Rural landscapes: Last of the Spring snow
LAST OF THE SPRING SNOW, NEAR CALGARY, ALBERTA
I’m blessed to live very near rolling prairie hills and valleys dotted with farms. This landscape presents plenty of ‘big picture’ photos as well as intimate scenes like this, captured a year ago along a dirt road. I liked the repeating diagonal lines in the snow and the contrast of the well-rounded little boulder. Nikon D90, tripod and maybe a polarizing filter (just can’t remember for sure).
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Natural landscapes: Springtime trillium
SPRING TRILLIUM, GREENWOOD CONSERVATION AREA, AJAX, ONTARIO
When my wife & I lived in Ontario, this area (about 45 minutes east of Toronto) was a favourite photography destination. In May, Greenwood’s forested areas have several spectacular trillium locales and I managed to get to this one right after overnight rain about five years ago. I used Photoshop software to do a fair bit of work on this composition, making sure the background didn’t compete with the main focus. Nikon D50, tripod.
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Natural landscapes: Spring in the Rockies
SPRING IN THE ROCKIES, KANANASKIS COUNTRY, ALBERTA
Believe it or not, this is April in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. I made this photograph about a year ago using a tripod and a polarizing filter. This was about a half-hour before dawn and I needed a looong exposure to get the picture. Was it a productive photo outing? With this much beautiful new snow and a glorious sunny morning to come, you bet! 🙂
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Natural Landscapes: Icy Shoreline
ICY SHORELINE, WATERTON LAKES NATIONAL PARK, ALBERTA
This Rocky Mountain park is three hours southwest of my Calgary home (near the U.S. border), but it’s always worth a day trip. I made this photograph during a trip in January. The colour in the water is from sunshine reflecting off a nearby peak. And yes, the ice was definitely as slippy as it looked. Nikon D90, 70-300 mm. zoom lens, tripod.
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Natural Landscapes: Spring on the Bow River
SPRING ON THE BOW RIVER, CALGARY, ALBERTA
‘Blue hour’ – that time before sunrise/after sunset when it’s not yet pitch black – is a favourite time for many landscape photographers. And by taking a look at this photo, you can easily see why it’s called blue hour. The patches of ice really glow against the water and murky blue conditions. Nikon D90, tripod, 18-55 mm. lens.
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Check out my new coffeetable book, just published in December – “MOMENTS OF LIGHT: 30 Years of Photography” http://bit.ly/sd0ygQ
Natural Landscapes: Winter on the Bow River
WINTER ON THE BOW RIVER, CALGARY, ALBERTA
I labelled this photograph as a natural landscape because that’s certainly how it appears. However, this scene in the middle of one of Canada’s largest cities. I fished around in the archives to dig up this 1991 picture, made right after a snowfall from the vantage point of a pedestrian bridge. The conditions that morning produced one of my most productive photo sessions! Nikon FM2 film camera, slide film, tripod, probably a polarizing filter. Scanned and processed with Photoshop software.
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Check out my new coffeetable book, just published in December – “MOMENTS OF LIGHT: 30 Years of Photography” http://bit.ly/sd0ygQ
Urban landscapes: Inside the Peace Bridge
INSIDE THE PEACE BRIDGE, CALGARY, ALBERTA
This stunning and controversial new cyclist/pedestrian bridge is so extraordinary that uploading just one picture onto the website wasn’t enough. So this is another, done with a very different light balance and with less of a telephoto perspective. (You can see the other Peace Bridge photo here: http://wp.me/p2ccTX-5G. Here’s the bridge in its urban setting: https://wp.me/p2ccTX-1Kn.)
The best time to photograph this architecture is at night; I cloned out all the annoying bits of building and street lights so nothing would distract you from the shapes and hues. Nikon D90, 17-55 mm. lens, tripod.
Click on the picture for a larger view.
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Urban Landscapes: Peace Bridge
PEACE BRIDGE, CALGARY, ALBERTA
Calgary’s newest architectural marvel opened yesterday, after many controversial and expensive delays, and I went there before sunrise today to make photographs. It turned out to be every bit as spectacular a subject as I hoped for; I spent almost an hour “working” the pedestrian/cyclist bridge (which spans the Bow River) from both ends and in the middle, going with a variety of wide-angle and telephoto views, plus trying some long exposure zooming in-and-outs. Almost everything I tried turned out brilliant – a credit more to architect Santiago Calatrava than my skills. (I photographed one of his other Canadian creations, Brookfield Place in Toronto. That photo is also on this website.) Nikon D90, 18-55 mm. lens, tripod.
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Check out my coffeetable book “BLUE SYMPHONY: Winter in the Canadian Rockies”: http://bit.ly/kFb3Xw
Rural landscapes: Country road & bridge
COUNTRY ROAD & BRIDGE, ROCKY MOUNTAIN FOOTHILLS, ALBERTA
One of my favourite photo tours is to drive Hwy. 22 southwest of Calgary (where I live) to Pincher Creek. I especially love detouring onto unnamed country roads and finding hidden photographic gems like this bridge. Frost on the trees adds to the scene.
This is a wide-angle point-of-view; I also zoomed closer for a picture, making the bridge more prominent in the photo, but I like the stronger lines and shadows in this perspective. Nikon D90, tripod, polarizing filter, 18-55 mm. lens.
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Check out my coffeetable book “BLUE SYMPHONY: Winter in the Canadian Rockies”: http://bit.ly/kFb3Xw
Natural landscapes: Frost on Vermillion Lakes
FROST ON VERMILLION LAKES, BANFF NATIONAL PARK, ALBERTA
The Vermillion Lakes offer amazing vistas of mountains around the town of Banff. Better still, parts of the lakes are fed by hot springs and stay ice-free in winter, allowing opportunities for pictures of frosty reeds.
I fished through the archives for this photograph, made during the 1990s on my old Pentax 6×7 medium format film camera using Velvia slide film. I had the slide scanned, then tweaked it using Photoshop.
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Check out my new coffeetable book, just published in December – “MOMENTS OF LIGHT: 30 Years of Photography” http://bit.ly/sd0ygQ
Rural landscapes: West Hope School
WEST HOPE SCHOOL
The mottled pattern of late-winter snow caused me to go for a wide-angle perspective on this heritage school, north of Calgary, Alberta near the town of Carstairs. The strong horizontal lines of trees and sky also made the scene worth photographing. Nikon D90, tripod, polarizing filter.
Want to buy this picture? Email me and I’ll make it happen! (fdking@hotmail.com).
Check out my new coffeetable book, just published in December – “MOMENTS OF LIGHT: 30 Years of Photography” http://bit.ly/sd0ygQ
Natural landscapes: Waterfalls & snow
WATERFALL & SNOW, KANANASKIS COUNTRY, ALBERTA
Elbow Falls is in Kananaskis Country, an area of the Canadian Rocky Mountains that’s little known outside the province of Alberta.
I visited here for 90 blustery minutes in iffy morning light, often making three or four exposures of each composition to ensure I got something tack sharp.
A tripod, polarizing filter and two darkening filters were used on this scene. I carefully composed this to keep the boring green-grey forests out of the photo.
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Check out my coffeetable book “MOMENTS OF LIGHT: 30 Years of Photography” http://bit.ly/sd0ygQ
Natural landscapes: Winter in the Badlands
WINTER IN THE BADLANDS
One of my favourite photo locales in Alberta is Dinosaur Provincial Park, about 2 hours drive southeast of Calgary (where I call home). It’s a stunning area of badlands and one of the most important dinosaur fossil areas in the world. I especially love winter there, because few people have seen badlands covered in snow.
This photograph was made back in 2003, before I switched to digital. I used a Nikon FM2, tripod and polarizing filter. By then I was getting my Velvia slides automatically scanned onto CDs during processing, so I had a good digital file to work with.
Wander through my coffeetable photography book “Special Places: A Landscape Photographer’s Vision of Southern Ontario”: http://bit.ly/yNU06F
Want to buy this picture? Email me and I’ll make it happen! (fdking@hotmail.com).
Natural landscapes: Elbow River
ELBOW RIVER, KANANASKIS COUNTRY, ALBERTA
Elbow Falls is in Kananaskis Country, an area of the Canadian Rocky Mountains that’s little known outside the province of Alberta.
I visited here for 90 blustery minutes in iffy morning light, often making three or four exposures of each composition to ensure I got something tack sharp.
A tripod, polarizing filter and two darkening filters were used on this scene, made just above the falls. Elbow Falls is a wonderful photography spot because there are at least a half-dozen unobstructed viewpoints, at varying heights, scattered around the area.
Want to buy this picture? Email me and I’ll make it happen! (fdking@hotmail.com).
Wildlife: Silhouetted Deer
SILHOUETTED DEER, NEAR LONGVIEW, ALBERTA
I was driving around the glorious Rocky Mountain foothills southwest of Calgary when I saw these deer on a ridge above the road. At the time I was driving a Ford Focus with a sunroof that turned out to be perfect for this picture. I put a telephoto zoom on my old Nikon D50, opened up the sunroof and made this picture. I’m now in a minivan with no sunroof. 😦
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Check out my coffeetable book, “Frank King’s Southern Alberta“: http://bit.ly/1oUzd4A
Wildlife: Feuding Marmots
FEUDING MARMOTS, JASPER NATIONAL PARK, ALBERTA
One of the best attractions in this wonderful Rocky Mountain park is the Jasper Tram, which transports customers above the treeline to the top of Whistlers Mountain. During a visit there in 2009, this pair of marmots – probably mother & baby – were beautifully posed on some boulders just a few minutes’ walk from the top of the tram. Scrambling, I quickly slapped on a 35-70 mm. zoom lens and skipped the tripod, because I never knew how long I had before the marmots disappeared.
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Check out my coffeetable book, “MOMENTS OF LIGHT: Thirty Years of Photography”: http://bit.ly/JTNnMX
Mountain Landscapes: Sunrise at Bow Lake
SUNRISE AT BOW LAKE, ALBERTA
I’m not sure there’s ever a bad time to visit Alberta’s glorious Banff National Park, especially in winter. Unlike other parts of the province, it’s always reliably *winter* in the Rocky Mountains. This photograph was made in late February on the Icefields Parkway, considered by many to be one of the most beautiful drives on this planet. I wish there was snow on the trees, but I think this scene still works well.
The peak, by the way, is Crowfoot Mountain. And if you’re wondering why the distant trees seem a bit hazy, it’s because ice fog was drifting through at the time (the temperature was -15C).
Nikon D90, tripod, polarizing filter.
Click on the picture for a larger view.
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Check out my coffeetable book “BLUE SYMPHONY: Winter in the Canadian Rockies”: http://bit.ly/kFb3Xw
Natural landscapes: Morning frost
MORNING FROST, NEAR CALGARY, ALBERTA
I’m blessed to live very close to rolling prairies with mountain views, soap opera skies and fields of hayrolls. This picture was made a few winters ago when I ventured into this landscape and found incredible frost on roadside grasses. Made on my old Nikon D50 (since replaced by a D90) and tripod.
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Urban landscapes: Awaiting Sunrise
AWAITING SUNRISE, CALGARY, ALBERTA
I ventured into the downtown core right after a significant snowfall and was rewarded with endless satisfying compositions like this one. This was made about 45 minutes before a strong sunrise in windless conditions – perfect requirements for ‘blue hour’ photography. Nikon D90, tripod.
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Check out my coffeetable book, “Frank King’s Southern Alberta“: http://bit.ly/1oUzd4A
Rural Landscapes: Farm & Frost
FARM & FROST, NEAR BROOKS, ALBERTA
How often does any photographer get conditions this good? I was on my way to experience winter in the badlands of Dinosaur Provincial Park, in southeast Alberta when this scene simply FORCED me to stop and make pictures.
Nikon D90, tripod, polarizing filter.
Click on the picture for a larger view.
Want to buy this picture? Email me and I’ll make it happen! (fdking@hotmail.com).
Check out my coffeetable book, “Frank King’s Southern Alberta“: http://bit.ly/1oUzd4A
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