Sunrise from the east side
I’ve photographed downtown Calgary at dawn from the east side near Inglewood twice in the last few weeks. It is a side of the city that I have not shot before. I have enjoyed the view and the different look from this side.
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Downtown Calgary – Morning along the Bow River
On Saturday I watched the morning arrive on the shore of the Bow River. I was across the water from Calgary’s downtown and used the Center Street Bridge as a focal point between the sky and the buildings. I parked along Memorial Drive and checked the sky in a couple of test photographs. Traffic came by and made for a good start.
On the other side of the road, the rocks, snow and ice along the river bank presented an interesting foreground. It was a bit hectic teasing out compositions as the light was changing rapidly. But that’s pretty fun chaos by any measure.
The eastern sky had bundles of pink cotton candy for a few minutes. To the west the pink was a pastel that looked very pretty reflected in the Bow where it passed Prince’s Island Park.
Mallard ducks and Canada geese milled about flying up and down the river. The cackling and quacking across the water along with the occasional group of vehicles passing behind me on Memorial Drive joined the river to perform the morning’s soundtrack.
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Night into day at the Peace Bridge
Calgary’s Peace Bridge has become one of the city’s landmarks and is an important pedestrian connector into the downtown core. Last weekend I went to Eau Claire a couple of hours before sunrise, walked over to the bridge and then photographed from dark night to bright morning. The lines of the structure are beautiful and I really enjoyed working with them, as well as the color and lighting, while I was photographing.
The construction crane south of the bridge was working and it played a nice supporting role as an interesting element in a couple of the images as well.
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Calgary at night: traffic in motion under the city’s lights
Late night light trails as vehicles move along Bow Trail. The red tail lights streak towards downtown while the lights on the left climb out of the city centre. Every few minutes the LRT, Calgary’s public transit commuter trains, slid along the tracks dividing the westbound and eastbound lanes of the roadway.
I walked to the Bow Trail Bridge near midnight in early January. I often pass under this bridge and believed it would afford a good view of both the city’s skyline and the traffic passing under it. The bridge itself has great curved lines and I shot it for a few minutes before photographing the cityscape.
From the bridge deck, the view matched my expectation and it was fun composing for long exposures meshed with the skyline. I’ll end with a slightly wider view of the scene. I’m looking forward to a return on a starry night… or maybe during an exceptionally bright Aurora Borealis display.
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Fernsehturm de Berlín in der Nacht
The Berlin TV Tower rises up from Alexanderplatz in the heart of Berlin and is arguably the most prominent landmark in the city. To get an elevated view, I went to the Park Inn’s panorama terrace which is on the 40th floor and faces the tower. The netting wasn’t great for photographs but I enjoyed the challenge of trying to work with it.
The views of Berlin from that height were fantastic. I got there before the sun had set so it was nice to be able to see many of the cathedrals, museums and other sites I had spent the week visiting. The image below is looking to the west and the orderly yet somehow still chaotic mosaic of the city.
Just before midnight I went to the top of the tower itself. The windows at night had reflections to wrestle along with a bit of distortion in the glass so the photographs from Berlin’s highest perch were quite limited. Still great to take in the whole city wearing her night lights. The night market in the centre of Alexanderplatz under the tower nearly empty but provided some colorful lights to frame against the railing shadows I leaned against.
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Crowchild in motion
Canon 5DIII with a 24mm f/1.4 lens: 13 seconds on f/11 at ISO 100
Vehicle lights trace lines along Crowchild Trail on a winter’s night in Calgary.
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Calgary Landscapes: A Lost Sunrise
During the lunar eclipse last December I was shooting off the Centre Street Bridge in Calgary with the moon to the west of me. As the moon came out of eclipse, I turned my attention to the east and photographed the sunrise over the Bow River looking east from downtown.
I wrote a short post on the eclipse the next day but then we left on vacation and I forgot about these images. Looking through Calgary sunrise photographs in my library, I rediscovered these and put them together here.
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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.
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Calgary Cityscapes: Street Scenes Downtown
I’m often downtown in the morning before dawn and occasionally in the evening after the sun sets. I’m always intrigued with the mingling of buildings, vehicles, street lights and deep blue sky as graphic elements during these walks to and from work. Occasionally, I notice when they align and present me with an interesting scene. Here are a few of the photographs I have made from these moments.
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Stormy Morning in Downtown Calgary
I was in downtown Calgary the morning after our first winter storm on Thursday. It was our first real snowstorm in a few weeks and the moody overcast light inspired a couple of images as I made my way along Stephens Avenue.
These silhouettes of the other commuters created nice abstracts for a final image on the morning.
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Calgary’s Downtown Core at Sunset
I was out on a windy hill east of Calgary’s downtown core on Monday night photographing the city center at sunset. There were some great clouds that soaked up the light to create some beautiful hues that reflected into the buildings. As the sun fell, stray light would find a clear patch through the clouds and then bounce around the glass on the buildings. A beautiful scene to photograph, here are a few from the evening.
Although it is no longer the tallest building along the skyline, the Calgary Tower is still an icon for the city. This is a different look at the building as dusk quickly advanced.
A view of the whole downtown as the sunlight waned.
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Downtown Train: Centre Street Station
The city was still fairly dark when I was downtown early on Wednesday. I dragged the shutter, using long exposures mixed with some panning to capture the motion of the commuter trains coming into and heading out of the core. Many of the trains were sparsely populated with passengers with the rush of people yet to start building. This afforded the opportunity pick out individual riders and follow them through the exposure to give the illusion of freezing the person while surrounding them with movement.
The station matched the trains at that hour – both were pretty quiet.
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Christopher Martin Photography 