2012 Favourite Landscape Photographs

That went by quick.  Seems like things are speeding up and 2012 went by in a flash.  I reviewed a large set of landscapes from the past year and it was fun to recall those moments.  But, I was a little surprised that a year has gone by since I pulled together a list of my favourites from 2011.  I suppose I have little control over how quickly time rolls – I will just continue to try to stuff as much into it as we go.  Before I move with my camera forward into 2013, here are some images of mine that stood out for me from 2012.

The mountains in the Albertan parts of the Rockies pulled me close many times over the year.  I really enjoyed photographing Mount Kidd from a new location in the fall.  Above, the reflecting pools along Highway 40 just past Wedge Pond were a new place for me.  And I enjoyed a couple of mornings down along the shoreline of Wedge Pond with the image below resulting from one beautiful morning.

I also was pleased with the images I put together from Banff, Lake Louise, Moraine Lake and Jasper as well.  The photograph of Lake Louise’s canoe cabin is subtle and is a vein of imagery that I am continuing to work in.

The view of the Valley of the Ten Peaks from the top of the rock moraine at the near side of Moraine Lake is spectacular – particularly the alpen glow in the morning.  This summer I went up in the evening and was rewarded with a different, and equally beautiful, look at sunset.

This hoar-frost on branches stretching out of a small pool in the marsh west of one of the Vermilion Lakes in Banff provided for a nice abstract composition.

I spend a fair amount of time photographing wildlife and landscapes on the prairie.  The storms in the summer can be incredible but the clouds this winter have been really inspiring.  In the photograph below I watched a dragon form and stretch towards the east to meet the sun.  Beautiful colours and great to let imagination have the reins.

Before the snow flew, I was working to photograph the warm autumn sunrises on the fields.  When I had these horses approach as the sun cleared the horizon, the image really came together.

The sunrise photography extended west in Bragg Creek and the image below was made along the Cowboy Trail (Highway 22X) just east of the town.

In the summer I joined Bobbi on a journey to Sedona in Arizona.  It was my first visit and is a place I was excited to return to as soon as I had returned home.  The variety of landscapes in the Coconino National Forest and the time to hike into a few places were great luxuries I enjoyed on the trip.

Cathedral Rock is an iconic subject and it deserves its high standing with artists.  Our first day in Sedona we walked along the river to the base of the rock and watched the shadows climb up the red rock.  On a hot afternoon, I escaped to the West Fork Trail which meanders up the Oak Creek Canyon.  The calm water, lush forest and red rock made many bends in the creek picture worthy and this was my favourite from a productive hike.  And there were wonderful butterflies flitting around in one meadow of flowers too.

One of the evenings, I went out to the top of a mesa and photographed the night sky.  It was a bit remote so I had the trees, the stars and a few strange sounds in the desert night all to myself.  That was another side to Sedona that I was very happy to have experienced.

There were a few other nightscape photo outings through the year but the highlight was photographing the Northern Lights in October.  I had missed several good Aurora nights through the summer so I was excited when I got to watch them rolling down from the north for almost two hours.

Later in October I was in Jasper on a wildlife photography trip.  The animals were the focus of the week spent driving and hiking along the Icefields Parkway and around Jasper but this gentle scene where snow had just blanketed the valley along the Athabasca River demanded to be photographed (despite some good-natured heckling from my companions).

And in late November our family headed to Kaua’i the northernmost of the populated Hawaiian islands.  Time dripped by and we had a great vacation.  I had almost too much fun photographing creatures above, on and under the water and those are the images that first came to mind when I was looking back at our visit.  However, once I worked through the catalog over the Christmas break, I realized that the landscape images from this year’s trip to the island were solid additions to my Hawaii portfolio.

We stayed a stone’s throw from Nukoli’i Beach on the east shore so the sun rose directly in front of us each morning.  I spent a few mornings down on the beach photographing what the ocean delivered with morning sun.

The warm light following the sunrise provided beautiful illumination on the beach and through the waves.  One of those places that is easy to spend a whole day shooting, painting or playing at.

We covered a lot of ground during our time in Kaua’i and one of the favourite places for seals, snorkelling, swimming, waves to watch and coastline views was Ke’e Beach on the northern edge of the Na Pali Coast.  The last night in Kaua’i we spent at Ke’e and at one point there was a rainbow over the beach when I looked to the east and the mists and violent waves of the Na Pali in winter to the southwest.

A couple of days earlier, the spray kicked up from the waves hitting the rocks rolled up the forested mountainsides to create another magical scene.

An amazing lightning storm over the Hanalei Valley provided the last image for this collection.  The rain held off for almost three hours before forcing me into my car and back to the apartment.