The snow is mostly gone, here on the prairies, but it will be some weeks before we see greenery and flowers blooming. I can’t wait! It has been a long winter and I sure could use a bit of color. Late spring or early summer images are great for it because all is fresh and green is bright and not dimmed by dust of late summer days.
We are lucky here in Alberta, because some nights are full of light show. We had a couple of gorgeous Aurora showing last fall and I have managed to capture some shots without leaving the city.
I know, I know it is winter and everybody posts winter photography, but I am not ready for it yet. I see it outside my window every day, so I want to see something warm, colorful and pretty. Hope you are in need of this as well.
It has been a while since I’ve posted anything about Elk Island National Park. So, I think, it is time for some lovely sunset from the beginning of summer, when all was green, flowers were blooming and days were warm and long.
There are a lot of spectacular photographs of northern lights on internet. Beautiful lights dancing on the night sky are quite amazing to behold. However, it is not as easy as you would think to get a good shot of them. It, often, requires hours of waiting for the sky to turn dark enough in summer or freezing your bottom on location in winter.
It is an interesting experience to visit Elk Island at night. We are a city creatures, not very comfortable with being in nature without the ability to see. And then, there are the noises. It is so eerie to stand in the middle of nowhere, where it is pitch black and so quiet that every noise carries a long way. Hard to judge the distance separating us from the animals making that noise.
After a tiring yet wonderful walk around Manhattan and Central Park, and a beautiful sunrise on the beach, our host, Dominick Chiuchiolo, took us for a little drive on Long Island.
I have shown you some of the pictures from our December trip to the Rockies in my post Beautiful Lake Louise. Today, I would like to share what I saw (along with landscapes, I could not help but take some close up shots, yet again..) when we took a gondola ride to the top of Sulphur Mountain in Banff. Such gorgeous winter views! It was relatively warm up there and the light was lovely. We were able to stay long enough to see the sunset and the night taking over the world. Unfortunately we had to get off the mountain (gondola closing time) in order to shoot Milky Way. Landscape photography is so easy when you have such wonderful vista to work with! :D So here it is, some more of winter beauty! Enjoy! Kasia
Due to our long winter this year, I have been missing very much the colors and drama of summer skies. I am very happy, I have a bit of a back log of images to share with you guys, because now I can show some more of these to you and remember our photo adventures when we traveled outside the city to get them. You've seen some of my summer skies in my post: Missing Summer Skies.. Part 1 and today, I would like to share some shots I took one time, during our visit to Elk Island. It was an evening of storms, when the sky was changing from one minute to another and we were quite lucky to be close to our vehicles in order to hide from nature's fury, shoot some pictures in between the storms and hide from them again.. I have never experienced a more severe storm being out in the country. It was, definitely, something to behold.. And no, I was not going to be outside our vehicle shooting the lightning. I was cowering like any other smart human being inside it, emerging only well before or after a while, when all this fury has moved well away from us.. Kasia
I love photographing night skies! It's much better outside of a city (light pollution) and, in order to do so we need to travel away from it. We are lucky to be close enough to one of the 7 Dark Sky Preserves in Canada, located at Elk Island National Park. Mac has mentioned our recent trips to Elk Island in his post Two Sunsets - Alberta Landscape Photography. We've traveled there a few times during last week, taking our kids with us, in hopes of showing them the elusive comet Panstarrs. The first time we came searching for the comet the western sky turned cloudy and there was no way to see it. We have finally managed to accomplish it on Saturday night. It was freezing cold (temperatures dropped to -22 degree Celsius) but the skies were finally clear. The comet was very faint and barely visible, even, using binoculars, but it was there! I have attempted to capture it using my 200mm lens, but was not successful. Instead, I concentrated on capturing some beautiful night skies. The constellations were very well visible, regardless of a bright moon, and I did have a lot of fun capturing the stars and the colors of the sky turning from evening to a dark night.. I did not harbor much hope for capturing the comet, though, after the fiasco with the long lens.. Imagine my surprise when I saw it on pictures I took with our fisheye lens.. It is small, very faint and one has to look very closely to find it, but it is there! Veni, vidi, vici! ;D Kasia
A few weeks ago, we wanted to get away. To go somewhere. Mountains is always a good choice. Packed up the gear, and the kids :), and headed out for a photo filled weekend. It was a beautiful weekend weather wise, and my wife wanted to get some star and landscape photos. Banff, Alberta is a perfect place for star pictures, as the whole area has very little light pollution. It was a wonderful evening, beautiful sunset, and a wonderful time with the family. The stars finally showed, and so did the milky way. Unfortunately, I completely screwed up the settings on mine and my wife's cameras. My exposure times were completely wrong, and I did not realize this until we got home. The exposure was way too long, and although the mountains looked great, the star started streaking, and the images looked bad. Sad really. I completely forgot about the 500 rule, and was using settings I normally use on Northern Lights. So not only did I ruined my photo's, I ruined my wife's too. Perfect. So what is this rule? It's very very simple.
500 divided by the focal length of your lens equals the time of exposure
So let say you are shooting with a full frame camera with a 15mm lens. The exposure time before the stars start streaking is calculated by 500/15=33.3. 33.3 is the time in seconds you have to capture the stars before they start moving across the image. Now on the crop sensor cameras it is the same thing, but a 15mm is really a 24mm, so this calculation 500/24=21.8. So as you can see, with the same lens you have a 9 second difference, between the full frame camera and a crop sensor camera. Yep, and I messed it all up. Shame on me. As a consolation here are some of the landscapes I managed to capture before the sun went down. Enjoy!
I received an email that there will be some northern lights activity, so I packed my family into the car, call couple of friends, and we headed out of town. Decided to try a new spot, but unfortunately, driving at night on the country roads, with no clue where exactly I was going proved to be quite challenging. So after a bit, we all decided to pull over on the side of the road, and try to capture what remained from the very faint Aurora Borealis. This time Murphy was with us all the way. The moment we pulled off, the green bands of light in the sky completely disappeared. I thought that maybe we could catch the rising Milky Way, but that was thwarted by the almost full moon rising in the east. Didn't want to come home empty handed, so decided to shoot the rising moon. Since I graciously gave my tripod to my wife (what a wonderful husband I am....right? hahaha ), I used my Fuji x100 with a GorillaPod. I have to say, the X100 was made for that tripod, or maybe it's the reverse.... but the setup worked wonderfully. Here is what I achieved that night... Enjoy! Mac
University of Alberta has a website that monitors geomagnetic activity in the Edmonton area, called Aurora Watch. There you can sign up for free email alerts, when aurora borealis or northern lights have a chance of occurring. I received a red alert a few weeks ago, and decided to take my oldest son with me to Elk Island Park for a "capture the lights in the sky" mission. Unfortunately at the site, Konrad realized that his little point and shoot camera did not have the settings necessary to record the northern lights. I setup both of my cameras, one with fish eye lens, the other with wide angle, on the beach of Astotin Lake. Since Konrad wasn't able to take any photos, I let him operate one of the cameras. It was a great time, just being there, chatting, counting down exposure time, and watching the amazing light show in the skies above us. Great great time. Enjoy!
Another warm cloudless starry night. Another opportunity to try my fisheye lens. So off I went to the special dark spot at Elk Island National Park. This area is quiet, and mostly traffic free. Not this time. Even at 1am I had 3 vehicles pass by my spot, which made my worried that my star trails will suffer. Luckily I think the red tail light trails add to the photo. I guess you be the judge.
I have to say, I really enjoy these little quiet trips to the park at night. Yes it is a spooky place sometimes, but over all, it's silent and calming. Great place to lay on the ground, look up at the vastness of the sky, and let your mind drift among the stars. Enjoy.
So on my recent ad-hoc trip to Wabamum lake I started of with some light painting. In actuality it was more camera painting, because, being the silly person as I am, I have totally forgot my tripod. Instead of sitting in my car, having a couple of hours before the sunrise, and kicking myself, I decided to improvise a little. Using the hood from one of the lenses, and a little soft bean bag I managed to perch my camera on the roof of the car. I set the ISO, and manual focus to infinity (and beyond), and tried as hard as I could to compose the frame, before placing the camera on the makeshift stand. Luckily I always carry the remote shutter release cable, so I was able not to disturb the camera on longer exposures. Using different shutter times and a few pictures later, I managed to get one above, of my favourite constellation of Orion.
Next I moved my setup to a pick-nick table nearby, and point the lens due east. Venus always rises before the sun, or sets right after, and there she was in full glory (the brightest point in the sky on the left). From the colours of the sky I figured that the sunrise is near, so I cleaned up the makeshift camera stand, and headed out on the jetty. The clouds were rolling in slowly, and there was almost no wind, so the lake was promising wonderful reflections.
It was a chilly morning, and the morning fog was forming on the shores. It was absolute silence, punctuated only by sporadic duck and geese calling to each other.
Absolutely wonderful morning, which I will continue with tomorrow...
