Winter mornings - November 9, 2020

The weather over the weekend was cloud covered, snowing and really windy and so I spent most of the time huddled in the house avoiding winter's onslaught. It was kind of sad, really, as I was browsing Instagram it looked like the bad weather was localized ?! with bluer skies out in the mountains.. I dunno. I haven't been to the mountains for a while now and I'm starting to wonder what it's going to take to get out there again.

This morning the sky was clear and the sun was out with no wind it was a brisk -12degC though. As I drove into downtown to drop Jen off, the beautiful orange sunrise light was just scraping the tops of the buildings. About 25 minutes later I was looking for a place to park in Bridgeland so I could get out and grab some photos.

I'd seen the view below as I drove into downtown and wanted to take a closer look at it.. of course in the half hour or so since I first drove by, the initial orange glow was gone and been replaced by a bluer sidelight, which was still pretty nice. Of course it's another photo of the Calgary tower, how could you expect anything less. I don't think I can take a picture downtown without including the tower.

Center Street - March 19, 2020

Yesterday, I went out after dinner thinking that there would be a sunset. I had been fiddling with a photography app on my phone (photopills) using it to determine where the sun would set and what the best position to be in would be. I knew as soon as got outside I knew it was all for not.. there was heavy cloud in the west and the sun hidden. I quickly lost interest in the plan but drove around anyway. I couldn't really find the motivation to stop anywhere and with all the flat light so eventually I just drove back home. Today, after dropping Conor off in the Northwest I thought I'd make my way downtown to see about taking some photos. The light still wasn't great and it was pretty cloudy but I wanted to go anyway, possibly to make up for last night.

On the way, I needed gas and stopped at a station on 16th ave over by the Foothills hospital. As I was filling up I noticed the group of workers gathered across the street. It looked kind of interesting (to me) so I parked the car, changed lenses and tried to frame up a photo. For some reason I felt very self conscious about the whole thing. Because I was across the intersection I needed to wait until there wasn't any traffic between me and the scene so I'd end up standing there out in the open waiting to take a photo. Some workers were making their way across the intersection and buying snacks at the gas station or coffee at the Tim Hortons behind me.. As they came close I'd put the camera down and sit in my car and for them to move out of the way. It got a little silly because I'm sure I was in and out of the car about four times before being able to grab a couple shots and then decide that I was going to move on.

On break

Elbow River - February 25th 2011

I didn't have much time before I had to be back in town.

I drove out to the Bragg Creek area to see if I could make an image or two. It felt like it'd been so long since I'd held my camera in my hands. In my mind I wanted to find some water, the falls, the river, anything. I parked the car at the gate by Elbow falls and set the timer on my phone to go off after 30 minutes. This would give me time to get back to the car so I could leave. I had, at most, an hour to find an image.

I put on my snow pants and boots and headed over towards Beaver Flats. The sun was out, the sky was a brilliant shade of blue. Shocking white snow from a recent snowfall. Cool crisp air. It was beautiful. I walked down by the river and composed some shots - being careful not to make foot prints in the scene. I like how this one turned out.

After a bit I walked a further down and found a blanket of snow covering the rocks along the riverbank.. like moguls on the ski hill. I was quite low to the ground, and trying to compose on the tripod.. sometimes it gets a little dicey being all hunched over like that. I'd knocked the camera and it caused the lens to tilt the focus plane. I decided to work with it, and like the effect here.

Then the phone beeped at me, I reset the timer for another 15 minutes.

I walked over to the beaver pond and got pretty excited at the idea of the mountain and the calm open water. I wanted to take a panoramic image of the scene - three shots merged into one to show a wider than normal view. I like how sharp I was able to get the image. However, I'm not too happy with the composition - or the view. It feels too.. normal, and kind of boring. I think I got caught up in trying to get the focus and the panorama shot that I didn't pay enough attention to the rest of the details that could have made this a really great image.

What do you think about this picture..

All of a sudden, it was time to go. I packed up and made it back to the car with about four minutes to spare on my self imposed deadline. I was drove back into town in about 45 minutes. The quick escape was good, for a while I felt refreshed.

Thanks for looking.

brad.

Elbow Falls - Feb 10th, 2011

Really fast trip out to Elbow falls to get this image. Drive there, take the picture, drive home. ok I took two or three pictures.. maybe 5.. yeah, I`m sure I didn`t take more than 25 shots. But they were quick shots.

I'd picked up a filter which is essentially a piece of black glass that you put in front of the lens. I was anxious to try it out. When you put it on the camera you need to add 10 stops to let the same amount of light through. One use for it is to do what I've done here - make the water all smooth and glassy. The exposure without the filter was at 1/250th of a second. With the filter the exposure became 6 seconds.

What I wasn`t expecting was that the colour balance would go all blue like this.

Overall, I like it and the effect. I`m looking forward to using the filter for making some creative images once all this ice melts off and we get lots of water flowing. I suspect with all the snow we've had this winter that the creeks and streams will flow nicely this spring.

Thanks for looking.

brad