Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.”—Abraham Lincoln
This post is kind of a Wayback Wednesday flashback, with echoes of my former Wordy Wednesday posts that I used to feature on my old blog. Instead, Today’s post, presented for your approval, is about one of my favorite places to make photographs and test new cameras and lenses: The charming town of Castle Rock, Colorado.
How I made this shot: The Pentax K-01 is a mirrorless interchangeable lens camera with a funky design (and colors) that was created by Australian designer Marc Newson. Although introduced in 2012, the K-01 uses a 16.3 megapixel APS-C sensor measuring 16x24mm. The camera has held its value especially well, with used color versions at prices near the original list price of $749. The above image was made using a yellow Pentax K-01 with a smc P-DA 18-35mm f4-5.6 lens at 55mm. Exposure was 1/250 sec at f/10 and ISO 400 and was converted to monochrome using Silver Efex.
About Castle Rock
Castle Rock is the county seat of Douglas County, Colorado and was originally the home to the Arapaho and Cheyenne native peoples..The town is named for the prominent, castle tower-shaped butte that’s located near the center of town. The town population is currently 86,501 ranking Castle Rock as the most populous town (not city) in Colorado and is growing at a rate of 3.9% annually.
Settlers were drawn to the area by rumors of the discovery of gold and land that was opened under the Homestead Act of 1862. One of the first homesteaders in the area near today’s Castle Rock was Jeremiah Gould. He owned 160 acres to the south of “The (Castle) Rock.” At that time, the settlement consisted of just a few buildings for prospectors, workers and cowboys. In 1874, Jeremiah Gould donated 120 acres to the new town that was also now the home to the Douglas 
County government. However, it was the discovery of rhyolite stone—a light-colored rock made up of various crystals, including quartz and feldspar among others—that ultimately led to the settlement of Castle Rock and during the late 1800s and early 1900s, many Swedish immigrants arrived in the area to work in the quarries.
My book Creative Digital Monochrome Effects is available from Amazon with new copies at $11.46 with used copies starting at a little more than six bucks, as I write this. There’s no Kindle version available, sorry.