Whitetail fawn out for a morning stroll
(please click on the image for a higher resolution version)
This fawn was trailing its mother along this cliff trail above the Elbow River in Kananaskis. The rising sun had just hit the hillside so the warm light soaked the hill.
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Kananaskis Wildlife: Winter Stags
A chilly morning in West Bragg Creek gilded all the tall grass and tree boughs with hoar frost emphasizing the hold winter now has on Kananaskis Country. I wandered around a few trails before finding this muscular stag walking steadily through a field.
He watched me closely for a minute, pausing to check me over, before carrying on through the snow parallel to the path before crossing and bounding up the hill into the forest.
I encountered a second buck as I was heading back to Bragg Creek. I was driving on Township Road 232 and he was near the fenceline, partially obscured by a stand of reed-like branches. I was running a bit late and he seemed anxious so I only stayed for a minute to get this image before heading on my way.
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Nightscapes on the Prairie
A snowstorm obliterated the opportunity to photograph the “supermoon” on March 18th but I was out in a field the night before to see how the moon looked. The moon was impressive and it was really great to be out in the moonlight for a few hours. In the image above, the pink sky is the result of the city glow and the light from the moon. With two of the three deer walking slowly during the long exposure, they have a ghostly appearance.
As the last couple of deer trotted past, I panned with them. Under the moonlight they were dimly illuminated so I raised the ISO, opened the aperture and underexposed a bit to try to capture enough light to show the landscape with the deer moving through it. Even with the noise in this image I like the motion.
Below, a simple landscape image with the moon as it rises clear of a band of haze laying just above the horizon.
A long exposure looking west towards the mountains was one of the last images from the evening. The layers in this photograph from the lights, to the hill, the mountains and into the stretched sky are interesting.
As for the moon itself, I didn’t take an image that really showed the scale of it during this close pass unlike some of the incredible photographs I have seen around the web. This image was taken with a telephoto lens and then cropped in slightly. It doesn’t convey how close the moon came but it is nice to photograph our lone satellite.
Christopher Martin Photography 