Tepee Rings Conservation Easement, April 19th, 2012

 The Legacy Land Trust and Larimer County in Colorado hosted a special field trip to part of the Tepee Rings Conservation Easement. Led by Jason LaBelle who is a noted CSU archeology professor and director of the Colorado Archeological Society, the trip described the rich cultural history of early Native American activity on this conservation easement and surrounding area. Covering 504 acres of ranchland, the easment helps to preserve Native American stone circles. 

My experience learning about the easement and what was on it was quite the experience. Though windy, I was able to listen to what Jason LaBelle was saying. At the same time, I was was able to photograph the changing weather, as well as the vast vista of ranchland that we were on. Knowing that this would likely my only time there, my focus changed to photography once the wind picked up. Being at a series of stone circles was very interesting to me as I love history. It would have been dificult for me for photograph the circles as our group was standing directly over them. 

If your interested in how I stictched the pano above, I used Hugin a free aplication available at http://hugin.sourceforge.net. The short photo galley on my google+ page documents some of my expericenes at the easement. 

A Precious Moment

I've spent a few weeks getting our local robin population used to me and my camera. This is the first time I've had success photographing them. Here, you see a mother robin on top of her nest. The nest is perched on one of our outside lights.

I can't stress how much of an achievement this photo is for me as this was an extremely difficult moment to capture. It involved a lot of waiting, patience, with mental and technical readiness.

The City Bus Chronicles for May 13th, 2012

I dug through the archives of what hadn’t been published yet, but had ready to go. These are old, but I do have more written up on notepads to share soon. Lots to report from riding route one as it became the main route I took home, rather than the 19.

January 2nd 2012

The bus driver goes past the bus stop even though someone requested a stop. It is 6 in the evening after all, and he looked tired. I tell him what happened, the bus stops, and the driver thanks me for paying attention. He thanks me more formally at CSU transit center. The driver is one that I regularly see. He’s a nice older guy who does a nice job of announcing street intersections. He has a unique voice on the bus microphone. Makes things fun.

February, 2nd 2012

A guy calls Colorado State University’s veterans affairs office. I hear him say multiple times “great”, or “that’s awesome”. Then I hear him say “Really, you found an apartment for me?” After that there was more excited talk. He’s a regular on the 19, just never knew much about him until today. He’s a nice, professional, yet quiet guy.

February 7th, 2012

Today I decided to take the 1 instead of the 19. As I had not been on that route before, I wanted to see what the difference was like. The main change is that the 19 has more silent, professional people riding it. On the other hand, the 1 seems to be ridden by the more lower class citizens of the city. I sat close the back of the bus, near an exit door.

The chatter from the back emanated the sense of homelessness and crime. I kept hearing things like: “Yeah, he’s in jail again”, or “That Yolanda lady is a *****”. There were a lot of people with obvious medical problems that got on and off. One such “couple” was two guys that obviously knew each other. Funny watching them do what they do.

New Alpine Robotics Documentary Underway

These two videos were edited and shot several years ago by me. Think of these as teasers for the documentary I'm putting together. All the footage was shot over my time with the Alpine Robotics team at Poudre High School. Putting the 20+ hours of footage together is a major summer project for me. All of this was recorded on my Canon HV30 on HDV tapes. Importing an hour of footage takes an hour as it is done in real time, unlike newer hard drive and flash media based devices.

My Experiences Planning the Marcus Borg event at Plymouth UCC in Ft. Collins, Colorado

Instead of going back and formalizing these writings into one summary, I’ve organized them by date. Originally these were Facebook posts, so I’m adding a few things here and there. The lectures occurred on April 13^th and 14^th, 2012. Marcus Borg also gave sermons at both the 9am and 11am services Sunday the 15^th. These lectures were a part of the visiting scholars series at Plymouth UCC, the church that I do a lot of volunteer work for. I rarely go to a Sunday service, but am there to be a part of the church’s community. Rather than believing, I am accepting of religions that I encounter.

Marcus Borg is a great religious scholar and well known. For more information on who he is, go to his website, marcusjborg.com. 4 months ago, on November 10th, 2011, I was asked to put together a website for the Marcus Borg lectures at Plymouth. I ended up setting up a simple wordpress.com site, with a Gmail email address for people to contact the organizing committee. borgfortcollins.com is the final site that emerged. My goal for the site is to have it be an archive of the event.

After giving the website over to other committee members to update, I ended up joining the publicity committee and helped to plan the event from the first meeting. The committee, including me, decided that recording the lectures on video would be a good idea. Those lectures are being edited and put on DVDs for those who paid for them at the event.

 It was a great experience, and certainly one that will be going on my resume. All the work I did on the event was done as a volunteer, along with the majority of those on the planning committee. There were also many other volunteers who made the event possible. There is a lot more I could say about the event, but I’m choosing to keep things as simple, and as positive as possible. At some point, I plan to have a post describing the A/V side.

Training on March 29^th, 2012

So tomorrow from one to four I'm getting technical training from the Fort Collins Public Access Network (FCPAN) people on the cameras I'll  be running for the Marcus Borg lectures. The Panasonic DVX100B seems to be quite the camera looking at the Amazon page for it and its variants.

Going back at 6 to FCPAN for a talk from a local film producer gains the status of one of the best decisions in my life. In addition to learning a lot about independent film making, I gained a lot of great advice from Sharron Due's personal experiences. What’s exciting is that she asked the 4 people attending (including me) what their experiences have been and what their interest in independent film production is. I told my story of starting recording videos at age 5, and from then on quickly. At the end I was able to connect with the people there, who all had an interest in what I've done and am doing. Sharron and another guy wrote down my contact info, including my website.

So in all, I'm pretty stoked with what I accomplished today.

I'll give her website a plug here.
http://bereelpictures.com/public/Home.html

April 1^st, 2012

My day started at 6am. Yes, its a Sunday but that's the very reason I was up that early. In preparation for the Marcus Borg lectures, our small A/V group recorded today's early church service at Plymouth using FCPAN's TV cameras. It was quite fun and I meet a lot of new people. Good experience too for someone who is used to working alone with one camera.

I've been at Plymouth a lot for event planning, but hadn't been to a service in quite a while. In the theme of April Fools, the service was conducted entirely in reverse of the usual order in addition to some very fun moments with kids. It was well done.

April 13^th, 2012

Its going to be a long, hard weekend for me. The Marcus Borg lectures start tonight, and go through Saturday evening. In addition to recording the lectures, I'll be recording both of the Sunday services, book signings, etc.

I'm going to get very familiar with the FCPAN TV cameras this weekend. Should be fun as I've been on the planning committee for 3+ months now. I'm excited to actually see the event in action.

April 14^th 2012

Marcus Borg Lectures filming completed. Still got tomorrow to record the Plymouth UCC services at 9am and 11am. I'm exhausted, as I was standing for the entire 90 minutes lectures. However, having complete strangers come up to you and say that I had done a great job along with the rest of the A/V team was very rewarding. I'll have much more to say later in a blog post.

April 15^th, 2012

The A/V team recorded both the 9am and 11am Sunday services. Marcus Borg gave sermons at both services.

April 24^th, 2012

I went over to FCPAN and talked to them about volunteering there. They asked me what I’d like to work on. I mentioned new camera/ equipment documentation, and learning how to use tools such as Apple’s Final Cut Studio for video editing. Another major point I made was doing video editing for those who couldn’t do it themselves. Finally, I mentioned that I’d be happy to help with their website as I have experience doing such things. Currently, I’m waiting to hear back from FCPAN’s volunteer coordinator. Hopefully that is soon.