Osprey in the trees
We were in Invermere last weekend. I spent some time watching a family of osprey on the water. This adult perched in this tree and made a couple of passes over a pond but no dives for fish. They looked pretty fantastic in the evening sunshine so I wasn’t too disappointed.
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Towing the moon across the sky
I caught sight of this airplane just after it had crossed infront of moon in the early evening. The smoke trails connected them together. I liked the way that it looked like the jet could almost be pulling it behind.
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Happy New Year!
Welcome to 2021. Here’s to a happy and healthy year for you and yours. There is so much that will be nice to leave behind in 2020 around the world. I hope to remember the silver linings and the special moments from a long year and let the tougher ones fade sooner than later.
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Sunshine over Spillway
In December while my son was in snowboarding lessons at Nakiska, I drove further into Kananaskis Country. At Spillway Lake, along the Smith-Dorrien Trail, I found the sun laying low above the silhouettes of the forest and the mountain ridge lines.
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Snowy owls aloft in the blue sky
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Dawn Osprey in Cabo San Lucas
One morning while I was set up for sunrise in the rocks on the coastline, one of the resident Ospreys flew low overhead looking for fish. Her sharp eyes picked me out easily and she looked at me for a couple of seconds before banking back towards the open water. The pink light from the eastern horizon softly painted the belly and underwing covert feathers.
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Lake Louise – ice castles and early mornings
Lake Louise is a favourite place for my wife and I to visit in the Banff National Park. This weekend, with my parents taking care of the kids for a night, we went up and stayed on the lake’s eastern shore at the Chateau. The view across the ice up to the Victoria Glacier and the surrounding peaks was hidden by nightfall by the time we arrived so I was anxious for the morning to come. As it turned out, I may have slept right through sunrise, if Bobbi hadn’t looked outside just after 7 and woken me up. The black of night had given way to the dark shades of blue ahead of the dawn. I looked outside and then raced out of the door a few minutes later.
Winter at Lake Louise is magical. The Fairmont had an ice carving competition earlier this year and the sculptures fanned out between the hotel and the lake. At night, they are lit up as is the patriotic castle that is in the middle of the skating rink cleared out on the lake ice.
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An ice castle is made every winter by the Chateau’s chefs from large blocks of ice. Nearby is a hockey rink and the trailhead for ski trails along the northern shoreline. Through the evening and again during the day, as it turned out, these drew many visitors who walked, skated and skied around. However at the time I went down to the lake, in the early but quickly brightening morning, there were only a few other people around.
Two people were playing around with hockey sticks and a puck while a couple of other photographers were roaming across the ice. And there was one gentleman out skating laps around the castle – I was glad he wore a red coat.
Once the sunlight hit the peaks, the dark sky disappeared and the cold, clear dawn of a beautiful morning took hold. It was wonderful to be out on the lake and I had a lot of fun working with the details in the castle and the spectacular landscape surrounding it.
When the sun was rising out of the forest east of the lake, the warm light on the ice blocks provided another opportunity to play a bit longer before I headed in for breakfast with my dear, and patient, wife.
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Up into the blue
On Saturday evening, I was combing Bragg Creek’s back roads for a Great Gray Owl I have seen a couple of times lately. I did not find the owl but enjoyed the scintillating blues in the sky contrasting with the bright white clouds. I paused my search to watch the sky and see if any of the clouds picked up the sunset colors once the sun dropped. I was mesmerized by these colors and contrasts and the scene faded to gray and then black in just a few minutes.
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Bow Valley Trail Mountain Sheep
A large group of ewes were walking along this ridge with a gang of frisky youngsters in tow. A bit further down the road were 12-15 rams that looked to have separated from this group as they were grazing on the south side of the highway. Maybe they were sneaking away for some guy time. This is around the time lambs are born but I didn’t see any really small ones here. Not sure if they will be born soon or if they have been already and their mothers are keeping them in more remote spots for now.
These two younger lambs did not have the sure-feet and confidence of their more mature brethren which made their traverse of this steep, jagged part of the rock below the ridge an interesting walk to follow.
There are a number of great locations to see Bighorn Sheep when heading into the Rocky Mountains from Calgary. The place where I made these pictures is one of the most accessible: it is a long stretch of the Bow Valley Trail between Exshaw and Canmore. The sheep can be frequently seen right beside the road, up the mountain slopes on the scree or, more dramatically, on the cliffs that loom 60′ above the road just north of Lac des Arcs.
This ram came up a few minutes after the herd of ewes and lambs had gone. He was a beautiful animal and we loved watching him stride across the rocks. This ended an incredible day on a fine note after having seen a herd of elk, a moose, a Barrow’s Goldeneye, a grebe, a mating pair of osprey, several hawks and a bald eagle between sunrise and sunset.
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A Weathered Truck on the Prairie
I was exploring the country roads that divide up the fields along the prairie west of Calgary and found this old Ford 350 farm truck long since abandoned overlooking a river valley. The truck looked like it had been left where it finally broke down, just past a cattle guard on a dirt track that led down to an old farmstead.
With the deep blue sky of the early morning, the weathered reds and oranges of the cab and the hood made a nice contrast. I liked working in the white line on the horizon where the Rocky Mountains are still covered with snow. I will be back to this lonely Ford again soon to work in some star trails and light painting. When the new green grass comes in, I’ll return to work with the three strong colors (two primaries – red and blue, and one secondary – green) as they will allow for some dynamic compositions by varying the amount of each color in a frame. A great subject to find and I suppose it will be returning to work after having had at least a few years rest.
In the image below, I de-saturated the sky to emphasize the color in the truck (both the body and the rust on the bed’s frame. It creates an interesting feel to this image as the relationship between the truck and the surrounding environment is different.
In this final picture from this set, I walked down towards the valley so that the sun’s position relative to the truck changed from behind and streaming over my shoulder to behind the truck backlighting the truck and throwing a lot of reflected light towards the camera. The washed out color that resulted allowed for an image very different from the others.
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Flight Lines
I was up in the North-East of Calgary a couple of days ago during the tail-end of the cold snap. At one of my stops, I realized I was in the flight path of planes landing at the Calgary International Airport. I found an interesting set of lines to frame a plane and then waited in the frigid air for 10 minutes for another plane to pass overhead. I like the result of this simple composition.
Here is the alley sans plane.
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Autumn on the Saskatchewan Prairie
Fall came later to the Prairies of eastern Alberta and Saskatchewan than it did around Bragg Creek. We drove out through Medicine Hat and on to Gull Lake a couple of weekends ago to visit my wife’s grandparents. It was nice to fit in a bit more fall photography along the way.
Small hills break up the prairie fields near the Saskatchewan – Alberta border.
Motel sign at a truck stop along Highway 1, the Trans Canadian Highway, at the Highway 21 intersection in Saskatchewan near Maple Creek.
The prairie landscape blurs by from my view in the passenger’s seat near Gull Lake.
Christopher Martin Photography 