Cog Railroad on Top of Pikes Peak

photo of the cog railroad at the top of Pikes Peak, Colorado, USA

This was one of the first images I had taken using a new cell phone. The image comes from the top of Pikes Peak in Colorado. The railroad here is a cog railway: the little teeth running down the center line are able to catch and hold the train to help gain traction going up steep slopes as well as keep it from running backwards down the mountain when the train stops. Some cog railways are no more than two feet wide to get through narrow mountain passes; this one is more like four.

If you’re interested in buying a print of this, you can get one through DeviantArt for around 20-60$ (depending on size).

Rising Sun Collage

A animated GIF collage of several photos of a sunrise.
Taken in November 2019, in Colorado, USA.

This was somewhat of an experiment and an early attempt at animation. Back in November, I took a photo of a sunrise. The sun kept rising and it kept being beautiful, so I took more photos.

Fast forward to today, where I put the photos together into a little GIF collage, using the animation program Krita. For the record, I really dislike Krita. Some of the tools don’t do what you expect them to (particularly copy-paste), and you have to download a separate hacky program to render animations into GIF files specifically. Still, I’m told it’s better than GIMP, and it’s completely free, so for now it’s what I use.

Unfortunately, this collage isn’t perfect, either. The original photos were of several sizes and several angles, and even re-cutting them didn’t quite get rid of the discrepancies. It creates a bit of a wobble to the picture, which I’m not sure if I like, as in a certain light, it makes it look more 3-D. The resolution of a couple of the frames are another casualty to the re-sizing process, however, which I can’t quite get rid of.