Moose on the Prairies
Driving the gravel roads that divide up the fields north of Calgary, I found this moose in the tall grass near the end of August this past summer. She was alone and seemed relaxed laying down under the late afternoon heat. I stayed for a minute, the peaceful scene one to enjoy before retreating to leave her as she was.
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Aurora and a traffic lit skeleton tree
From this late August Aurora Borealis storm, I leveraged the lighting spillover from late night traffic into the fields along Highway 8. Here, this weathered tree stood out from its neighbors due to the headlights passing by. The Northern Lights stayed low along the northern horizon and played a supporting role in many of the images I shot that night.
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In a misty field…
A humid afternoon slipped away into dusk with peels of fog rolling over the long grass inviting the darkness of night in earlier. This whitetail walked past Desirée and I a few minutes before I took this photograph. When the visibility dropped away, she raised her head to sniff the air. She wasn’t on edge, her tail stayed down, it seemed just a focus on one sense with another being curtailed. Her profile created a beautiful shape and the moment felt calm and intimate.
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A common loon swims in front of a low, rocky island on a calm, smoky morning on Upper Kananaskis Lake. Haze from the wildfires to the west was thick in the mountains and often hid the mountains that ring the lake.
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This small shack is leaning to one side and I suspect it will fall down in a year or two. It served me well as a solitary anchor under the growing dawn on a frigid morning last weekend near Mossleigh. I love the isolation and the constantly changing skies on the prairies in the winter.
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Dawn over the prairies
I caught a sunrise on the prairies east of Mossleigh on the weekend. Fog had rolled over a large swath of southern Alberta so the morning was spent watching skirmishes between the rising sun burning off the clouds and the walls of fog. Here the early pink light had painted the clouds but not yet reached the fields nor broken through the opaque wall behind this tree.
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Flashback Friday – A park lane to Neues Palais
Last year when visiting Berlin, I took a day trip to Potsdam. From the train station, Potsdam Hauptbahnhof, I walked to the Neues Palais. I love wandering in unfamiliar places for the surprising things I find along the way. At one point, I turned away from the busy street at a park gate. When I came through, this quiet scene was waiting. It was an entrance to the extensive grounds of the palace. I walked through these grounds and the surrounding parks for the Sanssouci Palace for several hours, including a long nap beside a pond. The palaces weren’t my cup of tea but these parks had a manicured charm that I enjoyed immensely that day.
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Snowstorm Sheep in the Banff National Park
(Please click on each image if you are interested in higher resolutions)
The weather this weekend was more winter than early summer – In the Banff National Park it was cold. Large, heavy flakes of wet snow fell fast for a couple of hours in the morning. I drove up to Lake Minnewanka and this was the only mammal I saw on the drive up and back down.
This young Bighorn sheep was walking alone on the edge of the road away from the water. When I pulled over, he walked 100 metres towards me and then sauntered nonchalantly right past me.
He stopped a few times on both the approach and as he walked away. Which gave me some nice photo opportunities to work with the animal, the snow and the even light.
Christopher Martin Photography 