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.
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Evening over Osoyoos
When we were in Osoyoos in August, we stayed at the Spirit Ridge Vineyard Resort. It is a great place to stay and its location above the lake and across from the city gave us a beautiful view of both as well as the hills to the west.
On our last evening, I watched the sunset from one of the rooftop patios and enjoyed the light and its changes on the land and in the sky. As the sun sped away, there were interesting scenes that kept my interest sharp through into night.
(Please click on any image if you would like to view a higher resolution version)
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Sunset across the prairies
Fuji X100S with fixed 23mm lens: 1/45 of a second at f/11 on ISO 800
A few days ago, the clouds were anchored along the eastern edge of the Rockies all afternoon and I was not sure how the sunset would develop. Well, I guess I was sure that the winter sun would go down early and fast but what the light would do was the question.
Fuji X100S with fixed 23mm lens: 1/70 of a second at f/11 on ISO 800
I found myself on the edge of Springbank, west of Calgary, at 5:30 and the clouds had stretched east across the prairies and were catching and filtering the rich glow from the sun now hidden behind the mountains.
Fuji X100S with fixed 23mm lens: 1/50 of a second at f/11 on ISO 800
It was a scene that didn’t require much input from me to create images. I did like the reflections on my car’s glass and hood so that provided an opportunity to play around a bit.
Fuji X100S with fixed 23mm lens: 1/60 of a second at f/11 on ISO 800
Fuji X100S with fixed 23mm lens: 1/40 of a second at f/8 on ISO 1600
Bobbi and I are off to Sedona, Arizona tomorrow for a week – this landscape session provided a nice warm-up for the spectacular red rock scenery I’m looking forward to photographing down there.
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Hunting with a Barn owl at dusk
Boundary Bay is lovely throughout the year. Early spring along the levee that runs parallel to the tidal flats, driftwood piles and grassy fields is not an exception. When we were there last weekend, the rain rolled in as we were watching Snowy owls scattered across the grassland which did contribute to a beautiful scene a couple of hours later. At the time, it set the owls in their poses as they hunkered down through the showers.
Jack and I waited for the weather to change so that the owls may take to the air. Dusk was quickly approaching and we had hopes that these raptors would start hunting. The rain increased and we walked back along the dyke towards the parking lot a couple of kilometers away. As the car came into view, the rain lessened and when I was at the trailhead, the sun had even hazarded a couple looks under the clouds. The evening light was beautiful though very soft as it was filtered by the clouds and water vapour in the sky. A rainbow over the water drew my attention out over the flats and that’s where I first saw a distant bird flying low over the marshes.
I followed it through the gloom and as it moved closer and into the sunlight, I was able to identify it as a Barn owl (Tyto alba). This was my first sight of one of these owls in the wild and I fell in love immediately.
They have a chaotic flight pattern where they swoop along and then dive with great conviction downwards at crazy angles when they find a target. It crisscrossed a large area for about half an hour and all I could have wished for was a bit more light.
Dusk was well entrenched by this time and I was pushing the camera’s ISO and autofocus hard. The owl was curious too and swooped by on two separate occasions. The whole time spent watching this bird was a great experience and I’m looking forward to my next encounter with one of these beautiful owls.
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I could still make out the silhouette as it flew further away but my attention was pulled in a new direction by a Short-eared owl that circled by for a couple of minutes and then a Snowy which, freed from its perch by the calm weather, landed on a pile of waterlogged wood less than a stone’s throw away. I hope to share some of those photographs soon.
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Magic in the clouds above
The sunset in West Bragg Creek was beautiful last night. The warm sunlight alternating with the long shadows striped the land and looked great in every direction. However it was the same light caught in the clouds above that stole the show.
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Palm tree sunset in Wailua
We had a lovely sunset a couple of nights ago. The western of Wailua, where I am staying, has a few mountain ridges and valleys blocking the view to the ocean directly but the on this night the sky was beautiful. A stand of palm trees in the courtyard made a great silhouette to anchor the pastel lines.
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Midnight Sun – Cochrane, Alberta
Sunset was 10pm last night but the sky was still quite bright in the northwest after midnight.
These clouds were incredible and worth pulling off to the side of the road in the middle of the night.
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Old Ford Truck: Dusk on the Albertan Prairie
Out at my latest infatuation , this old F350 abandoned beside a country backroad, last night. The evening light after the sun dropped behind the Rockies was great and with long exposures, light painting with a flash off camera and the steadily darkening sky, I had a great time.
I was so absorbed, I lost track of time and didn’t make it back to Redwood Meadows to enjoy the community fireworks for Canada Day. I could see the explosions from the truck but with 25 kilometers between me and home, they were just small balls of color.
As night took hold, I finished with a couple of darker images that left more shadow in keeping with the dark sky to the east.
