Snowy flight over the Prairie
I found this snowy owl perched along a forgotten fence line north of Lyalta (which is east of Calgary). After a trek across the field to get to about 60 meters away, I leaned against a post and waited. I set my exposure so that I would have a slower shutter speed at the start. I wanted to show some motion in the wings and estimated that 1/200th of a second would allow for that. Fifteen minutes later something drew his attention and he launched perpendicular to me and the fence.
I had two nice images of him flying towards the sun before he was past me. The first had a soft blur in the wings as they were near level. The other caught the wings at their full extension upwards. Both images kept the head sharp so luck played to my hand when I was panning with the bird. The shutter speed worked out well. I continue to try slower speeds but have yet to nail one of those with a sharp face. I will share those when I do.
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Raven vocals
This raven and I crossed paths in Cochrane. As I pulled up to a stop sign, she landed on a fence post. I pulled out my camera and she croaked a couple of times while looking this way and that.
She seemed restless from the moment she landed so I was unsurprised when she launched back into the air, rejoining another raven that had been circling the field behind her.
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Aspen lines
Canon 5DIII camera and 300mm f/4 lens: 1/15th of a second at f/16 on ISO 200
I drove along the Grand Valley Road in search of raptors and was fortunate to come across a small group of fellow photographers who had spied a Northern hawk owl in a roadside stand of trees. I will share a couple of photographs of that fine bird soon but wanted to first show the abstract images I made earlier in the day. Before finding any wildlife, I was spending time looking for them among the trees and meadows along the road. Early on, I found this stand of Aspens and I loved the vertical pattern and the stark contrast between dark and light within and between the tree trunks.
Canon 5DIII camera and 300mm f/4 lens: 1/500th of a second at f/9 on ISO 1250
I loved the straight image and once I dialled that in the way I liked, I wanted to drag my shutter and play with the blurred images that I traced out.
Canon 5DIII camera and 300mm f/4 lens: 1/30th of a second at f/16 on ISO 200
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Radium Otter
A few years ago I photographed river otters swimming in a pond in between the Columbia River and the town of Radium in British Columbia. They swam around for an hour and I had great fun watching them. I never looked through these images afterwards but came across them while working on a client’s project. I enjoyed having a look at these again and particularly liked how this image looked in black and white.
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Ice and Snow: lines and shadows
The waves of mild temperatures then bitter cold that have been winter’s pattern this year have played havoc with the ice.
Along the Elbow River the once smooth sheets of water frozen layer on layer, have buckled and split along the channel.
The temperature went into free fall yesterday but the blue skies pulled me outside this morning. Near the edge of the ice down the Elbow I spent some time photographing the forms created by the blanket of snow, broken ice cover, and the long shadows of winter.
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Rippling on the water
From a small pond in Granville Island where a light rain was falling. The circular ripples created by the raindrops hitting the water distorted the reflections of trees above.
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Winter chaos
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A few echos of the blizzard from last week blew through since then. More opportunities to photograph winter storms and with the image above I wanted to show the chaotic aspect often seen when the wind blows and the snow flies. Click on the image to open a page with a higher resolution version.
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Early morning with Vermilion and Rundle
Dawn at the second Vermilion Lake was beautiful with some lovely colour in the sky around Mount Rundle early in the sunrise. As the sun climbed, I moved into the contrasts and this one worked well in black and white.
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Dolphin Spray
A dolphin slices through the waves of the Northern Swell off Kaua’i, Hawai’i. I was on a catamaran and the dolphin had no trouble keeping up
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Storm Ridge
A storm threatened to cross over the western ridges in Kananaskis yesterday when I was in the Peter Lougheed Provincial Park. The ridge above caught my eye and displayed the tension high up on the mountains.
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A raven’s portrait
Stopping at a viewpoint along the Icefields Parkway on Sunday to photograph a pair of friendly ravens during the second day of John Marriott’s Jasper Fall Wildlife Workshop. This raven lived up to advance billing and was a pleasure to photograph. This portrait was one of my favourite images from a wonderful wintry day that saw us photographing mountain goats, bighorn sheep rams and bull elks in Jasper National Park.
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Mount Kidd
The morning got bright quickly when I was at a set of reflecting ponds just west of Wedge Pond and the Galatea Trailhead in Kananaskis. I met a fellow Calgarian photographer, Graham McKerrell, along the water’s edge and we watched the most promising cloud slip behind the mountain just a couple of minutes before the sunrise hit the face. The early light was still beautiful on the rock of Mount Kidd and its reflection. I really had fun once the morning sun was well established as I switched from hunting warm light to thinking about the sun and shadows for black and white images as seen here.
(please click on the image to link to a larger, higher resolution version)
These ponds are a beautiful location to welcome the morning, I hope to get out there once more this season.
