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Phil and I are continuing our autumn send off at the end of October when we headed upstream on the St.Vrain dam road, but would end up in the mountains above, instead Rottenbuck Reservoir. There was no rush as warming is slow in this skinny canyon. We are pretty well familiar with the territory and had nothing particular in mind but here we are at the bridge, lower left, over the trickle down Sleepy Lion trail. It appears new; it was rebuilt after the big flood a decade back. You can see the glorious day we had. Slowly, the normal clouding is starting to gather over the Divide. Here is where we turned up the Sleezy Lion Trail.
In this up canyon scene, the misanthropic Longmont KKK era dam can be seen! Now, the stream trickles left, around the unfinished dam. Boy, it was in a stupid location to start. No wonder it was never finished. Perhaps too many grafty NYC contracts were awarded to Trump's father to continue. Maybe the misbegotten project can be restarted under Trump's renewal of KKK hatred. KKK is too emboldened under Trumpism to hide any more. Otherwise, this is always a grand trek with a camera. There are always good like-minded folks exercising along the dam road and ready for a meet and greet. This view is up the river and shows the slow ripple in tree shadows. I think that we better head up the trail on this classy day.
The entire canyon, above the old Longmont reservoir is deep and a glorious slice in the Rockies' crust all the way to Wild Basin along the Peak-to-Peak Highway at the southern end of Rocky Mountain National Park. The river in its valley is a quarter mile down below the Taylor Mountain. Taylor is the source of many shots in my photostream. Should I jump in here and cool off in 50 degree water? I better set the camera on the bank. I found this shot on the St. Vrain awaiting edit in my working directory.
At least the running stream keeps the place cooled down every day. Get used to escapism because the environment will be getting worse according to all the scientists not on the Koch payroll. The orange revolution is on the way but it was still cool up here.
When UP got a waiver to use foreign power on the Geneva Sub across northern Illinois to operate detoured BNSF trains due to flooding, it even used foreign power on a couple of its own trains, as evidenced by this Ferromex unit leading an empty well train at DeKalb on 3-26-19.
Union Pacific Railroad GP9 226 at Kansas City, Missouri on an unknown day in April 1980, Kodachrome by Chuck Zeiler. Number 226 was built in January 1954 ( c/n 19112 ) and retired by the UP in June 1983.
If you want to relax in another world and watch a whole different life float by in peace and relative happiness and harmony, a few hours sitting on Humpybong Creek at Redcliffe is sure to bring a smile to your face. With lots of ducks and water birds, they just go happily about their simple lives focussed mainly on food and perhaps a little loving.
There are lots of nice eats under that water and bottoms in the air are a frequent scene, I liked this one because, while the facing tail is a bit out of focus, the other duck has plunged its head so fast into the water, it has created a hole! The camera is thankfully faster than the eye!
Humpybong Creek, Redcliffe, SE Queensland.
A soybean load out of Minnesota left UP rails a few miles back in downtown Omaha and is now on the BNSF Omaha Sub starting a trip to Hastings, NE via Lincoln, NE to return to home rails.
While I was taking this, I was hoping they would lower their beaks just a little to form a heart, but didn't happen. Shot at the Viera Wetlands in Melbourne, Florida.
Union Pacific's Sinclair local rolls into its namesake town on a sunny, albeit cold, morning in February 2015. Power for the local was provided by SD40Ns 1823 and 1865, former UP CA8 25561 can be seen in the background on display at Sinclair's 'railroad' park.
UP 1823 ~ LDA01 ~ Sinclair, Wyoming
Union Pacific's Laramie Subdivision
02.24.2015
Quality-wise this would normally be one of those photos that normally gets either deleted or filed away for eternity, but in this case it gets an airing because it's not something you see very often. This is an adult doe rabbit accompanied by five kittens. I watched these guys for several minutes before they all lolloped off into an adjacent field. Every time the doe stopped, the kittens would try and get underneath her, presumably trying to suckle; this would prompt her to jump up and bound off further down the track with the kits in tow.
Well yeah, this is one block up from Main Street Ventura close to where I do my laundry and about three block away from Ventura High School in a pretty rough neighborhood (not! :-))
Music: Morcheeba - Otherwise right click and open in new window/tab
INVITES ARE GREAT, BUT PLEASE IN MODERATION
All my public photos are free for personal use
In case your interested here's a sample of my convoluted workflow:
1. +2,0,-2 RAW (sometimes JPEG) files loaded into Photomatix and processed using the detail enhancer.
2. Base Photomatix Settings:
Main:
> Strength - 85 or less
> Saturation - 65
> Light smoothing - High (The further right, the more realistic)
> Luminosity - 0 (adjust based on the picture)
Tabs:
Tone
> White point - 2% (adjust up/down based on picture)
> Black point - .5% (adjust up/down based on picture)
> Gamma - 1.00 (adjust up/down based on picture)
Color
> Temp - 0
> Highlights - 3
> Shadows - 0
Micro
> Contrast - 10
> Smoothing - 15
S/H
> Highlights - 18 (adjust up/down based on picture)
> Shadows - 18
> Clipping - 18
The light smoothing is the most powerful adjustment, so play with that setting first then adjust the others until you get the right look,
If your sky is a dull gray increase the S/H tab, “Highlights” up a bit
If you have to much light “halos” increase your “Luminosity” and the “White Point” settings.
3. Save as a TIFF file.
4. Open in "The Gimp" and re-size (save as____.tiff)
5. Make a layer copy.
6. Do an auto "levels" and see what it does, if it's cool I'll merge it down if not I'll play around with the setting and opacity then merge.
7. Make another layer copy.
8. Use the "local contrast enhance" script at about 50%, then adjust the opacity to fine tune it, then merge it down.
9. Make another layer copy.
10. Use the "vivid color" script and play with the opacity to fine tune it, then merge it down.
11. Save (still as a tiff) and close the picture.
12. Open in Photoshop (I have and old version and only use it to run the Topaz plug-ins)
13. Run the Topaz Adjust plug-in filter and see what the various presets do.............
14. Run the Topaz Denoise filter.
15. Save (still a tiff)
16. Open the original file (unaltered JPEG or RAW) in "The Gimp"
17. Re-size this to match the modified tiff file (don't worry about keeping the aspect ratio)
18. Drag the modified tiff file in as a layer (it will completely hide the unmodified version) then merge it down, this will recover the lost EXIF information.
19. Use the "smart eg sharpen" script at default settings (it makes it own layer copy) then play with the opacity to fine tune it, then merge it down.
20. Do a "save as" as a jpeg, and it's ready for Flickr!
A westbound manifest hits the middle of the three 2 main track sections on the Blair Sub at CP Duffy.
