On one hand traveling anywhere on a plane today is such an incredible pain, and seems to take forever, but in the view of history, two thousand miles in a few hours isn’t so bad I guess. We went from a remote-ish cabin in Estes Park Colorado at 8,000 feet to our house, at sea level in Auburn, in about 12 hours. I have always loved airports, at least at long as I can remember anyway. Today the airlines pack as many people into every single aircraft as they possibly can, which makes for extremely crowded airports, and cabins. My perspective of airline travel has changed tremendously over the last twenty years, but airports, especially the major airports like Atlanta Hartsfield or DIA, are still a great place to just relax, people watch, read, do some photography, and generally take a break from the normal routine of things. I do love visiting different parts of the country, and the world for that matter, but as the cliche goes, there’s no place like home. I have visited every state in the country, lived in a dozen or so, and I can say without a doubt that the south really is a great place to live.
For all the craziness that is involved with traveling today I only have to look at the photo below to remember the reason why all that was worth it. To be there for the birth of our second grandson was an experience we will be able to remember as he grows up, and to be able to photograph his arrival into the world makes those memories even more vivid. I always feel very privileged to photograph specific events. They are all little pieces of history, frozen in time, never to happen exactly that same way again.
The photos in this post are sort of a hodge-podge of images from our trip home. I never did get a chance to do my 50mm airport shoot at Denver International Airport because by the time we got through security we only had about 30 minutes left before we got on our sold out flight, and we arrived hours before our departure time. I have several more photos of baby Luke than just the one below but I will save those for another post sometime.
This season, to me, seems so crazy right now that I find myself looking desperately for some margin (or balance). Fall is always a very busy time of year, but between football season, our multi-site movement at Cornerstone, a grandson being born trip, a niece to be born sometime this week, seminary classes, and a trip to Africa in two weeks, I’m feel a little frazzled (that a very scientific technical term) at times, just like everyone does.
I look at baby Luke in this photo below and it amazes me. God spent nine months to create the perfect little boy who right now knows nothing of the hustle and bustle of this world, and by the time he is my age, around the year 2050, he will no doubt feel the same pressures and anxieties that come with living in this extremely modern world. Maybe he will some day pull out this photo on his whatever electronic fangled device he has and remember that one day he too had no cares in the world other than to be warm and sleep in the sunlight.
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Our view from the cabin in Estes Park looks out over Longs Peak, which just got a dusting of snow over the last night or two. The temps are above freezing at around 8,000 feet where we are, barely, but it’s cold enough. I don’t get a chance to do self-portraits very often but I did this one below this morning as Deborah and I spent some nice quiet time, me reading and Deb knitting. These two shots pretty much show what we like to do when we are not scheduled to be somewhere doing something. It’s great because our location can change but we can pretty much take a few things with us and enjoy spending the day together on the beach, or in the mountains, or at home in the living room for that matter.
This self portrait was pretty neat to me since I was able to combine the two things I’m passionate about in one moment, studying God’s word and photography (meta data here). Self portraits are really much more difficult than one might think, it just isn’t as easy as pushing the button and your done, to me it’s about telling a story as always. I love looking at different ways to do self portraits since it tells so much about the photographer and the person. One of my favorite is this one my grandfather did, which I posted a few years ago.
Only one day left of our mountain view and it’s back to the heat and humidity. Something I’m actually looking forward to since it’s a whole lot easier to breathe in Alabama than it is in Colorado. Tomorrow we have the baby Luke photo shoot and I’m wishing I had all the cute little baby hats, baskets, and cups that Heather Carson in Auburn uses but we do have several Deborah knitting originals to use.
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Well one down and one to go. Today we welcomed baby Luke into the world today at 10:07am in Longmont Colorado. Luke weighed in at 8 pounds and measured 21 inches and seemed to be totally at peace with his own existence within a few minutes, hardly even cried except when various nurses jolted him here and there. The photo above, today’s photo of the day, is the first ever shot of the four Fillmer boys, and also the four people who contributed and helped the very least in bringing baby Luke into the world today. It would be really cool to add the other two Fillmer boys (Larry and Les) to this photo some day, but one is in Germany right now and the other in Alabama.
I think I took about 1200 photos of the baby and all the various participants and visitors from today’s glorious event. There were many great shots of mom and baby but those will come later. Deborah and I were so happy today to be witness to the birth of our second grandson (and we were told our last), can’t wait to share a few more photos down the road so to speak. Next up is my sister who should deliver within a week or so, hopefully she will wait until we get back to Alabama so we can get the first photos of our newest niece.
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Today’s photo of the day is something I love to photograph, barbed wire. There are so many different aspect and ways to photograph barbed wire, and almost all exhibit some type of feeling of simplicity (at least the kind found in fields anyway). This particular shot was something normally hidden in higher water, which no doubt took many fishing lures in its day.
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The photo of the day today comes from an overlook of a tiny old mining town called Creede Colorado, which sits in a beautiful valley surrounded by 10,000 foot mountain peaks. The air is crisp, clean, and extremely quiet, and from this vantage point the town looks a little like a toy train center piece (click on the photo to see the details). This was just before the snow started falling for the winter.
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Ok, well maybe not here in Auburn, but right now, the Aspen groves of the Rockies are ablaze with color. After flipping back over some fall photos of the last few years I came across this one, taken at this exact time of year, but at the 11,000 foot range in the Rockies. You can’t see the glorious fall colors that surround these tall pines from the photo, but at the time, it was about 40*F outside and the entire surrounding area was full of yellow aspen trees, like the one shown below. Fall has to be one of my favorite times of year, almost as much color in the fall (if you look closely) as there is in Spring.
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One of the things I probably dis-like the most about blogs is having to clean house, but, this weekend I went through the tedious process of implementing a new design, updating all the categories for each post, and changing some previous posts to display the full size images this design will accommodate. I really think that much of the details in photography is lost in viewing small images, so, for those still on dial-up, I apologize now. From this point forward I will be displaying my images on up to 900px wide in some cases, like the image below of Lake City lake in Colorado (although I will try to keep the file size as small as possible).
The image above was taken in August of 2005 in Lake City Colorado. There is an overlook on the forest road where you can stop and hike up the side of the mountain. Image data: Camera, Nikon D2X, ISO-100, Focal length 35mm @ f/16
This is one of those scenes that has probably been photographed a million times but is still so beautiful that you just have to stop and take a shot. This particular shot I did do a bit of hiking off the main road. I climbed up to the top of the ridge overlooking the lake and the most gorgeous colors appeared.
I rarely think the best shot is in the foot pegs of the tripod that just left (or where everyone else tends to take the same shot), and in this case I was greatly rewarded. The drive from Creede to Lake City is one of the most wonderful drives found in the country, so if you ever have a chance, take the road right out of Creede and take a slow drive over several passes until you drop down into Lake City.
Happy Labor Day to everyone.
