The Artful Engineer

We have lived in the Denver area for less than two years and there are many areas that are entirely unknown to us, so we make an effort to go to places just because we have never been there. It’s almost like travel, but closer. Our wedding anniversary was on a Sunday in August and we decided to find an ice cream place in an area that was new to us. And so we ended up in the LoHi neighborhood of Denver.

While I take more landscape photographs than anything else, I do really enjoy photographing in towns and cities. I am never sure exactly what to call that genre as I do it: “street photography” seems to usually feature people which my images very seldom do; “architecture photography” is something else more exacting; “travel photography” seems closer, but I don’t typically include people or food which seem prevalent in that genre; and “cityscape” (at least to me) implies sweeping views of skylines. The best I have come up with is townscape, and I just stretch the term to span the more urban scenes on one end and the more rural scenes on the other. I am open to suggestions from the audience.

LoHi (which apparently is short for “Lower Highlands”) is quite close to downtown Denver, but is on the west side of I-25. In practice, the freeway is every bit as much of a divider as a river would be, with access between the two areas restricted to some bridges. The area was a nice mix of old and new architecture and there were a lot of people around enjoying the day and the restaurants. It was a nice day, lighting-wise, with the sun shining through breaks in the dark storm clouds that were passing through. The image of the church above definitely benefitted from the afternoon sunlight, which brought out the color of the red sandstone.

The Little Man Ice Cream shop, below, was a popular little place built to look like an old-fashioned milk can surrounded by outdoor seating under colorful umbrellas. Oddly, this little structure was sufficiently well-executed that it didn’t seem kitsch as one might expect:

The ice cream shop wasn’t the only establishment in the area with boldly-colored umbrellas:

This bridal shop had a decidedly modern style, definitely a departure from the usual lots-of-glass bridal storefront filled with wedding gowns:

There were also a lot of modern-looking apartments:

In looking at this selection of images, you could get the impression that everything had a modern vibe, but there were more Victorian-looking things, too like the church at the top of this post. And there were even a few Gothic touches:

All in all, it was a fun afternoon wander around LoHi with my lovely bride of 34 years and definitely worth the visit. Yet another entry on my ever-growing need-to-go-back list…