Colorado (Part 1) + News

I have meant to get a new post up for ages, but graduate school has kept me quite busy. This weekend Scott and I went to visit his parents, which generally means some pleasantly lazy days. Today is no exception, and I am taking advantage of the gloomy, cold day by sitting in a big comfy chair while a fire roars in the fireplace next to me; perfect blogging conditions if you ask me.

Before I get into the images, I wanted to announce some rather exciting news (which is somewhat old news at this point unfortunately). A few months back I finally got a website up and running. I had put it off and put it off because I am too indecisive and couldn’t decide on formatting/organization, but finally bit the bullet and put one together. I am still adding images to build galleries and things may shift around some more, but it is up for your viewing pleasure (I hope). There is perhaps a bit of bad news to go along with this update though. In order to keep things more organized and unified I am going to be switching my blog over to be connected to my website, so soon I will no long be posting here. You can head over there (abigailithompson.com) to follow along though, and I hope you all do!

With that out of the way, let’s get on to the images. Back in the middle of October (almost a month ago at this point, yikes) Scott and I went out to Colorado for a long weekend of climbing, hiking, camping, and a wedding thrown in as well. It was an incredible weekend, and as I slowly got around to editing the images I found myself feeling homesick for a place I have never lived.

This will be a two-part post, so more images will be up soon! Also, don’t forget to head over to the new website and follow along the blog there. There is even a post of moments of light up there that I didn’t post here, so head over to check it out. Happy weekend everyone!

Colorado in October

I am so very behind on sharing things here. My old computer was struggling to edit photographs and share them as well. It was a pain to do and so I just avoided it. But, I recently purchased a beautiful new laptop, one that is powerful and fast, and so I am getting back on track with all my images finally.

In October, Scott and I went to Colorado to hear one of our climbing idols speak. We also made some time for climbing and camping in the mountains. It was a quick trip, but we had wonderful weather and were able to see some beautiful things.

Our first day was spent climbing in the Clear Creak Canyon, near Golden, Colorado. It was a stunning area, maybe even one of my favorites that we have climbed in. That night we camped in Guanella Pass, which is just past Georgetown, Colorado. We were the only ones camping out there (that we saw), and were able to find a stunningly beautiful and quite campsite in the subalpine forest. Our campsite was around 11,000 feet in elevation, which I felt the effects of when we woke up the next morning. There was snow on the ground, and the creek near by had lots of ice formed over it. It was a cold night for camping, but one of the most memorable ones for me.

 

The next day we woke up and tried to keep warm with tea and eggs and sausage. We had plans to try to hike Mt. Bierstadt (a 14,000 foot peak just up the pass) but when we woke up I was feeling the effects of the elevation (loss of appetite, headache), and we decided we just didn’t have the time or the provisions to do so. We ended up driving to the parking lot for the trail to the peak and explored some of the shorter trails from the same parking lot. After taking some photographs we went back to pack up our campsite, and I wandered around shooting some more in the frosty, late-morning light.

Scott, excited about being in the alpine air. Mt. Bierstadt is behind him.

Scott grabbed this one of me; I think it sums up my personality pretty well 🙂

The double exposure series of my feet continues.

Leaves

In my last post I mentioned that my work is now dealing with collections. I have just started with this process, and so have only been working with one collection so far. Every fall I have the tendency to pick up a few leaves that I find nice and pin them to my walls for a bit. The leaves actually sparked my first collection piece. I started by placing the leaves on my copy machine and making simple black and white photocopies I also scanned them to see what I thought of a digital, color image of the collection. I have over 200 leaves copied and I finally had to force myself to stop picking them up. Once I had a large number scanned I started to piece them into a large Photoshop file, which is what I am sharing with you all today.

 

Once I printed it out I realized that this is not the direction I want to go. The color and the format of the digital print are not doing what I want them to do, and so I will be leaving this behind for the time being at least. I debated sharing this here, but decided that I wanted this blog in part to be a place to show my progress and thought process on my work. I will be printing some copper plates this week and so will be sharing those with you as I work on them. Be on the lookout for another post soon!

Time in the pasture.

About a month ago Scott and I went to his parents’ farm for dove hunting season. We went out in the evening and sat in their pasture watching for birds. I, however, was very distracted by how beautiful it was out there.

We sat on buckets, low to the ground and surrounded by tall grass fronds catching the rich evening light as they swayed in the breeze. Not far away was a group of wild sunflowers in full bloom. A small pond was in front of us, and it was mesmerizing to watch the giant dragonflies swoop down to catch bugs in the low, golden sun. The only noises we heard were bugs buzzing, birds chirping, and the sound of the wind in the grass. It was almost dream like.

300/366 – Pumpkin Donut Holes

This morning I baked up some pumpkin donut holes. They are incredible. Recipe is thanks to Two Peas and Their Pod!

 

299/366 – Colorful

I forgot to change my ISO after shooting with my Holga lens yesterday so this is suuuper noisy.

295/366 – Fall Explosion

A group project for a class animation turned in to a photo I really liked. When I get the stop motion video done that this is a part of, I will share that with you all too.

 

190/366 – Orange

*Thursday, November 1
I shot this yesterday morning when I was leaving my apartment to go to class. It was a wonderful site to start my day. And then I was so exhausted when I finally got home that I didn’t want to shoot anything else.

I am being so bad with this 365…

285/366

Confession time. I completely forgot to take a picture yesterday, so this is actually from a few days ago when I was trying out my Holga lens on my Nikon. I fell in love with the incredible depth I got in this shot, and the kind of dream like atmosphere. It is SOOC, with the exception of conversion from RAW.

282/366 – Fall Confusion

I ordered a Holga lens for my Nikon last week, and got it in the mail yesterday. I went out shooting with it for the first time for my grad work this afternoon and decided to try out a double exposure with it. This is pretty much SOOC, just a bit of a contrast boost.

For those of you who may not know, a Holga is a cheap, plastic film camera. They have a plastic lens, and are known for their soft focus and heavy vignette. They now make lenses like this that can attach to DSLR cameras. Since my grad work is about Alzheimer’s I thought it would make more sense to be shooting with a lens that distorts and disturbs the images like this instead of getting “perfect” photographs.

On another note…I am finally all caught up.