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.
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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.
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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.
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Silhouettes and city lights
Watching the dusk fade from the east side of Calgary, the color in the sky softened into pastels. The city’s lights glowed and cast tall stalks of grass into silhouette. It strikes me a little melancholy looking at it now – and beautiful.
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Evening towards Kananaskis
A night on the western edge of Bragg Creek in January. The clouds had incredible texture all afternoon and when the last light caught them it threw incredible pinks and purples across them. A cotton candy sky glowing to see the day off. Same scene above and below – two versions.
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Evening over Sulphur Mountain
With the day slipping away from the Vermilion Lakes in the Bow Valley, the clouds began to light up in the last light of the day. This column started out bright white and soon burned into a hot pink. It hung over the valley between Sulphur Mountain and Sunshine Peak brushing them with a faint pastel hue before dimming as night took hold.
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An abstract with the moon
The crescent moon on my daughter’s birthday in January was beautiful. Here I framed it between the silhouettes of the trees along the forest in Redwood Meadows. During the exposure (0.8 seconds) I moved the camera slightly to play with the elements and see what would trace across the image. This one had an interesting look of motion in it.
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Springbank electrics
The thunder and lightning rolled over the prairies several times over the past couple of weeks. On August 1st, I went out to photograph dusk as the smoke from the wildfires has helped create some beautiful evening scenes. The haze thinned after sunset and a large cloud took shape from it as the sky cooled into night.
While the color slipped away, the cloud grew and I caught a flicker of lightning on the northern edge. Rain didn’t fall and the wind never really picked up. However a fork crackled through the air every few minutes for the next couple of hours.
The storm slowly churned east towards Calgary and the open prairie beyond. The trailing edge left behind a clear sky dotted with stars. This last photograph caught the moon illuminating the cloud as it rose.
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Sunset over Springbank fields
Sunset over a field in Springbank west of Calgary.
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An autumn sunset in the sky
The sky in late October near the Rocky mountains often serves as a fantastic canvas for clouds, wind and sunshine to paint as they mix, blend and tear apart. I live on the eastern flank of the Rockies and am fortunate to be able to see a fair number of these beautiful collisions. This one was just before sunset in the third week of October on a recently paved country road off of Highway 8 between Bragg Creek and Calgary.
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Dusk in the Crowsnest Pass
I had a wonderful getaway camping with my son in the Waterton National Park last weekend. Along the way down there, I travelled through the Crowsnest Pass just as the sunlight was slipping off the peaks and giving way to the night. I stopped for a few minutes to enjoy the transition and this photograph is the one I made from the many peaks stacked around the valley. A mountain unknown to me but beautiful in its isolation.
August 16th update – my Uncle Bill, Auntie Ann and cousins Chad and Darren, who lived in the Crowsnest Pass area for many years, discussed this peak and confirmed that it is Mount Tecumseh. Thank you family!
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Night Flight
I found an owl hunting after dusk had settled over Bragg Creek. It was getting dark quickly and I had go back to my car for a flash at one point. I started to photograph this Great Gray around a stand of trees on the edge of a field. After a while she moved out onto the yellow grass and then went to perch on a fencepost.
Retrieving the light, I mounted it in the hotshoe and it didn’t take long to relocate her. We then spent an hour together as she hunted on either side of the fence line while I watched from 40′ away. She was very comfortable with me there and flew to a post closer to me on a couple of occasions. It was challenging to shoot the owl in flight but a lot of fun.
At one point we traveled along the fence with her stopping every 100′ until I caught up. When we had returned to the edge of the trees, the owl flew back out towards the field. It was a very powerful encounter for me.
Christopher Martin Photography 