Evening Drive through Banff National Park

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

The Rockies This Summer

We were very lucky this summer to be able to travel through the Rockies twice - so far :D.  The first time we have visited only Jasper National Park in Alberta visiting some of the places we have not seen yet.  The weather, again, was on our side and in spite of the very strong wind the temperature as well as the sky cooperated and allowed us to stop by and take lots of pictures...  It was a very wet beginning of the summer and the lakes and rivers were full of water (as you can see on pictures of both Jasper and Talbot Lakes below). We have made a little detour before we entered the park to visit another site in the mountains, but the roads were closed due to flooding...  There was still quite a lot of snow high in the mountains and we have been granted wonderful views of glaciers and snow covered peaks (Mount Edith Cavell with her glaciers, below).  Here is a few shots from the first trip:

It was a wonderful trip, filled with great views and animal sitings that are always a pleasure...

Our second trip took place just a week ago and it took us a very long way through the mountains to British Columbia and back home to Alberta. We were a bit short on time and could not stop too often to take pictures but we have still managed to take a few stops here and there admiring the views and the abundant flora.  It's amazing how of the wild flowers full the mountain meadows were this time of year!! It was simply gorgeous and since I did take my macro lens with me I took advantage of it and here are some of the results:

On the way there we could not resist a short stop at the beautiful Moose Lake, B.C. It was a gorgeous day, the clouds providing a lovely background to the mountains surrounding this lake and the wild flowers bloomed with abandonment making the views even more appealing...

As before we have decided to take a different way home and could not resist stopping at Lake Louise (since we were travelling through Banff National Park this time).  After we left there, the views became even more beautiful... We rarely have a chance to travel through the mountains with setting sun and moon accompanying us. This time we were granted both of these and it was such a gorgeous set of views that, regardless of a long travel ahead, we have decided to stop a few more time to capture the wonderful scenes.  I hope you like them as much as we did :D

Kasia

Night or Day?

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

Randomly Back in Time

Since the temperatures in Edmonton dropped to well below -20C, it was a perfect time to do a little house cleaning in Adobe Lightroom.  I still have to figure out the best workflow for myself, as it is a challenge to find things in my over blown Lightroom catalog.  So far I have decided to split the main catalog into yearly chunks.  I will have to see how that works out, but  I can already forsee that if I'm not careful I might end up with a bigger mess.  Nevertheless, going through the first dslr year of 2007 I found some shots which I thought needed a revisit.  So here they are.  Completely random and not in any particular order.  Enjoy!

Rising

Yesterday evening I glimpsed this big orange thing in the eastern sky.  Of course by the time I got my tripod, and fitted my long zoom lens on the camera, and set everything up, it wasn't as orange or as big anymore.  Still I was able to capture this shot of our natural satellite.  Maybe not the most original shot, but I think it came out pretty good.  Enjoy.

First Challenge Almost Complete

The first challenge for the DPC Olympics is almost complete. It will be done tonight at midnight. There were two themes: Color on Color and Black and White in Color. Good thing is that they were repeated challenges, so one could go back to previous one for ideas and inspiration:
Color on Color

Black and White in Color

I thought it would be easier to do a B&W in Color so finally after spending a lot of time (I mean a lot of time) I've submitted this photo:

I've seen our team's photos, and I think we stand a good chance. Voting will begin on Feb 27th, as well as another challenge will be announced. There was also another challenge posted themed Free Study. So just for the hell of it I've submitted a photo I took yesterday on the way to work.

We'll see how they do. Just a reminder you can view the Olympic results at the official DPC Olympic page.

Total Lunar Eclipse.

So the weather was perfect. A little bit of cloud on the horizon, but wispy enough that they did not block the view of the rising moon. The eclipse started around 6:43pm and I had a perfect unblocked view from my backyard. Cleared a foot of snow of the deck, setup my tripod and started shooting. First pictures were test of timing and aperture. I found that closing aperture to about F14 and setting the shutter at 1/40 gave pretty good results of the encroaching shadow on the moon.

When the totality approached the moon did turn a shade of darker orange almost reddish hue.

The eclipse is almost over as I write this. Next one will be in December of 2010. It was a quite an amazing show. I would have loved to try this with a 2x extender to really increase the zoom. I guess I have about 3 more years to save up for one.