Denver, Colorado. October 2015

Grace and I have been in Denver together for almost two weeks. She is rightfully excited to be back in her home State of Colorado.

The Autumnal colours are out, and they are absolutely beautiful. I can’t work out whether they are more prominent here than back home, or if I just don’t notice them.

I absolutely love the reds, especially where you can see the transition from green in the one tree.

Look how amazing this house looks in amongst it:

I forced Grace to let me take some pictures on a walk to the supermarket, and drove her nuts.

I played about with the 50mm f0.95 a bit, taking the sort of pictures that I don’t usually…

The colours were so amazing I couldn’t help myself.

The way this lens renders the out of focus areas is amazing… like stained glass.

Compared to European cities, the urban area in Denver is huge. That, coupled with a lack of good public transport means that people understandably default to using their cars rather than walking much. That can make it difficult as a visitor to get your bearings, or to really get a feel for the city. It’s a shame, as there’s loads of really interesting neighbourhoods to explore.

I need to make more of a concerted effort to get out and about on foot. Watch this space.

Grace’s parents live in the Capitol Hill Area, and it’s been nice to get to see them. Her mum grows the most amazing tomatoes I’ve ever tasted, and we were lucky enough to get here just at the end of the season.

We ate a pile of sushi thanks to Grace’s sister Hazel. Way better than any of the stuff we have back home. That shouldn’t make any sense, since Denver is landlocked, and Scotland is surrounded by water. We need to step up our game.

Another cool thing has been getting to hang out with some fellow Automatticians, as there’s a whole bunch of them in the Greater Denver area.

Both Kevin and Michael live not too far from Grace’s mum and dad’s place.

Complete with tiny dog…

The view from Michael’s 16th floor flat was pretty wonderful – particularly at sunset. Prominent skylines are something we don’t see very often in Europe, so it’s always pretty impressive to see.

The bars here are pretty great as well, and always have amazing lighting. In particular, I love how this place called The Atomic Cowboy looks…

Just look at those lights.

Bars are obviously no use without old friends though, and luckily we have a fair few here.

The one thing I’m not crazy about is the omni-presence of televisions showing sports, even in bars where you wouldn’t necssarily expect it. It’s something that automatically draws your eye in their direction, irrespective of what people around about you may or may not be doing.

The bar staff are generally pretty chatty and friendly though, which makes up for it.

Especially when you’re there with regulars, like Scott.

I was really enjoying using the Canon 50mm f1.2 that I picked up in New York with the atmosphere in the bars we’ve been to, but managed to completely destroy it today by accident. Walking along the street I tripped up, hitting the deck along with two of my cameras. The Leica M (digital) survived with cosmetic gouges out of the metal body, but the 50mm lens hit the barrel at a bad point, totally smashing the front element to smithereens. There’s no way it can get fixed. I’ll just have to suck it up and get a new one, so it’s lucky it happened earlier on in this trip rather than later… as getting a hold of one in the UK is a nightmare.

We’ve got a couple more weeks here, and I need to take waaay more pictures than I have already, so there should be more to come. Hopefully I won’t trash any more gear whilst I’m at it.

All shot with a Leica M Typ 240 and Canon 50mm f1.2 LTM or Leica Summicron-C 40mm f2.