Been playing with a new lens and decided to photo the bumble bees in our blooming sage garden. Was able to get some interesting close ups, but in a couple the wings did some interesting things. Haven’t quite figured that out yet as I was at 1/8000 second. Are their little wings really that fast?
We have had a doe hanging out in the yard for the last week or so, she was definitely very pregnant. Last week Erin saw a tiny fawn in our yard so I have been keeping my eyes on the search for the baby deer the oaks. This morning on my to work, I noticed a some activity in the oaks and I turned around to get my camera. I was able to see the doe give birth to a fawn which was an amazing treat!
Little did I know, however, she had already given birth to another fawn, so the Sageport twins were born. I watched her and the fawns for about 25 minutes and was able to grab some video and still image footage. Now I’ll be keeping an eye out to watch these little creatures grow!
Originally forecast to be in the Wyoming/Nebraska Panhandle into South Dakota areas, the severe weather threat dropped into Northern Colorado on the morning of June 12th. The Storm Prediction Center issued a Particularly Dangerous Situation moderate risk with a tornado watch extending down into north central Colorado. Here is some wording from the watch:
The NWS Storm Prediction Center has issued a
* Tornado Watch for portions of
Northeast Colorado
Western Nebraska Panhandle
Southeast Wyoming
* Effective this Monday afternoon and evening from 110 PM until
800 PM MDT.
...THIS IS A PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION...
* Primary threats include...
Several tornadoes and a few intense tornadoes likely
Widespread large hail expected with scattered very large hail
events to 4 inches in diameter likely
Isolated significant damaging wind gusts to 75 mph possible
SUMMARY...Isolated intense supercell thunderstorms are expected to
develop across the watch area this afternoon. Giant hail and strong
tornadoes will be possible in the most intense storms.
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I have not seen wording like this for Colorado in a long time, if ever…”Giant hail and strong tornadoes…”, and “scattered very large hail events up to 4 inches likely“. Wow!
I drove Highway 85 north from Aurora. By the time I was in Brighton they were saying baseball hail had fallen in Pierce from the southern storm. The most southern cell wasn’t big but did look like it had fantastic storm structure. Unfortunately I was too far north to see the structure clearly. I was tempted to drive SW towards Loveland and check it out, but seeing the supercell in front of me kept me on it!
Photo viewing is recommended in higher resolution, just click on the photos.
The barber pole structure on this supercell was very tempting to spot from a better location, but I wanted to stay on the stronger storm!
The first tornado warning (radar indicated) appeared while I was east of Ault on the supercell I was on. There definitely was a defined wall cloud and everything looked “right” with the storm, it was just a matter of time.
Lowering wall cloud on the southern side of the supercell. It was tornado warned at this time just north of Briggsdale.
You can see the rotating wall cloud and funnel .
This is taken outside of Grover looking northwest, the tornado was down near Hereford.
The tornado was on the ground for 16 minutes and did some structural damage (one road was closed due to debris/powerlines in the road). It was rated EF-2 with 111-135 mph winds.
Tornado showing mesocyclone.
The ropeout phase was pretty amazing, look how long and needle thin the tornado vortex was!
I stopped just east of Hereford as the hail looked pretty amazing laying everywhere. Hail didn’t pile up on the ground like some storms, but it was everywhere and the smallest size was around quarter sized! Then there were stones up to softball size laying around! I am fascinated by large hail and spent some time just checking out these amazing ice crystals!
I found a good article that explains white versus clear ice.
Example of how the hail was lying around everywhere! Not covering the ground, but big stones!
On radar the storm still had an intense velocity couplet after the tornado!
Driving towards Bushnell out of Pine Bluffs I saw another tornado touchdown but only for a minute. As I headed east of Bushnell, I saw a tornado NE of town; but there were no easy spots to pull off so I just watched it as I drove. When I finally found a pull-out from the road, a train went by blocking my view for about 5 minutes. After the train, I caught the rope out. Looking back to the NW, I saw another tornado but was never able to get a good picture of it!
Rope out NE of Bushnell, NE.
I ended up calling it a day near Chimney Rock as I watched the amazing mothership sail off into the distance!
I have been wanting to visit the St. Peter’s Dome fluorite locale for a while as I heard the fluorite was beautiful and plentiful. Friends Matt, David and I visited the location and it didn’t disappoint.
The location is accessible by a normal vehicle along the Old Stage Road where it meets Gold Camp Road coming out of Colorado Springs. If one is unsure of the last road to the mine, they can park at the St. Peter’s Dome parking area and walk the 200 yards to the mine dumps.
View of St. Peter’s Dome, Colorado Springs and the Palmer Divide from the mine.
Fluorite is everywhere.
Purple, green and white fluorite litter the ground.
There is a bunch of fluorite laying everywhere, mostly in small chunks. You can take a sledge and chisel and work some of the larger pieces if you so chose, but I just walked around and picked up a dozen or two smaller stones that looked like they had interesting color or marbling.
I have a flat lap so I took these stones and polished with a 150 lap. They look really nice all polished up (wet in this case), so I will continue to shape and then polish the stones.
Lightning is one of the things I look forward to most during Spring and Summer months! I love photography and have been able to get some nice lightning strikes normally with my digital SLR camera. Lightning on a cell phone isn’t that difficult, however, assuming you have some know-how and a more advanced camera app on your phone. There is certainly luck involved, but a little technical knowledge and a cell phone with advanced options can allow you to catch Mother Nature’s natural fireworks!
Firstly, safety is most important. Being on a porch or anywhere outdoors is unsafe. Being under a tree is unsafe. Being next to a fence is unsafe. Being close to metal underground piping is unsafe. I think you get the point! The safest place to photograph lightning is inside of a house (through the window) or in a vehicle with the windows up. You don’t get wet that way either!
Lightning photography is dangerous and lightning isn’t very forgiving (i.e. is deadly), so please be safe!
The key to capturing lightning, given you can’t predict when it will occur, is to open the exposure on the camera so you can capture several seconds at a time. Only certain phones allow for this, but newer Android phones seem to be leading the way–it is called “Pro Mode”. Different phones have different options in Pro Mode:
My Samsung Note 5 camera allows for control of the focus, ISO and Exposure, so I lowered the ISO to the lowest setting (not Auto), changed to manual focus and set to infinity, and chose 4 second exposures. I then positioned the camera on the ground and/or window pane so it would be absolutely still and repeatably pushed the trigger. If you have a rapid fire mode, this could work instead of the longer exposure as well.
Arrows (from left to right) show Pro Mode ISO, Exposure and Focus setting options.
ISO at its lowest setting; tells the “film” to absorb the least amount of light (and noise) which is needed because the lightning is so bright. If you’re finding that the lightning isn’t showing up, increase this setting to allow more light to be captured.
Focus is set to infinity. Mountains is infinity and flower is macro–or up close. Most lightning is (better be) far enough away to be considered “infinity” distance.
Exposure can go up to 10 seconds on this camera, or as quick as 1/24000th of a second. Since lightning is so quick, all this setting is for is to make it easier to capture the lightning by having the exposure open for longer periods of time in between when you have to fire the shutter. Great since you have no idea when it will happen.
TIP! Lightning tends to occur (rule of thumb, definitely not scientific) at regular intervals, so i often count the amount of seconds between each bolt. Once I get within 1-2 seconds of when it “should” occur, I open the shutter. I also just continuously trigger the shutter so it is open most of the time.
So now that the setup is out of the way, here are some examples of lightning I caught and some tips and tricks.
Here I had the camera placed on a light post. Notice the focus of the foreground is not tight, this is because there is too much movement in the camera over the 4 seconds the shutter is open.
Again, too blurry of a picture due to the unsteady placement of the phone.
So I switched to the sidewalk which was much more sturdy. I also used my shoe to give something to lean against to make it more sturdy. Now the foreground is in better focus. Lightning is still far enough away to be outside, and to not be too bright to photograph.
Lightning still far enough away (about 10 seconds between bolt and thunder) to not completely blow out the amount of light the bolts produce. Cloud to Ground bolts will most always be brighter, as in the case with the left both that found its ground.
This anvil crawler didn’t strike ground and wasn’t too bright to be captured.
Okay, these are getting too close, not only is it dangerous but you don’t get good pictures. With the ISO setting at its lowest it is allowing the least amount of light to be captured, but still it is too much. If you had an f-stop aperture setting you’d want to close the shutter letting less light in (closing the aperture is increasing the f-stop number, by the way)…but this is a limit of my cell phone’s camera.
This one is a good capture, although it is getting a little too close for comfort, time to head inside!
Luckily the window was tinted a bit, or this would have been way too much light. This was just a few blocks away. The window pane and window allowed for very sturdy aids to keep the camera steady. Although in cases like this, the only light captured by the phone is coming from the lightning, so at that instant in time is the only time there was light, so sturdiness isn’t as important because I don’t have any other light sources in the field of view.
Since I was focused on infinity, the rain on the window didn’t really obscure the subject of the photo. You an see the raindrops as hexagon white blobs in the upper/center part of the photo.
Got a call from my friend Jim that we were getting some great Palmer Divide Lightning coming into our neighborhood. He invited me over to get some shots; but I couldn’t find the camera which was put out of reach to avoid accidents while my son and friends had a video game fest!
I ended up finding the camera and quickly set up on the back porch as I didn’t have time to head over to my buddy’s place across the neighborhood. Since this was dusk I set the exposure for one second and closed down the aperture (f11) to limit the light so I could get a longer exposure. I then put it on rapid fire and started taking photos.
The storm’s bolts got within about I estimate 500 feet which was a bit close but I was able to capture some shots before the rain overtook me…luckily I have a safe setup when shooting from the back porch. The storm was hardly yellow on the radar so it was a special treat to be putting out any lightning.
This was the closest. You can start to see the intense parts of the bolt (towards the top, the “balls” along the path) and that fizzled away by dissolving; which is really cool to see. Might be hard to imagine but if you’ve seen up close lightning you probably will know what I’m referring to.
I have long been wanting to explore the area known as Bacculite Mesa near Pueblo, Colorado searching for various fossils in the Pierre Shale deposits. This site is on private land but the land owner does allow clubs to visit on planned trips. This year I was able to make the field trip with the Canyon City and Lake George clubs.
The Western Interior Seaway had Colorado as the ocean floor around 70-80 million years ago. This was before the mountains were formed and all over Colorado there are fossils contained in Pierre Shale deposits. I have found pyrite and marcosite concretions in this general area coming out of the Pierre Shale. This is a rare and premiere location for fossils from this era of our geologic history!
Looking SW over Pueblo towards the Spanish Peaks from the Bacculite Mesa.
Thanks David for taking this picture of me and the Pierre Shale formations of Bacculite Mesa locality.
I carpooled with another fossil enthusiast David (thanks for the ride and company!) and we both had a great day and some amazing finds. David suggested hitting the back side of the collecting area and we found some great fossils in that area; but limited bacculites which was mainly on a different face of the mesa.
Collecting area we were in. Photo courtesy of David Gillard.
I found the bacculite fossils pretty much in every zone of these hills including on top, especially in the small ravines and in wash outs below the hills. I dug in a couple of spots that had quite a few rocks and fossils in the area, but didn’t find anything in-situ.
Various bacculites are common if you look through the alluvial slopes as they have weathered out of their host Pierre Shale and made their way down the hill. These multicolored bacculites are 4-6 inches long.
This is a bacculite tail that can flex, it is interlocked like vertebrae.
Here is what bacculites looked like. Taken from http://www.bhigr.com/media/photos/rplca/bacculites_grand.jpg
I found a couple spots where there was calcite (?) crystals in the fossils, like you see in the clams from Florida or septarian nodules. These were eroding out of harder rock and not the Pierre Shale, I’m assuming some kind of reef as the rock was full of imprints of fossil clams, shells and ammonites.
Shell imprint in shale.
Small clam Nymphalucina occidentalis
Weathered bacculite with shale matrix attached.
Unknown concretion, love the red/yellow/orange staining and patterns!
Little conglomerate ball, about an inch.
I love this triangle shell in a partial cube!
Calcite cluster, about 3 inches.
Veins of calcite mineralization
I believe this is the head of a small bacculite–which you can see protruding from the left side.
More calcite (?) crystallization
Bacculite with some of the iridescent patterns
Fossil clam with calcite mineralization
Some of the larger calcite (or barite?) crystals. These were beautiful amber color and translucent and in some spots gemmy. Up to an inch.
Prickly Pear Cactus were in bloom!
David found this bacculite head right away; preserved in matrix!
David’s ammonite fossil.
Cool color and design on this shale rock; about 4 inches.
Various clams and shells. Many have calcite cores.
Been cleaning some crystals and since I was playing with my macro lens I decided to do some crystal photography, both to play with technique but also to see up close where the cleaning still needs to occur.
Most of these crystals need a lot further cleaning; with all the facets and how stained they were to begin with; this will be a long process to get all of the staining out of the cracks.
Love the parallel secondary growth and all the facets.
Back side of the above crystal. Looks as if the original growth was a smoky, then two different growth periods.
Still has plenty more iron oxide staining to clean up, but love the colors on this fluorite chunk.
There is a lot pointing at you!
A pyrite double ball. Love the shapes and facets on these great crystals!
This is uncleaned, the pyrite was starting to tarnish when I extracted it; the colors are amazing!
This is a great healed crystal!
Was a beautiful Mother’s day, took a few minutes this afternoon to play with my prime macro lens to become more familiar with the depth of field options, bokah and focus.
Wanted the whole flower in good focus. f/18, 1/100s, iso-3200, 90mm.
Wanted a shallower depth of field, with focus on the center of the flower. Turned out pretty cool! f2.8, 1/160sec, iso-100, 90mm.
Was interested in what the bokah would be like. f5.6, 1/100s, iso-320, 90mm.
Wanted to get good focus for the large depth of field. f22, 1/100s, iso-12800, 90mm.
Was trying to get the pedal in good focus, was curious about the fuzz. f5.6, 1/100s, iso-500, 90mm.
Was curious how the focus would blur with a small depth of field on the tip of the budding flower. f2.8, 1/100s, iso-320, 90mm.
Hoping for good focus throughout. f/8, 1/100s, iso-1250, 90mm.
Was focusing on the flowers with a shallow depth of field. f/2.8, 1/100s, iso-160, 90mm
Going for deep focus to contrast with the above photo. f/20, 1/100s, iso-10000, 90mm
Wanted to get the curve. f/20, 1/100s, iso-8000, 90mm.
Was trying to get the stem as it was in the shade. Got some grass blades in the foreground blown out. f/14, 1/100s, iso-1000, 90mm.
This was a difficult shot because it was breezy. f/5.6, 1/100s, iso-320, 90mm.
Love the budding oaks! f/16, 1/100s, iso-1250, 90mm.
More oaks. f/16, 1/100s, iso-3200, 90mm.
Was standing taking a picture straight down. f/16, 1/100s, iso-2500, 90mm.
What a cool time of year! f/16, 1/100s, iso-4000, 90mm.
Was curious on how these lichen on the oaks would turn out. f/22, 1/100s, iso-6400, 90mm.
f/20, 1/100s, iso-10000, 90mm.
Decay, with a leaf gall wasp cocoon. f/8, 1/100s, iso-400, 90mm.
f/22, 1/100s, iso-12800, 90mm
Denver and the entire Eastern part of the state was under the gun for potential severe weather on Monday afternoon; the first severe day of the year. There was a tornado warned storm around Agate on the Palmer Divide and the radar definitely showed a couplet, but only sustained funnels were reported by chasers on the ground. The main threat was hail; big hail and lots of hail, and straight line winds.
I went out east of Denver to start, took a conference call for work while I was watching the major hailstorm wreck havoc over Denver. After my call, I headed east until I eventually punched through the line of cells and was able to see the storms on the east side. Watched several cells get close and then headed home. Although there was a lot of lightning, I was nearly to Kansas and will wait until another day to catch the nighttime action closer to home!
May 8th, 2017 Denver Hailstorm taken just east of DIA.
Sitting at DIA looking west was the damaging hailstorm, looking east was this smaller storm cell.
Planes were landing, must have been an incredible view from the left window seats!
Scud cloud that looked suspicious.
Love the colors at deep dusk. This is near Cope as the hail core of this storm was merely a cornfield away! Note the in-cloud lightning.
Great cloud structure and some in-cloud lightning
Love the rain and clouds!
Cloud to Ground lightning inside the rain, barely visible. The storm was looking pretty evil and I took off after this picture.