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.
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
Sometimes telling a story with your images is not the easiest thing to accomplish. As a photographer, one should try at least to tell a story. It gives images meaning and context. Like any other art, it may have different meaning to different people. Here is a little story of two girls getting stranded on a side of a road, some where in Alberta. All was shot with the Fuji X-Pro1. One could call this a lifestyle photo session. Personally this could easily be a portrait photo session as well. I have a hard time categorizing these images. I'll let you, the viewer, fill in the blanks :) Enjoy!
It's always a lot of fun to travel on unknown little dirt roads in Alberta. You can discover so much. In my travels I try to get myself lost in a sense. I take turns where I think the area might present itself with something interesting. This little trip was no different. Completely by accident my wife and I found ourselves on the road and passed by this beautiful lake. It's not big enough so it did not show up on maps that I have, but I had my GPS handy so I marked the spot for future reference. It was late spring, and noise coming out of the surrounding reeds, was almost deafening. Ducks, geese, and other flying species were making quite a racket. It was quite amazing. Unfortunately I wasn't prepared for fowl photography, as I was testing my Fuji X-Pro1, and did not bring any long lenses. My main reason was landscape and HDR. As always it was a great trip. Enjoy!
Well, it was time to say good-bye to Glenfinnan and head back to Edinburgh. We have decided to make a circle and chosen a different road this time, as always, trying to fit as much new views as it was possible in the short time we had. It was definitely not a mistake and, though, we had been stuck for a while in a traffic jam in Fort William (road constructions - what else?!) we were not sorry at all. The weather system that we've encountered at the end of our nature walk seem to have been chasing us and the sky was truly amazing. So even stuck in traffic we have snapped a few shots of it.
Starting to be short on time, we weren't really planning on stopping too many times on the way, alas the views were so gorgeous that we have made numerous stops here and there taking pictures, every time promising it was the last..
How can you not stop when the rainbow shows up invitingly?!
Seduced again and again by colours and textures we were in awe of the beauty of the views we've encountered...
Oh.. to live in this little house for a while.. That would be something, for sure.. See it all in the changing seasons and colours would be something quite extraordinary, I think...
With such amazing textures and colours and ever-changing sky it was very hard not to photograph the same views over and over again, because every time we turned the light has changed and showed us yet another aspect of the landscape.. Glorious,wonderful places, all of them!!
The weather has started to catch up with us. There was a serious rain on the horizon and yet we still took our time to stop, not willing to miss anything...
See what I mean about the changing sky?! Well, it was time to hide in the car, since the rain started to fall and the road was calling.. What we've found next, I will share a bit later. I hope we were able to capture the wonderful beauty of these places. I can imagine them in the late summer or early fall when heather is in bloom, adding more colour to the ground... I would love to be able to truly explore this stretch of the road again, with more time and the ability to actually hike in the mountains a bit and visit places farther away from the highway..
Kasia
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
After coming back home from our little morning excursion, I decided to take the boys out in the evening. This time we didn't get lost, but still had a pleasant trip out. Enjoy!
Getting lost never was so rewarding. You can easily get lost on the Alberta back roads, specially when you are not really paying attention to where you are going, only to the landscape around you. Luckly a homing GPS will get you out of most troubles, with which we realized that we traveled over 100km away from home. Here are more results of getting lost. Enjoy!
Driving and ultimately getting lost in the Alberta back roads must be the best pass time for me. There is nothing better than enjoying good music, great company, beautiful scenery, and picture taking. This is what happened when me and my lovely wife, took to the Alberta back roads. Initially we wanted to visit Elk Island National park, but I took a wrong turn somewhere along the way. The rest as they say is history... of images. Enjoy!
I just had to try out the 40 year old film camera, on a little drive I took over the weekend. A good friend of mine, a specialist in photographing pets, agreed to go for a little drive in the country, just exploring. We took the backroads, and after a while, because I was paying more attention to the scenery, then to where I was going... I got lost. I mean lost, completely utterly lost. To make matters worse, it was a grey, overcast day, and no sun peeking through at all. Didn't have a clue if I was driving north, south, west or east. Luckily my iPhone found the way home. Here are some shots taken with the film camera. Again almost no editing, just a little crop here and there. Enjoy.
Continuing the little road trip post from yesterday, here my favourite pictures from the trip.
Plans... planning outside activities during Alberta spring, is like throwing a dart at a dart board, blindfolded and standing on your head. That's precisely what happened last week. Randy Pond and me were planning and interesting shoot last friday with 3 models. During that week the weather has been gorgeous, with lots of sun and temperatures going as high as +26C. By Friday it all changed. Temperatures went down to barely +9C with lots of cold wind. We were waiting to the last minute for the weather to improve. I even packed all my gear into my vehicle before going to work that Friday. Unfortunately because of the cold wind with heavy hearts we decided to cancel the shoot. Since I had all my gear I figured that I might as well use some of it.
As per Mr. Murphy and his laws the sun came out and the clouds were dispersing creating fantastic shapes.
Since the plans were for a model photo shoot, one thing I left at home was my wide angle lens. So I had to use my 24-70mm. Don't get me wrong 24mm is plenty wide, but personally I love the field of view I get with the 17mm.
So although the initial plans bit the dust, I didn't come out empty handed. To be continued....
A coworker gave a great tip where I could find some bald eagles. It's an old gravel pit, which right now is a little lake. He showed me some pictures that he was able to take with his little point and shoot camera, and there were 5 0r 6 bald eagles just sitting calmly in the trees. So I decide to go on a hunt myself. I did see one young eagle, but it was too far away. Even with my 400mm zoom it would make a good shot. Maybe it was beacause there were a few people around, and they got scared away. I'm planning to visit that spot again to see if maybe I can get a couple of good shots. Since I couldn't get a shot of an eagle, I didn't want to leave empty handed. Here are some random shots I too while there. Enjoy.
Nothing says "Alberta Girl" more then doing a photo shoot in of Candace in a bikini in +3C temperatures, and windy. She really wanted to do this shoot, and the previous day the weather was quite nice for late March. Unfortunately the day we planned this shoot, the weather turned for the worse. Candace braved the chills though, like any good Canadian would.
I mean really, when temperatures hit anywhere above 0C, you start seeing t-shirts and shorts on the streets.
During our shoot, we found some old junk in a pile ready for pickup, so I tried using some of it to create something different.
We were shooting at University of Alberta Farms. It's a large piece of land almost in the middle of Edmonton, that is almost like a little rural Alberta community. Anything from barns, livestock, fields ready for planting, and farm machinery. It's a great little place, and perfect contrast for bikini shoot.
We didn't shoot for very long, as I felt sorry for Candace, as she was getting really cold. So we wrapped up the shoot by a small tree, and a little more clothes.
