Splashing the clouds with color at dawn
Before photographing down in the fog a week ago, I stopped along the Trans-Canada Highway on the hill overlooking Springbank to watch the sunrise.
The eastern sky was starting to brighten quickly and I hoped the clouds would catch the early light. The fog was quite close to the hilltop when I first arrived but it fell back down before dawn came. The sunlight did bathe the clouds in amazing colors. It was spectacular!
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A heron fishing in silhouette
Walking back from the birds along the shoreline of the Bow River, I drew a line along the ponds in the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary. The daylight was failing and the paths were in deep shadow. The water reflected the southern sky where there were breaks in the surrounding forest. In one of these bright patches, was a welcome surprise, there stood a Great blue heron, his profile silhouetted and motionless at first.
The bird then moved slowly in the shallows and I loved watching as the hunter stalked the fish below.
Within a couple of minutes, a strike came. The water was pitch black to me but that did not help this fish. The heron lifted its head out of the water with a very nice sized dinner I would imagine.
Once finished, the heron continued to ply its trade, looking to have seconds.
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De-icing planes at YYC – revisited
I originally published one photograph of the patterns of steam created by workers de-icing planes in January 2014, the day after I took the picture when I arrived in Arizona. I processed the image quite minimally as I believe I was working off of an iPad and had limited time to work on the images. Last year, a more true to life, and to my eye more pleasing, version was recognized in the CBRE Urban Photographer of the Year competition. This version required some processing as RAW files are quite flat and high contrast images can require a bit of work to bring them out.
For a recent competition I entered, I submitted a series of different images from the same time. I liked the abstract quality of the steam created by the patterns and swirls, backlit by the just risen sun. I wanted to share those here – with the break in the freezing temperatures this morning, I thought it was a nice reminder of just how cold winter can be in Alberta!
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De-icing at YYC
Canon 5D Mark III + 500mm f/4 lens: 1/6400 seconds at f/4 on ISO 320
A member of the ground crew at the Calgary International Airport does the critical work of de-icing the airplane during a cold sunrise well below freezing in Alberta, Canada.
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Calgary commutes: driving out of downtown
Fuji X100s + 23mm lens: 1 second at f/11 on ISO 200
The Plus 15 walkways which are ~5 metres above Calgary’s street level connect the majority of buildings downtown. This allows people to avoid going outside during cold winter days and provides a great vantage point for watching the bright, orderly retreat of workers from their offices to their homes.
Fuji X100s + 23mm lens: 1/4 of a second at f/5.6 on ISO 3200
I played around with longer exposures (wishing I had a way to counter the slight bounce in the skybridge due to my fellow Plus 15 pedestrians) and had a moment to appreciate a benefit of the early sunsets that come with the winter months and daylight savings time.
Fuji X100s + 23mm lens: 4 seconds at f/11 on ISO 200
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A broken cloud sunrise on the Canadian prairies
The clouds make or break sunrises in many landscape scenes. On Sunday, they broke apart just before sunrise leaving a nice gauzy patchwork above the glow on the horizon. A good start to the day just west of Calgary in Alberta, Canada on May 27th.
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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 Wildlife: Night Geese
Another evening down at the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary tonight. The wedges of geese and colonies of gulls flying in at dusk are really fun to watch. There are easily hundreds of birds returning to the Bow river for the night. Sunset was just after 6 and by 7 the birds had settled on the rocks in the channel.
After all of the chaos of the returning birds, I liked this isolated Canada goose that was standing motionless. I guess it was sleeping as it did not move for this 13 second exposure. The light reflected from the street lamps above the Deerfoot lit the water like fire. With the small silhouette of the goose anchoring the frame, I like this composition.
