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I spent my first Denver New Years Eve hanging out with a great bunch of people from the Denver Photo Walk group. We hung out at Diamon Hill Park to photograph the New Years Eve fireworks taking place downtown. It was a short eight minute fireworks display. And though I was hoping the fireworks would be a bit bigger and higher in the sky, it was fun getting out in the cold weather and enjoying the Denver skyline. From those who had seen previous year events it sounded like this firework display was a bit less lively and smaller.

This is probably the best photo I have from the night though there are a few others that I enjoyed too. I debated which color setting to use for post processing and ended up using the automatic setting that the camera created when I took the photograph. I like the yellow ting of the skyline with the purple and blue hues of the fireworks and the tower that is part of Elitch Gardens.

If you want to know more about the Denver Photo Walk group you can drop me a message or go to the Meetup.com website and do a search for Denver Photo Walk. (Or just click on the link in the first sentence of this post.)

Happy Halloween everyone! One of the first places I knew I wanted to stop and photograph in Denver, Colorado was when I drove past Flossy McGrews costume shop on  South Broadway. The outside is decorated like Halloween exploded all over it. There are a mixture of big and small pieces and if you are just driving buy or not paying attention as you walk by then you'll miss a ton of entertaining items. If the inside is anything like the outside it may be just too much for my brain to handle. According to yelp reviews of Flossy McGrews it also has a lot of other items to see beyond costumes.

Brenna Fichtner, 12, of Columbus and her cousin Madeline Enright, 5, of Cleveland run back to their parents celebrating Madeline's victory in finding eggs following the annual Bexley Easter Egg Hunt on the back lawn of Jeffrey Mansion on Saturday, April 23, 2011. The Enright's were visiting the Fichtner's for the holiday weekend. The event was put together by the Bexley Celebrations Associations and Bexley Recreations Department along with help from Boy Scout Troop 166 and Girl Scout Troop 50199. The boy scouts filled 1,400 eggs with 22,000 jelly beans for over 600 children and adults to enjoy. For more photographs including another of these two kids take a look at the Easter gallery.

Cute kids with baskets reacting to finding candy in surprise packages tucked away in secret spots. It is a moment filled with emotion and pretty fun to photograph. The challenge is that kids move fast, they move unpredictably and the event is done in 90 seconds. Plus after the egg hunt is over you never know if a parent is going to tell you they don't want their child's photograph in the newspaper. 

So planning ahead and getting a few safety shots is always a good idea. If you take a look at a few of the photos in the gallery, you'll see that I took some before photographs of the setup of the event and a father and son planning out his attack. 

I usually try to photograph at least one child with a parent and get a name before this type of blink-and-it's-over event even if that photo isn't the one I'm going to use. That way I definitely have a name and face I can photograph during the egg hunt. Unfortunately this time around the child I thought would be interesting to photograph ran straight out into the middle of the egg filled yard, picked up one egg and stopped. After a few seconds I had to move on to someone else and hope I could get a name just to make sure I had someone from the event.

The one thing that is guaranteed is that Easter egg hunts are unpredictable. So be prepared to change plans and react to what you are seeing.. Also as a tip for parents, crouching down and photographing your child from your child's eye level or lower often makes for a much more interesting photograph. I wish I would have done it on the above photograph as the rope in the background wouldn't be bugging me as much.

Xing Teng, 11, of Westerville performs with other members of the Columbus Contemporary Chinese School during a ballet performance at the fourth annual Chinese Festival at Westerville Central High School on Saturday, February 12, 2011. The festival celebrates Chinese culture and is organized by the Chinese Culture Link and the Ohio Contemporary Chinese School. See more photos.