Splitting threads of thunder over me

Oh man oh man oh man. This is going to be super long, because I'm explaining my shit day in Denver. But there are pictures at the end, I absolutely promise.

Last night was fucking interesting.

Knowing that traffic on a Friday going north on I-25 is generally hellacious, I decided to leave early for my class. I figured, best case scenario, I would be an hour ahead of the game, and I could go eat at Baja Fresh (because yum!) and generally lounge around 16th Street Mall. Worst case, I'd be right on time (meaning fifteen minutes early).

I got into my car at 3:45, thinking I was so wise, and I was quietly applauding myself and looking forward to eating some Baja Fresh. I plug the address I needed to go to in my Nav, and oh fuck. It says one hour and fifty minutes. I look over at my roommate, who was standing outside smoking a cigarette, and I say, in a panicked and also somewhat defeated voice, "FUCK! My fucking phone says it's going to take me two hours to get there!" And my roommate looks at me, completely nonplussed, and says, "Then you'd better start driving, dude."

Ya think?

Almost the entire first quarter of the trip was in red on my Nav. Balls. Fast forward to thirty minutes later, and I've just passed the Briargate exit (for those of you playing the home game, that's actually only three exits from my house). Everything was bottlenecked because of construction, and I was annoyed. But, I was bopping along anyway, listening to my music and singing (I actually put Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic on my newest music compilation, specifically for The (Boy)Friend, and oh yes. I danced.) and I was in a fairly decent mood, considering my blood was boiling at myself for not leaving thirty minutes sooner. I found myself at a pretty dead stop behind a Cruze (and there's a story about that car later, too! Oh, the adventures I have!), and marveling at how I seemed to be the last person who wanted to leave the Springs, as there was nobody behind me. Until there was. In a major way. I'm looking in my rear-view mirror, and up comes this Hyundai, and the lady driving is just not. paying. attention. I can see her looking around at anything other than the road in front of her, chiefly my car, and I start to freak out a little bit. And right before my freak out ends, she runs into the back of my car. I jerk forward hard enough to knock my head against my steering wheel fairly solidly (Poor, poor me. I have a little goose egg on the side of my head now), but I liken it to throwing a dart at a charging bear. All that did was make me fucking angry. Bonus round: There was NOWHERE to pull over and get her information. All of the construction nonsense had fenced off the shoulders, and traffic was bumper to bumper for miles and miles up the way. I didn't really know what to do, so I just angrily dismissed her with a wave of my hand, because I felt like I was at a loss, and also that I wanted to punch her in her god damn eyes. All I could do was pray that my back bumper wasn't lollygagging behind my car, dragging against the road like some sort of retard. Thankfully it wasn't, and even more thankfully, the damage is incredibly minor. It's cosmetic, so uh, I got lucky, I guess. I tried to get her license plate number, but she trailed behind me super fucking far (no need to be paranoid darling, you won't hit me again if you just pay attention) and made it damn near impossible. By the time there was a place to pull over and SHE stopped holding up more traffic by hiding dozens of feet behind me, I had lost track of her, and I think she took an exit and I missed her. I couldn't pull over and get her info. I still haven't called my insurance company to tell them what happened. I'll have to do that tonight.

Ordeal the first.

Ordeal number two!

I got a parking ticket, because I never learned to read.

At first, I was incredibly frustrated, because I thought the meter said what our meters down here say, which is free parking after 6pm. No no no no, it's very confusing. The price for the meter is much, much smaller and lower on the thing than the big bit that says Overnight parking allowed after 6, and because I am apparently the god damn worst, I was just like, oh, ok! I'm safe here after 6, it's just like Downtown Colorado Springs! Weeeee! Yeah. That's not a fucking thing, and I got walloped with a 200 dollar ticket for my inability to read everything. Initially, I was like, hey, jerkwads, you can't give me a ticket, because this says I was safe to park here! Yeah, and I would have been. Had I paid the 6 dollars. God dammit. So, that was annoying, but totally my own fault. I feel really, really stupid about it now. Mostly because I felt such righteous indignation at something that turned out to be totally my own damn fault. I HATE when that happens.

The class was kind of a bust. I'm disappointed that I paid for it and then didn't learn anything. It was just watching a slideshow of photos, and hearing about, essentially, just using F/16 and 1/60th shutter speed on the lowest ISO possible (which is 100 for me, but I'm not sure if anything else goes lower). I just sort of sat in the back and thought to myself that it was a class based solely on an opinion for what's best rather than technique, or how to make everything work together for different lighting situations. But I got to talk about doing the 365 project, and I gave out a bunch of my cards (I showed them to Kristen later, and she said that my mantis business card is pretentious, and it makes it look like I walk around in blazers and pencil skirts with large glasses and a bitchy face. I was sort of uncomfortable about that, because I...uh...do those things) I was stunned at the amount of people who had cameras far more expensive and fancy than mine, but little to no knowledge on how to use them. I feel like photography is an insanely expensive hobby, and if you're going to shell out three grand for something that you do in your off time, you can probably afford to start off on a lower platform and learn what the fuck you're doing, then build your way up. That's a shitload of power for a novice. Then again, that's probably just my envy talking, because god damn, I want a camera that auto-brackets, and that will cost me at least a grand, twelve hundred if I get it with the lens I want. I'm prattling.

We walked down 16th street and took photos. I was disappointed that I didn't get to stop and take pictures of the chess players, and I vowed to return and do that on a day where someone else has driven me to downtown Denver. We stopped at an orchestral ensemble playing pretty dance-y tunes (I walked up when they were playing I'm No Good, and I very much enjoyed it), and I walked around snapping candids of a few people on dates, one very annoyed looking gentleman, a horse (!), and some of the buildings.

I wanted to center this differently, with the angle of the building sitting on the corner of the frame, but I couldn't get it right, and when I tried to crop it that way, it looked like garbage. I'm still pretty damn fond of this photo, however. I took this very hastily, because the rest of my class was about to cross the street, and I didn't want to get lost in downtown Denver, where I would surely not know where I was going, and would be forced to curl up in a ball next to some sort of trash receptacle and cry, because obviously I would never find my way home ever again.

We walked to a few other places, I snapped a few pictures of candy in this kitschy little candy/soda joint that I just HAVE to tell my cousin about. He used to collect soda, the more disgusting it was, the better. I remember milk soda. Chocolate milk soda, specifically. It looked like dirty paint water, and tasted like fizzy Yoo-Hoo that had been watered down with sewage. Anyway, we stopped for a good long while at the beginning of Larimer Square. I felt incredibly delighted by this. The last time I was at Larimer Square, I was with The (Boy)Friend and Sarah on New Year's Eve, and I wasn't able to take any pictures of the twinkly lights draped all about the place. That was also a bit of a problem this evening, as my Gorilla Pod was not very effective as a tripod. I needed something with height. And envy came into play again! But, I braced myself against a post and held my breath, and this was the photo I got with the least amount of blur.

It's not terribly clear, but considering that I was shooting at 1/8, it's pretty fucking impressive that it's as still as it is. And again, I really, really love this photo. I love that one side of the clouds looks glacial, and the other side looks like a fire. I love the lights. I love the cars. I love love love the building on the left. I felt so happy while I was shooting over here. It wasn't loud, and it felt so calm, even though there was clearly a lot going on. I'm going to ask one of the agents here if I can borrow his tripod this week, and I may very well see if Kristen wants to go through Larimer Square after we're finished with RMNP and Boulder on Thursday.

After spending about thirty minutes on this street corner, where every third person would ask what I was taking pictures of, we wandered down the street and ducked into a pillared hallway right next to a restaurant. I wanted to push my luck again and see if I could manage another photo of the lights without a tripod.

Nailed it. Well, sort of. Considering I didn't have a tripod? Yeah. Nailed it.

And then the instructor started talking to me, and he let me borrow his tripod so I could take a few shots of where we were, since it was quite nice.

I fucked around with split-toning in LR, because I wanted to see if I could do it. And I can! But it looks a bit yellow. Though I guess I don't particularly mind it.

I shot this at 6 seconds, and this fellow opened the door about two seconds in. I was sort of worried that I'd have this odd, Gaussian blur effect going on in the middle of the door, but it held fairly nicely.

I have so many more photos to look through and edit, but these were all I had time for this morning.

This was probably the longest post I've done ever at all, and I feel kind of bad for being so ramble-y.