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 of course in the half hour or so since I first drove by, the initial orange glow was gone and been replaced by a bluer sidelight, which was still pretty nice.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.

Winter comes again.. October 19, 2020

It's been a cold and un-inviting couple of weeks as October zooms by.. I'm writing this on Oct 19, 2020.. It looks like the last blog post was on April 23 so anything that you read between then and now has been backfilled.. I might do it for certain things or I might not, who knows at this point.

My last hike was a few weeks ago at Gibbon pass in Banff, I then went mountain biking a couple times out at Bragg Creek. I'd hoped to ride a few more times but it snowed, got cold and it's been cold since. 

We had a regular kind of fall this year where it got colourful then cold and now it looks like winter has settled in. In recent years it would get suddenly cold in mid September, snow would fall, all the colour would be sapped out of all the trees leaving dead brown leaves hanging limply on the branches. It'd warm up for a few weeks before the cold came back and there'd be this back and forth of cold/warm until the -30's hit in Nov.

It wasn't like that this year, and for that I'm grateful.. you'll hopefully have read some of the backfilled posts that I have yet to create which will show off all the beautiful colours I saw. 

Back to the current situation, it's been a cold an un-inviting couple of weeks as October seems to be zooming by.. The sky went grey and the snowflakes were falling; adding to the dusting of snow that's been collecting around the city.  It was reported that twitter was showing pretty photos of snowflakes on this cool Sunday morning.. after looking out the window and seeing evidence of the snowfall I scrounged around for my camera. I located my macro lens and a set of extenders and found myself outside trying to find snowflakes to photograph.

I'm still in denial that our summer and lovely fall is truly over.. I was wearing shorts and was spelunking around in bare feet as I wandered around the yard looking for snowflakes to photograph. I found some on the hood of my car and as my body temperature started to fall and the shivers came on. I desperately tried to frame up some photos. The goal was to find a snowflake that was standing in the right position against a compatible background.. after a number of attempts I headed back into the house. My feet were colder than I had thought because they did that achy-breaky-heart thing as warmth started to return to my extremities.  

Of all the photos, I think the one above turned out and so I'm sharing it here.

Thanks for looking.

Winter returns - March 13, 2020

After performing my taxi duties for today I drove towards downtown thinking that I'd have a photo session in the mid-afternoon. While in the car I saw a bunch of scenes and I though for sure I'd be able to get some shots today. Winter has returned and there was snow and blank skies everywhere. Being a weekday and the middle of the afternoon there's no free parking downtown. I thought that the streets near rotary park might have street parking so I made my way up there.

I was correct in my memory, 3 hour street parking on top the hill. The only downside is that it was pretty cold out -15 degC with gusty winds and I'd have to walk down the hill and across the center street bridge before I could scope out any downtown locations.

Crossing center street bridge, I can't help but make the photo below.. it happens every time if I have my camera with me..

Obligatory Center Street Bridge shot..

It's O.K. though. I was watching a youtube video and the premise was that you should shoot the things you know across different conditions.. so based on that I don't feel guilty for posting this photo as the entry to the rest of the story..

Thirty below - January 17, 2012

On the way into work this morning I grabbed my coffee from the Center street Starbucks and then drove over to the hill in Crescent heights that overlooks the city. The hill overlooks Memorial drive, the Bow river and Princes Island park in addition to the downtown core. I stopped because it was very cold outside and I thought the exhaust from all the buildings would make a cool picture (literally :-). I took three shots and stitched them together to make a panorama of the skyline. Each shot was a 15 second exposure, while the camera was exposing, I was jumping up and down to get my blood circulating to try and get some warmth back into my fingers. Needless to day I wasn't out there too long. I hope you like it.

Thanks for looking.
Brad

Winter Sun - January 15, 2012

First real cold snap this winter came in over night. Temperature was -17c with a windchill of around -30c. 

When I peeked outside I noticed a halo around the sun and I figured I would try to catch it. I didn`t have a lot of time so my goal was to drive east and look for some trees to help in the composition. I ended up at the same place as the morning of October 8th when I was out looking for a sunrise. The sun was low enough that I could position it behind the line of trees. There is a pretty interesting pattern in the dirt with the snow on it. I like how this turned out although I wish the halo was a bit more pronounced.

After a few shots, my fingers started to get a bit chilled so I packed up and came home.

Thanks for looking.
Brad

Chinook - March 8th, 2011

Driving home from work.. the sun entered the gap between the upper clouds of the Chinook arch and the lower bank of clouds. By the time I was at this location, parked, over the barbed wire fence, gear out, composition chosen, camera settings tweaked, the sun was down. I had missed it by a few minutes, but this is what I was able to get before the colours started to fade..

Thanks for looking.

brad

Coyote - March 4th, 2011

Took a short drive on some country roads and came across this coyote walking through the snow. I stopped and had to go into the back of the car to get the camera out and change the lens. He didn't flee while I was fiddling with my equipment so I was able to get a few shots.

I like this shot because there is a small catch light in his eye. Afterwards I noticed how many of his tracks were all over the place.

Thanks for looking
brad.

Cold again - March 1st 2011

It's cold again.

I had an urge to make a picture so I walked down near the river looking for something interesting after wolfing down my lunch.. for the most part it wasn't interesting. Cold, grey, blah, flat, featureless white on white. I walked closer to the rivers edge where there was a small ribbon of open water. Steam rising up into the cold air. I could hear the chunks of ice bumping into the frozen edges as the water raced past. The steam might have been interesting, the sun was in the wrong spot I couldn`t get any reflections to bring out the texture of the water.

I kept walking, ears starting to burn, hands tucked into my jacket sleave, the skin on my face feeling heavy and numb. Then I came across this tree. At first I noticed all the holes in it from where the birds pecked away to get at the bugs. I took a few shots looking for some composition. Then I noticed the huge branch lying on the ground, I took a few more. I thought I had it, my fingers were stiff from the cold, it was difficult to work the controls.

I was walking away, trying to look through the moisture on the LCD in the bright light. Trying to see what I captured, see if I got anything. I didn't think that I had. I wanted to tilt the lens and make parts of the image out of focus, put emphasis on the tree, but for some reason I didn't do that. I went back and took a few more pictures, trying again. Fingers starting to go numb from holding the camera in the cold. I wanted to get it, so I'd shoot, review the shot - the tree's to high in the frame, adjust the composition, another shot, tweaking the focus this time. Couldn't feel my fingertips anymore. Think I got it. fingers hurt now.. time to go. I head back to the car, trotting along the frozen bike path.

Later, processing the image, I like it. Trying to come up with a name. I looked up synonyms for separate, broken and apart.. Disjoined is what I came up with. The branch is disjoined from the tree.

Later in the day, I tried to make a shot of the downtown skyline. This time I had gloves on, but I had to poke my fingers out to work the controls and they got pretty cold again. I think I've got to figure out a way to get circulation into my hands so they don't get so cold. Perhaps it's a sign of getting old. I'm not old though.

I wanted this image to make you feel how cold it was but I'm not sure if it does. Maybe it's because the colours are too saturated. Perhaps cold shouldn't be so vibrant and colourful.

There was another view that I thought would be interesting, but there was a fence in the way and some other obstacles that I couldn't overcome so I'll have to remember to try it out next time.

Thanks for looking.
brad

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.