Natural landscapes: Canoes on Lake Louise
CANOES ON LAKE LOUISE, BANFF NATIONAL PARK, ALBERTA
I had a Friday off work so I took my photography equipment to this iconic lake in the Canadian Rockies. So nice to be there without crowds or tourists and so nice to get wonderful conditions for a photograph like this. Could this look any more peaceful? 🙂
Nikon D90, tripod, polarizing filter.
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Urban landscapes: The carousel
ZOOMING ON THE CAROUSEL, CALGARY STAMPEDE, ALBERTA
Another picture from my evening midway photography marathon at this year’s Calgary Stampede. This is the carousel, but you’d never know it because I zoomed in and out during a long exposure. Nikon D90, tripod, polarizing filter (used only to lengthen the exposure).
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Urban landscapes: Ferris Wheel lights
FERRIS WHEEL AT NIGHT, CALGARY STAMPEDE, ALBERTA
This is the second straight year I’ve taken my camera & tripod to the Stampede midway and once again, I wasn’t disappointed. I photographed the ferris wheel last year, but found a different perspective for this composition.
It’s funny; the ferris wheel doesn’t move fast or for long (there’s only one spot to get on/off, so it’s constantly stopping to swap passengers), but a four-second exposure makes it look like a spinning top. Nikon D90, tripod, polarizing filter (used only to slow down the exposure a bit more).
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Natural landscapes: The glow of green
FALSE HELLEBORE, WATERTON LAKES NATIONAL PARK, ALBERTA
These luxurious plants, which seem quite out of place in the Canadian Rockies, were all over the place during my hike around Cameron Lake in this park, which is in the deep southwest corner of Alberta. Also known as corn lillies, the strong green, strong lines and rich lighting immediately set my mind to capturing abstract compositions. This one was made with my Nikon D90 on a tripod and using a 70-300 mm. zoom lens.
False hellebores are extremely toxic and according to Wikipedia, farmers with livestock consider them a pest plant.
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Natural landscapes: Beargrass
BEARGRASS, WATERTON LAKES NATIONAL PARK, ALBERTA
I was hiking to Blakiston Falls in this wonderful Canadian Rocky Mountain park when I kept seeing this fascinating plants. At the time, I didn’t know what they were, but that didn’t stop me from looking for interesting compositions. The shallow depth of field was important to guide your eyes first to the flower on the right, then to the background flower on the left.
According to Wikipedia, beargrass can grow to 15-150 cm in height and grows in bunches with the leaves wrapped around and extending from a small stem at ground level. The leaves are 30-100 cm long and 2-6 mm wide, dull olive green with toothed edges. The slightly fragrant white flowers emerge from a tall stalk that bolts from the base. When the flowers are in bloom they are tightly packed at the tip of the stalk like an upright club.
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Natural landscapes: Lake Huron sunset
SUNSET AT SAUBLE BEACH, ONTARIO
Sauble Beach is a busy summer resort area on Lake Huron in Canada’s most populous province. My brother-in-law owns a cottage on the beach and my wife & I have been blessed to stay there several times. This is an area with amazing sunsets and when I realized a great one was coming up, I grabbed a pair of Muskoka Chairs off Paul’s deck, dragged ’em to the shore, set up my old Nikon D50 on a tripod, then waited for the right moment.
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Natural landscapes: Prairie Pond
SUNRISE ON PRAIRIE SLOUGH, NEAR BAR U NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE, ALBERTA
About an hour southwest of my home in Calgary, the glorious Canadian prairies meet the Rocky Mountain foothills. Just before that spot is the Bar U, one of the most famous places in Canadian ranching history. Across the road is this pond. I came upon it with a fabulous morning sky; it was just a matter of putting a polarizing filter on my Nikon D90, setting up the tripod and carefully composing this scene. I might have also used a two-stop graduated density filter to darken the sky; just can’t remember for sure.
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Natural landscapes: Wind-blown flowers
BROWN-EYED SUSANS, WATERTON LAKES NATIONAL PARK, ALBERTA
This is one of the windiest places in the Canadian province of Alberta, so making good flower pictures is a considerable challenge. I lay on my stomach and used a shallow depth of field on my Nikon D90, in order to avoid blurring. I also made about a dozen exposures to also insure at least one picture where the blossoms were in focus.
Waterton is a stunning park, in part because there are no foothills – the prairies come right up to the peaks and that’s rare in the Canadian Rockies.
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Rural landscapes: The road to Longview
THE ROAD TO LONGVIEW, SOUTHWEST OF CALGARY, ALBERTA
The Canadian Rocky Mountain foothills southwest of Calgary are stunning, especially in early summer (i.e. June), when everything is still green. I made this photo in early morning light using a Nikon D90, tripod and polarizing filter.
The key was climbing up an embankment along the road. At the top, I had a better view of the entire scene, plus I had nice grasses to put at the bottom of the photo.
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Rural Landscapes: Old truck
ABANDONED TRUCK, NEAR ABBOTSFORD, BRITISH COLUMBIA
I fished around in the archives to find this 1996 photograph, made with my old Pentax 6×7 medium-format film camera, Velvia slide film, tripod and (probably) a polarizing filters. It was during a trip to Canada’s west coast that I wandered along lush country roads, looking for potential photographs.
I drove past this scene without a second thought, then realized I may have missed something useful and traced my steps back. It’s still one of my fave photos from that year.
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Natural landscapes: Mountain morning
MORNING LIGHT, SPRAY LAKES RESERVOIR, SPRAY VALLEY PROVINCIAL PARK, ALBERTA
While this water body is man-made, the views and experiences are no less wonderful – especially for photographers. For those of you who saw my wolf picture, this scene is in the same park. Nikon D90, tripod, polarizing filter. The polarizer was important here – it eliminated reflections on the foreground water, so you could see the rocks at the bottom.
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Natural Landscapes: Waterton sunrise
WINDY SUNRISE, WATERTON LAKES NATIONAL PARK, ALBERTA
This park, in the deep southwest of Alberta, is a glorious place to experience the Canadian Rocky Mountains – if you can stand the wind. This is one of the windiest places in western Canada; that’s why you can see all the whitecaps on the lake, even though I made this photograph just a half hour after sunrise, when (in most other places) the wind hasn’t yet picked up. Indeed. it was all I could do to battle the wind and keep the tripod still for this photograph. Fabulous sky, eh?
Nikon D90, polarizing filter.
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Wildlife: The Terminator Owl
GREAT HORNED OWL, FISH CREEK PROVINCIAL PARK, CALGARY, ALBERTA
A colleague at work told me there were owls in this provincial park and gave directions on where to find ’em. After wandering around staring into the trees for a half hour, I finally spotted this beauty in a giant cottonwood. I was fortunate to have a reasonably long telephoto lens to use on my Nikon D90.
I put the camera on a tripod then clicked away, using fill-flash to brighten the owl against the background. It was the fill-flash that created the red eye. I have a corrected version, but this one seems so much more evocative.
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Natural landscapes: The threatening sky
THREATENING SKY AT MOUNT EDITH CAVELL, JASPER NATIONAL PARK, ALBERTA
The Mount Edith Cavell area is one of the most spectacular places in the Canadian Rockies. Towering peaks, several glaciers, a glacier-fed lake, icebergs, water falls, snow avalanches, an ice cave – phew, it has everything a mountain photographer could dream of. Even threatening weather, as in this picture, couldn’t dim the breathtaking picture opportunities.
Nikon D90, tripod.
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Natural landscapes: Canada Goose
CANADA GOOSE, LAURENTIAN WETLANDS, KITCHENER, ONTARIO
Unusual lighting conditions, created by murky clouds and haze, made for excellent photography conditions at this marsh in the southwestern part of this Canadian province. I was fortunate to be focusing on the Canada goose when he (she?) decided to air out his wings. I kept the horizon close to the top in order to exclude houses near the shoreline – this beautiful wetland is a natural oasis in a sea of suburbia. Nikon D90, tripod.
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Natural landscapes: Marsh marigolds
MARSH MARIGOLDS, GREENWOOD CONSERVATION AREA, AJAX, ONTARIO
May is a fabulous month for these wonderful wildflowers, which proliferate in wet, swampy places. Greenwood is a favourite place for my wife & I; when we lived in the Greater Toronto Area, we liked to walk and pray here. The effect you see in this picture comes from zooming in & out my lens during a long exposure. The trick is to try it several times at different exposure times to achieve an attractive result. Nikon D50, tripod, polarizing filter.
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Rural landscapes: Bayview cottage
EVENING AT BAYVIEW COTTAGE, MUSKOKA, ONTARIO
Went back a few years, to the summer of 2009, to dig up this beautiful scene in the Muskoka cottaging region in the Canadian province of Ontario. My wife & I were blessed to stay at the cottage of our friends, the Stevensons, and one of the other cottages owned by their family caught my attention when I wandered around with a camera one sublime evening and saw this reflection. As you can probably tell, this is a pretty simple composition, with my only specific goal to keep the distracting sky out of the picture.
Nikon D90, tripod.
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Natural landscapes: Niagara River
NIAGARA RIVER AND GORGE, ONTARIO
I hiked to the bottom of the gorge, several kilometres from Niagara Falls, and found this wonderful red rock to work with along the river shore. The other side of the river is the United States. Nikon D90, tripod, polarizing filter and a soft-edge, graduated density filter to darken the upper left section of the picture.
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Wildlife: Black wolf
DRYING OFF: BLACK WOLF, SPRAY VALLEY PROVINCIAL PARK, ALBERTA
Let me start off by saying the series of photographs I made of this gorgeous creature is one of the absolute highlights of my 30+ years of photography. I was driving along Highway 40 in this provincial park (a hidden gem in the Canadian Rockies, little known outside the province of Alberta) on a wet morning when I spotted her (apparently wildlife official have named her “Lillian”) walking along the opposite shoulder.
Scarcely believing my luck, I pulled off the road, scrambled like a madman to (a) pull the camera bag from the back seat without clipping myself in the head and (b) put my 70-300 mm. zoom lens on the Nikon D90. Incredibly, the wolf didn’t run away, so I made a series of close-up compositions against a ho-hum earth-and-rock embankment.
A conservation officer came along and asked me to move the car (it was right on a corner beside a rock wall), so I did and, incredibly again, the wolf was still there when I parked, got out and walked back to where I was. Now, it was on top of the embankment, giving me the much better background you see here.
I made tons of pictures while it almost seemed to pose for me, not just to get various looks but also to ensure at least some were in focus (the camera was set at F 5.6, which allows for very little depth of field). On this picture, I darkened the trees and grass so your eye wouldn’t be distracted from the wolf.
Before these pictures, made just a few days ago, I’d never even seen a wolf in the wild — and I’ve visited the Canadian Rocky Mountains at least 100 times — much less photographed one. (you can see another photo of Lillian here: http://bit.ly/Z5jbeg)
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Natural landscapes: Tiger Lily
TIGER LILY, REVELSTOKE, BRITISH COLUMBIA
The flower was hanging perfectly in this open forest glade on Mt. Revelstoke in Canada’s westernmost province. And when I checked the view with a loooong telephoto zoom lens, the background wash of gentle colour was equally perfect. Nikon D90, tripod, 70-300 mm. lens.
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