Cruise Night Car show and a trip to lavender fields

Saturday morning I enjoyed a trip with my friend Annette to a Lavender Farm/Shop in Elwood, NE that was having an event. We did not attend any of the talks, but enjoyed seeing the lavender growing and visiting their shop. I may have bought a few things. Since Annette was driving, I took some pictures of the scenery along the way.

Last weekend was also "Cruise Night" in Kearney. There are numerous events over the weekend, and I went to look at the classic cars down "on the bricks" in the downtown shopping district on Saturday afternoon.

Denver Museum Art Exhibits

While I was in Denver a few weeks ago, I went to this Women of Abstract Expressionism Show at the Denver Art Museum.

Surprisingly, there were quite a few artists I had not heard of.

The show was excellent.

Judith Godwin

Joan Mitchell

Detail - Joan Mitchell

Elaine de Kooning

Detail - Lee Krasner

I also enjoyed other exhibits in the museum, including "Why We Dance - American Indian Art in Motion"

And also the exhibit "Printed and Painted -the Art of Bark Cloth". The patterns were fantastic, especially how they were displayed as contrasting layers.

They also had a piece outside based on the movement of the human body.

And it happened to be one the the Food Truck days at Civic Park across the street.  I had a Shrimp Po' Boy.

A fantastic day in downtown Denver.

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.