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Kananaskis Wildlife: Moose on the edge

After following the deer around for a little while, I walked back to the car and continued driving along the back roads that skirt between West Bragg Creek and Kananaskis.  I went by a thicket beside a pasture thinking I would photograph the horses there for a few minutes.  Instead, I found a moose stripping branches near the road.

She watched me for a minute, then continued moving through the meadow snacking along the way.

She wandered towards the frozen creek and then turned west and leapt over a fence before crossing the road and meandering into the edge of the forest where I lost sight of her.

Posted by  |  March 3, 2012 | Categories: Animals, Bragg Creek, Kananaskis, Moose | Tags: , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Kananaskis Wildlife: Hide and Seek with Whitetails

Yesterday, I was hiking in Kananaskis Country, west of Bragg Creek, morning along a trail that winds through the forest.  The trees are often well spaced out and allow a lot of streaming sunlight to reach down.  The highlight of the trek was finding a small herd of White-tailed Deer that were moving slowly towards the hills.

I stepped off the trail and shadowed their progress for a few minutes.  I waited for one deer to step into a shaft of light and then tried to create an interesting image.

There were a couple occasions where everything lined up and I got close to what was in my head.  In these pictures, I like the sense of the forest and the magic of sunlight.

I was enjoying the stroll in the woods when I was alone, save for the birdsong and angry squirrel reports, but crossing paths with these deer made it a very memorable day.

Posted by  |  March 3, 2012 | Categories: Animals, Bragg Creek, Deer, Kananaskis, Winter | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

Downtown in Motion

The morning’s are still dark when I’m downtown so the lights from the buildings and the vehicles create these illuminated pools.  With a longer shutter speed, I sometimes play with stretching these pockets of lights while capturing the motion of vehicles driving around Calgary’s streets.

I like photographing things in motion, particularly trains.  So, I snuck one C-Train long exposure in this post too.

 

 

Posted by  |  February 26, 2012 | Categories: Calgary, Cars, Transportation, Trucks | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Prairie Wildlife: Flight of a Snowy Owl

Leaving the south edge of Calgary this morning, the snow was flying and there was fog growing denser as we went further east.  My friend Jeff and I were driving on 22X heading towards the Siksika Nation to see if we could find any snowy owls along the range roads in the prairie outside of Calgary.   We made a straight line to an abandoned barn on the edge of the Siksika land that a local there had told me was a favourite location for a snowy year after year.  I’ve been there a couple of times this year but have yet to see the owl but it’s a great drive down toward the river.  Tracing fresh tracks in the snow-covered gravel roads, we carved a wide rectangle around the outer edges of Namaka Lake searching.  Along the way, the fog lifted, the sky brightened and the snow settled right down.  Just over two hours in and we hadn’t seen any wildlife following the herd with the exception of a couple of magpies and one acrobatic raven.

And then, once pointed west and heading back towards Calgary, we spotted a snowy along the same back road where I photographed one a few weeks ago.  It seems to be the same female but I’m not an owl expert so they may only be similar.  Either way, it was fantastic to find this one.  And she was a wonderful partner to make a few images with.  She watched us for a few minutes and then flew off to another telephone pole.  Dutifully, we followed, parked a little ways away and then stepped closer.  She flew again after a few more minutes.  We followed to a third pole and a fourth.  The last leap into the air carried her across the field to a distant perch where she could continue her day without further interruption.  Along the way, we both rattled off a bunch of images and had a lot of fun.

Just a great morning and I’m really happy Jeff was able to see and photograph a snowy owl in the wild.

Posted by  |  February 25, 2012 | Categories: Animals, Owls, Prairie, Winter | Tags: , , , , , , , | 9 Comments »

Bragg Creek Wildlife – Moose Run

Last weekend I was touring around Bragg Creek’s back roads in the morning looking for wildlife.  I did not have any close encounters but had this great moment where I watched this moose dash across the meadow and into the dormant forest.  Moose have a grace of movement that you wouldn’t expect from a huge animal.  With the mild winter so far, the grass hasn’t been blanketed by snow which allowed this bull to keep a fast pace and he was gone in a few seconds up a slope that would have taken me a few minutes.

Posted by  |  February 21, 2012 | Categories: Animals, Bragg Creek, Moose | Tags: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Bigfoot in Calgary – a monster truck attacks

1/30 seconds, f/9, ISO 1000

I went down to the Stampede Grounds yesterday with my kids to tour the World of Wheels on its stop in Calgary.  When I told Kian that Bigfoot would be crushing and jumping over cars in a hockey rink he was buzzing with excitement.

1/30 seconds, f/8, ISO 1600

I was impressed with the truck’s driver, Kyle Doyle.  Driving a huge vehicle inside a hockey rink would be challenge enough.  Throw in the jumps, brake stands, racing from end to end and tight cornering and it was a great show to watch.

1/15 seconds, f/13, ISO 1000

1/15 seconds, f/11, ISO 1000

1/250 seconds, f/5.6, ISO 3200

Bigfoot finished the main act with a park on the crumbled automotive heaps – seemed a fitting end to the last of the four shows over the weekend.

1/40 seconds, f/9, ISO 1600

Kezia was a bit ambivalent about the monster truck, the loud engine turned her off a bit, but when the motorcycles came out she got right into it.

1/60 seconds, f/5.6, ISO 1600

As soon as she they started performing stunts, Kezia was mimicking their moves while standing in the seating aisle – with the encouragement of the crowd nearby.

1/30 seconds, f/10, ISO 1600

1/6 seconds, f/10, ISO 1600

Posted by  |  February 20, 2012 | Categories: Events, Transportation, Trucks | Tags: , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Kananaskis Lakes Winterscapes

The storm blew over in waves as I trekked around the Upper and Lower Kananaskis Lakes in the Peter Lougheed Provincial Park yesterday.  Obscuring the far shoreline first, then moving across the ice and rolling over me.  This cycle repeated at both locations and allowed for some moody landscape photographs.

At the Lower Kananaskis there was a stretch of open water below the control station which manages the flow between the two lakes.  The patterns along the edge of the ice worked nicely with the distant lines in the forests and mountains.

Away from the water’s edge there was a man ice fishing on the lake.  I made this one image of him standing over his fishing hole – the compression of the lens telephoto lens makes him look quite close to the edge but he seemed a safe distance.

Upper Kananaskis Lake is completely frozen over now.  The blizzard was at its height when I was there so I waited between waves where I could see across the lake to the rock island and silhouettes of the peaks looming over the west edge of the lake.

Posted by  |  February 19, 2012 | Categories: Kananaskis, Landscapes, Uncategorized, Winter | Tags: , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Prairie Owls – a one eyed snowy

Spent one morning last weekend roaming the back roads east of Calgary looking for the snowy owls again.

I found this owl just outside of Cheadle. It was a one-eyed beast that seemed defiant in the face of a strong wind out of the west.

Posted by  |  February 15, 2012 | Categories: Animals, Owls, Winter | Tags: , , , , , | 6 Comments »

On the Prairie – Barn and Weather Vane

Saturday was cold and clear, -19°C and blue sky.  It was a perfect morning for a drive and I headed out on the prairies east of Calgary to see what I could find.  I ended up working with a stoic, one-eyed snowy owl but along the way I found this weathered barn and weather vane that lured me to stop.

 

I originally had a black and white image in mind when I was composing this but the color version looks alright too.

Posted by  |  February 13, 2012 | Categories: Landscapes, Prairie | Tags: , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Down the alleys with a superhero

Thursday night I was downtown photographing night scenes.  Hunched over my camera, concentrating on some abstract composition my attention was torn away by a blur of motion above me.  Looking up, I saw a flash of red and then… nothing.

I climbed up a fire escape on a lovely old brick building and that’s when I had a good look at the cause of my distraction.  He landed on the flight of stairs above and then leaped over the railing (as seen above).

At this point he was well positioned for an action pose and I managed to take one photo as he was staring at me.  A second later and he was scaling another wall up towards the roof top. Keeping up to him without a jet pack, flying surfboard or some other speedy contraption was unlikely so I just stood and watched as he spun a web and swung out of sight.

I went back down the escape and walked around the corner keeping an eye out for the webbed one.  I turned around intent on heading up the alley and saw him scaling a brick wall.  After clearing the doorway our neighbourhood friend launched upwards into the darkness where I lost him again.

I didn’t see the masked vigilante for a little while and thought he might have gone.  I was heading back to my car when I looked back over my shoulder and caught a sliver of his mask peering around a gate entrance.  I carried on to my car in one of the city’s underground parkades and was still rather surprised when the man spider ran down a line of parked cars and vaulted over my car.  I wish I had captured the whole sequence but I was only able to take one sharp shot.

At that point I was thinking that my chance encounter wasn’t chance.  I know photography was one of this particular superhero’s interests but I can’t say whether he was watching me out of curiosity about just what I was photographing or if he thought I may be a villain up to no good.  I should have asked, not that it was likely he would have responded.  When I pulled out of the garage, I had one last good look at this mysterious fellow.

I wasn’t thinking about it in the moment but, looking at the pictures, I wonder why he wasn’t in full outfit – was he just exercising a little after the day job, the superhero’s equivalent of going out for a stroll?  No idea, these and other questions are still puzzling around in my mind.  The imagination wanders… it was a very interesting evening.

Posted by  |  February 7, 2012 | Categories: Calgary, People, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments »

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