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.
After leaving the bubbles of Abraham Lake behind, we plunged into the no-man's lands of Alberta Rockies. This early in the morning the roads were empty. Lack of traffic allowed us to stop frequently and admire the rugged beauty of the Alberta landscape.
As you can see we are still in the snow covered Rockies. I will get back to our Vancouver trip soon, once I finish editing all the photos. Silly me. Still winter, and still Fuji cameras. I've been talking about the camera I use quite a lot, but essentially does it really matter what camera you use. Not really. I've said it on my podcast Shutter Time with Sid and Mac numerous times. The camera does not matter. It's a tool, a brush if you will. It's what that camera sees, being pointed by the operator, that matters. I've used Canons, Sony, Fuji, and I still own most of that, but the pictures taken with Canons aren't any better than pictures I've taken with Fuji or Sony. They are just pictures. Moments in time, captured, and shared to show the beauty of this world.
A whole day frolicking in the mountains. What could be better. The light conditions were wonderful. There were low diffused clouds, high clouds, sun, and snow. Driving around and stopping every few minutes because new vistas opened up. Great times... really great times. Here are some examples of those vistas. Yes Alberta is simply put, gorgeous. Enjoy!
When I finally got this lens, I had my doubts that it might not be wide enough for landscapes. I like to shoot landscapes at least at 17mm on full frame camera. and this 14mm translates to roughly 21mm, when factoring the crop of Fuji X cameras. I decided to give it a try. I was really impressed with the results. I think 21mm is wide enough for me, although I'm still looking forward to the new 10-24 f4 Fuji lens. Best of all, all this equipment is light, easily transportable, which makes shooting with it so much more fun.
It was a perfect day. The morning was beautiful and we found a few photographers already positioned at Vermillion lakes waiting for the sunrise. The weather conditions were quite perfect for a great sunrise shoot. After the sunrise, we traveled to Lake Louise. Another great iconic location for landscapes. A day of beautiful light, beautiful mountains, and great time shooting it all.
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
I know I've already shared some pictures from our visit at Lake Louise in July of last year (Lake Louise - how I saw it..), but I cannot resist posting more of them. Especially today, when the world outside is so dark and gloomy I can't help but look at these pictures and feast my eyes on summer colors... It is one of the most beautiful places in Banff National Park here in Alberta and every time I go there I am enchanted by the sight of it. I was lucky to have taken my macro lens with me as well and managed to snap a few shots of the beautiful wild flowers growing around the lake. I hope you enjoy all this color as much as I do... Kasia
It's not very often that we have a chance to visit mountains in the evening, when the sun is low on the sky and moon has already risen. The light is incredible then and the colors of the sky and highlights caught on tops of the mountains are just amazing. We have had a chance to see all this beauty while driving through Banff National Park in late July. I have shared some of the pictures taken that day at Lake Louise in my post Lake Louise - how I saw it.. and today, I would like to add some more images from that trip. Regardless of how much hurry we were in, we just could not help ourselves and stop now and again to capture the sites. Enjoy! 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!
Several weeks ago, in his post Lake Louise, Mac has shared some wonderful images taken during our short stop over at that beautiful place. Today, I would like to show you my pictures from that visit. Such a gorgeous place! Every time we visit it I am amazed at it's beauty. Every time I see it differently and enjoy being there even with tons of tourists walking around. We have been fortunate this time having the sun low on the sky. Not yet sunset, but still it made the surroundings so much more interesting. I have taken some shots from the area around the lake, as well, including a few macros. Such a treat seeing it all in the middle of summer with lush greenery and abundance of wild flowers growing everywhere!! Enjoy! Kasia
Coming back from a wedding in British Columbia, we managed to get to Banff National Park, just when the sun was going down. We stopped at one of the most pictured lake, Lake Louise, to stretch our legs after a 8h drive. I figured that since we are here, might as well add some more images to the huge collection already on the internet. Why not? :) This time I decided to leave my Fuji behind, and try out the Sony Nex-7 with a Canon adapter and a 70-200 F2.8. This setup, looks quite funny. It's like placing an LCD screen on the back of the big white Canon lens. Even though the setup looks ridiculous, it works quite well. The lens is very easy to manual focus, with the Sony's focus peaking function. The only minor problem is that because the Canon lenses aperture control is done electronically through the camera, mounting it on an simple adapter makes changes to the lens aperture impossible, it's stays wide open. It's not a huge problem for me, as I like to shoot wide open, but it is annoying at times. Next I tried my 8-15mm Canon fish eye lens with the Sony Nex-7. I think both combinations work exceptionally well, even though the aperture stays open at the widest setting. Here are some images from that evening. Enjoy! Mac
On the way back home, after an awesome trip and really good time, we spotted this huge cloud formation on the horizon.
I think it was the most interesting thing I have seen in a very long time. The clouds were changing their formation by the minute, and it was steadily growing. Luckily it passed us by. I would not want to be driving through this.
Besides seeing a lot of local fauna and flora in the Banff National Park, you always meet the other type of fauna.... the tourists. On a nice day like this there were a lot of them. Which in a way is good, because it provides great shooting opportunities. I just wish I had some business cards with me, so people would be able to get some of the images I took of them. Next time I will be ready, for now I'm just an anonymous dude with a camera. Enjoy.
Now what would a good road trip be, with out some postcards. Postcards from the mountains. Enjoy.
One thing you see on the road trip is an abundance of flora, and if you are lucky you will see some fauna as well.
We got lucky, as well. It was the first time I ever saw a bear in the Banff National Park, and it was a Grizzly. It looked young from the distance, but still I would not like to be near it :)
More pictures to come soon.
So a couple of weeks past few friends of mine and I decided to go for a little photo trip out to the mountains. Since if one wants to get to the mountains from our lovely Edmonton, it's at least 4 hour drive, we decided to leave around 5am. So at around 4:30 we piled into my friends big R-Class Mercedes, when I noticed this on his license plate.
He got this made a few weeks back. You have to be a fan of the british motoring show called Top Gear to understand this :). It put a smile on my face and it felt that the trip is going to be great.
The morning walk up foggy, but the sun soon warmed and peaked over the horizon.
Once we arrived in the Banff National Park we were passed by these guys. We didn't argue.
More in the next post.
