Landscapes

A bright start to a stormy Aurora night

I have been watching the activity on the sun with growing excitement for a few days. Tonight there is a large storm hitting the Earth’s atmosphere with the Northern Lights appearing early. I will head out again in the early morning and see how the Aurora looks then. These photographs were from my neibourhood just after 9pm.


Happy New Year!

I hope it is a year filled with joy for you and yours. To my family and my friends, I love you and look forward to new memories with you in 2023. I’m happy to put 2022 in the rearview mirror and looking forward to the year ahead.


Sunset and silhouette

I photographed birds at the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary this afternoon. With the sun out and the temperature rising close to zero, it was a beautiful day to wander along the Bow River. I walked back as the setting sun painted the clouds. The colors stopped me in my tracks. It was a stunning way to let go of the day.


Aurora and a traffic lit skeleton tree

From this late August Aurora Borealis storm, I leveraged the lighting spillover from late night traffic into the fields along Highway 8. Here, this weathered tree stood out from its neighbors due to the headlights passing by. The Northern Lights stayed low along the northern horizon and played a supporting role in many of the images I shot that night.


In a misty field…

A whitetail deer tastes the air in a misty field in Bragg Creek, Alberta, Canada.  June 2022.

A humid afternoon slipped away into dusk with peels of fog rolling over the long grass inviting the darkness of night in earlier. This whitetail walked past Desirée and I a few minutes before I took this photograph. When the visibility dropped away, she raised her head to sniff the air. She wasn’t on edge, her tail stayed down, it seemed just a focus on one sense with another being curtailed. Her profile created a beautiful shape and the moment felt calm and intimate.


Kananaskis Stormset

The setting sun backlit the tail of this clearing storm before dropping behind the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. Stunning colors as the evening started its summer-slow fade to night.


A Subtle Aurora

At the end of May Desirée, Karen and I chased the Northern Lights late into the night. It was cloudy in Bragg Creek so we headed west looking for open sky and active auroras.

It was not a powerful geomagnetic storm but cast some beautiful pastels in sky and onto the clouds. I’m never disappointed whenever I get to watch to watch them dance.


Sunset at the Luminous Lagoon

We spent a wonderful week in Jamaica earlier this month. One of the highlights was our night swim in the Luminous Lagoon along the north shore. It was an amazing experience being surrounded by the bioluminescence in that bay. We got there as dusk fell. The sunset was amazing and I took a couple of minutes to enjoy it before we headed out on the water.


Aurora Abstract

The Northern Lights were soft on April Fool’s night. There were a number of photographers lined up waiting for the show but the joke was on us with a subtle display. I didn’t mind, it gave me pause to think about the scene differently and try out a few things. This longer exposure, 8 seconds, with a little movement of both the camera and the grass in the foreground had an interesting look.


Nightscapes along Highway 8

A couple of long exposures from west of Calgary the other night. The vehicle lights traced light trails across the scene to make for more interesting landscapes.


A winter scene

The hoar frost encrusted the fields across Springbank over the past few days. I like the serenity of these scenes.


A winter night in YYC

Alberta has been thrown into the freezer this week. The temperature, -26ºC/-15ºF and colder, has felt like winter asserting that it is truly here now. It is a shock but I went outside last night while one of the boys had an appointment downtown just to thumb my nose at the chill a little bit. The fingers got cold but I didn’t mind too much. There is something about photographing landscapes when it is really cold that adds to the images – almost a clarity and a stillness – that I really like. These are images of Calgary’s downtown from Discovery Hill as the day slipped away.