet were tired, but by the end of the night I was so happy with my photos - it was totally worth it! 

I typically just use my camera on the standard setting so it was fun to try out some of the manual settings and it really did provide better and more interesting photographs. I did use a tripod for most of the night shots.

The group went to three spots. The first spot was at Sloan's Lake. I didn't know what I was doing with the manual settings and my camera does not have much of a zoom, it's 18-55mm.  So all my photos from Sloan's Lake are pretty much black.

Our next stop was on Zuni, near one of the I-25 entrance ramps. We were here for quite some time so I was able to play with my camera settings.

 
You can see how the car lights became long streaks due to changing the settings.

Then we moved to a bridge that goes across I-25, there was wire fencing that often got in the way of taking photos. Most of mine had parts of the fencing showing, but here are a couple that turned out great. I loved this location and hope to go back next time I am in Denver.

I really didn't want to leave, but it started raining. I had three people holding umbrellas over me so I could take a few more shots.

I want to do an art piece of the Denver skyline so I kept taking pictures throughout the week. On Monday night, we were headed to the Tivoli to have a beer at their new bar. A giant rainbow showed up as we were parking, but by the time we got to the top of the parking garage for an unobstructed view, it was gone (no tripod for these).

  

 

Here's a photo from the Tivoli, just using my "hand-held twilight" setting on my camera, since I didn't have my tripod. It takes three photos very quickly, then merges them into one. I like how the lights outline the trees at the bottom of the buildings.

 This one is from the Denver Art Museum later in the week.

I probably have enough photos for my project, but that won't stop me from being snap-happy.

If you want to see photos that my friend takes of urban Denver, you can find her on instagram at denverstreetphotog.

Summer Art Market in Denver

For many years I have participated in the Denver Art Students League Summer Art Market the second weekend of June.  I was working hard to have new pieces for the show, and so my blog was largely ignored for the last month.  Also, I was working on a large art quilt and did not want to post the progress, but wait until it was finished.

I went to Denver the weekend before last and stayed for over a week. It was a blast, I had so much fun at the art fair, with my friends, doing things around town, seeing a concert at Red Rocks, and going to Denver ComicCon. I feel like I stuffed a month worth of things-to-do into one week.  And Denver had a lot going on.

I am going to do a couple posts of things I did, places I went, etc. I am going to start with the Summer Art Market.

For the last year or so, I've been doing cow gelli prints and have kind of been cow obsessed.  This year I decided I wanted to make a cow art quilt. Shaped like a cow. Big like a cow.  I started it in January and finished it the day before the show.  Here is a picture of George in my tent at the show. I will do a nicer picture later, after I iron some black fabric to use as a background.

 Here is a picture of George and I, so you can see how big she is.

Why is she named George? I love my cow quilt and I was reminded of the old Bugs Bunny cartoon where Daffy Duck meets the Abominable snowman, and the snowman scoops him up and says, I will call him George, and I will hug him, and pet him and squeeze him.  That is the way I feel about by cow quilt. I will do a separate post, probably next week, of all the fabric and techniques I used to create it.  I have at least three other big cows I would like to make.


Here is the other side of my booth.

Here is a street shot of the show. I had a fabulous time, met a lot of people, and sold some artwork. Win, win, win.

Field trip to downtown Denver and the Botanical Gardens

Sunday I met Melanie to walk around downtown to take some photos. I was hoping to photograph some cool architectural details, but did not see a lot in the area we went to.

Here is Union Station. It is being renovated so we couldn't wander inside.

16th Street Mall.

Larimer Square

We did find this building with some cool details.

And this classic car.

And the bar bike.

Afterwards, we met up with Susan,Sabyl, and Gayla for dinner at Pasquini's. They were out of Eggplant Parmesan and it was only 5:00, I was very sad. I got some awesome artwork from Susan and Sabyl. I would share it here but it is already packed for our move on Friday.

I am going to miss you guys! If you want to skype our monthly art group, I am all for it!

After dinner, Melanie and I went to the Denver Botanical Gardens to see the new Chiluly exhibit. Some of it was similar to what I saw in Scottsdale a couple months ago, but there were new pieces as well.

And you can't go to the gardens without taking some flower pictures.

It didn't get really dark until it was closing time at 9:00.  It was a fun but tiring day. At least I walked off my Italian dinner.

Denver field trip

Since I will be moving to Nebraska sometime this summer, I thought I'd take some time over the next few months to take some photos in Denver.

My friend Melanie is a photographer so we decided to go out on the town Sunday afternoon.  But our plans were somewhat changed when we found out there is a new "Modern Masters" exhibit at the Denver Art Museum. It was a really good exhibit, briefly touching on the different art periods (Surrealism, abstract expressionism, etc) from 1880-1980. They had quite a few nice examples of each and I thought it was well put together. 

Included in the price of admission was entry to the Clifford Still Museum next door. They had a special exhibit of some of his work, somewhat replicating a gallery show he had in 1959.  I like Still, but am not a huge fan.  Melanie said some of the paintings reminded her of cow hides, so I said I liked the Holsteins (black and white ones). The architecture of the Still museum is cool and very concrete. I love this patterned ceiling that lets the light in.

I left the guy in this picture to show the size of these paintings. They are massive. Clifford Still left the art scene in the late 50's (I believe the 1959 show was one of his last) and when he passed away a few years ago (?), he had 3000 works that were to go to a city willing to build a museum for them.  Somehow that ended up being Denver after the decision making. Still must have had a huge warehouse to store 3000 enormous paintings!

City skyline (McNicholls Building in the foreground).  Across Civic Center Park from the museums is the McNicholls Building.  I had never been in it before, but knew it was used for art-related events and it had huge welcome banners so we went in.

 
They have two exhibits which are free to the public.  One exhibit is 25 years of printmaking. There was a wide range of prints on display and it was quite a nice show. There were a lot of pieces that used photography in their printmaking process, which I didn't find quite as interesting as the others.

If you don't know, I love the artist Nick Cave. One of his screenprints was included in the show.

Nick Cave screenprint

The other exhibit was "The New West" and it had a variety of different art expressing this idea. I really liked this painting (I forgot to write down the artist's name, sorry!). I thought both shows were definitely worth checking out, especially since we were in the neighborhood.

 Meininger's is one of the big local art supply stores. This orange-ish building downtown was their original location.  It's been empty for over 10 years. I thought the contrast between it and all the high-rise hotels was interesting.

 California St

 

 The big blue bear.

 The Corner Office, nice swanky bar for a drink before a show at the Buell.

 Buell parking garage stairwell and theater entrance.

 Sam's #3, good Mexican food.

 16th St Mall

By this point, our feet hurt and we had to go to the Rio for some refreshment and a snack.  We didn't get very far in our photo adventures since we were distracted by all the art exhibits, so we are planning another adventure soon.

Good times in Denver

(This post is mainly to revel in my new camera and the great photos it takes)

Yesterday was our 4th wedding anniversary and I got an awesome new camera. I used it for the photos I posted yesterday.  We had tickets to see Amanda Palmer at the Gothic theater (I think she classifies their music as Dark Cabaret? If you check her out online, check out her previous band The Dresden Dolls as well), and stayed the night at the posh Brown Palace.  It was a great time.

Allen took the day off. In the early afternoon, we went to Lime for margaritas and our usual sweet corn tamales and scorpion shrimp.  Then we went to the Esquire to see "The Master".  It was fine, but I think we were expecting more based on the Rotten Tomatoes reviews. Also, it was filmed in a certain film type that the Esquire's projector couldn't deal with very well. The movie was kind of grainy, and had halos whenever there was a lot of light in the picture.

We checked in to the hotel and went to the Tavern in the hotel for a drink.  The Tavern looks like the inside of a boat, all wood paneling, even the ceiling. 

 

We went to see Amanda Palmer and it was a great show.  Super energetic and fun crowd.  We were on the balcony just behind some people that were sitting on stools, so we had a great view. I'm only 5' so often do not actually see some of the bands when we go to concerts. Super fun, but when they started playing Wham's "Careless Whisper" we were ready to call it a night.

For breakfast, we went to the hotel's restaurant "Ellington's", which was included in our package. It was good, but I am a huge breakfast aficionado and I was not wowed. If you want awesome breakfast, "Snooze" is the place to go if you are willing to wait an hour to get in.  (I was going to recommend the red velvet pancakes with espresso maple syrup, but just checked the website and didn't see it on there any more.  I do love the Bella Bella Benny!  I usually pay the upgrade to get one pancake instead of hash browns.)

Bagels and Lox

Corned beef hash omelet with truffle hollandaise sauce

We went to the Tattered Cover book store downtown. I wanted to look at their European craft magazines. I wanted to see the latest "Mollie Makes" but they did not have it. I did like a British mag, "Stitch" but did not buy it.  We briefly wandered downtown and I took some pictures.

So Allen and I have been talking about exotic meats and possibly going to "The Buckhorn Exchange" sometime. In fact the best meal Allen ever made is an ostrich dish.  Allen is an excellent cook and is willing to put several hours in to make an outstanding meal.  It may sound like ostrich, pineapple, cilantro basil pesto sauce, banana mash, and Thai curry sauce won't go well together but this dish rocks! http://recipecircus.com/recipes/gijane/MEATS/Spicy_Ostrich_Tenderloin.html

Anyway, we decided to go to Steve's meats in Arvada to see what they had and picked up some Elk Sirloin.  I don't know for sure what Allen is making, but it sounds like it may have a port blackberry sauce.

Right next to the meat store, lo and behold, is a German bakery. I was not hungry in the least, but still wanted one of everything. I got one of these black forest tortes and Allen got a carrot cake torte. I kept eyeing the strudels and we ended up getting a half of one, strawberry cream cheese. 

 

It was a great time. I got to test out my camera. I get an awesome dinner with torte for dessert. Fantastic.

By the way, none of the pictures were taken with a flash, even the pictures of the drinks in the dark bar.   The photos below were after dark in Louisville, using a twilight mode on my camera - no flash, no tripod.