Downtown Sunrise

For a few weeks before and after the first day of spring - when the rising sun is still low on the horizon - the light will pour down the street wrapping everything in it's golden hue.

I think this light is magical.

As we move further into spring towards summer the sun will continue it's march northwards the angle will change and the effect will be lost. Until the fall when the sun starts to move south again.

I love the changing of the seasons, and am looking forward to the light after so many days of darkness.

Thanks for looking
brad.

Spring weather..

Driving home on St. Patrick's Day, the sky was looking real nice. There was a big cloud moving across the city and the sun was starting to set and lighting it up from the side. I chased the cloud out east of the city for a bit looking for a place to take a photo of it. Most of the country side east of the city is flat.

Driving past Conrich I've seen a field with a windmill in it. I thought that it'd make an interesting subject if I could get it lined up with the clouds in the background. The clouds were moving away faster that I expected, and soon they would be off on the horizon.

I was a little nervous because I had to jump a gate to get into the field and I had no idea if the farmer lived in the house across the road from where I stopped. I didn't really want to get yelled at for trespassing in the field. Eventually, I got enough courage to jump the fence and started walking towards the windmill. I noticed a lot of cow pies in the field which made me a little jumpy but I couldn't see any bovine's in the area so I felt a little safer.

I took two lenses into the field with me, the real wide 10-24mm and the longer 24-70mm. I noticed that the 10-24mm was a bit too wide and because the sun was low behind me my shadow was entering the frame. I switched to the 24-70mm and zoomed in a little to compose some shots. The one above is one that I liked.  I didn't notice until after that there is a pump in the middle of the windmill.

Thanks for looking.
brad

School Dance

I went to the kids school dance.

Conor, doing his thing.. 

Brought my camera, and had fun snapping pictures.


Thanks for looking.
brad

BC Place Panorama..

I was in Houston on a business trip in early February. All the IT Leaders from my company came together to discuss IT things, from our Australian region Jamie Paterson was in attendance and I spoke to him a little bit about his photography pursuits - in his spare time he's a big Australian landscape photographer. It's because of his influence that I tried to make a couple of large panorama's when I was in Vancouver.

Here is a shot of English Bay with BC Place ( where the opening ceremonies where held ) and some of the Olympic venues. The big Q was a pavillion put on by Quebec, the orb on the right was a Saskatchewan exhibit.



This particular photo is 14 stitched images, and was taken on the morning of the opening ceremonies for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.

I'm hoping to use this technique more this spring and summer as I start to find the outdoors again. It feels like it's been forever since I've been to the mountains.

Thanks for looking,
brad.

Our Olympic trip - Day 1

I've posted some images from the first day of our trip to the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver on my smugmug account. We left on February 11th and flew from Calgary to Vancouver at around two o-clock in the afternoon. The flight is just under an hour and the time difference is an hour so we almost got there before we left ;-)

Before flying out we had lunch at the Calgary airport.

Conor having a big ol slice of pizza

Clare munching on a french fry

Our Plane getting ready to take us to Vancouver..

2010 Olympics..

I was very fortunate to be able to attend the 2010 Vancouver Olympic opening ceremonies.. While in Vancouver I was able to see the opening ceremonies a short track speed skating event and a medal ceremony.

As far as pics go, I only have one for you right now and here it is.. a panorama of BC Place prior to the Opening ceremonies..



If I was smart I would have done the same during the ceremonies itself, maybe during that awesome rendition of Hallelujah by K.D. Lang but because I'm not all that smart this is all you get from a panorama perspective.. I snapped 11 shots and merged them into a single photo using Hugin. I didn't do much processing or whatever to the pics other than to convert to .jpg, and overall I liked the results here..

If your interested in a print, the original is 16800x3920 pixels, please e-mail me and we can talk about it.

brad.

Oldman - Feburary 5, 2010

I was flying home from a trip to the US and had brought my camera and a small collection of lenses with me as carry-on. I spent the entire four hour flight with my head glued to the window searching for and taking photos of the interesting shapes and textures of our earth. When picking a seat for the flight I wanted two things - a window on the left side of the plane and a seat that was forward of the wing. I wanted to be on the left side so I’d see the mountains when we flew close to home and I wanted to be ahead of the wing because exhaust from the airplane engine will distort details in the photos.

As the plane approached Calgary I got pretty excited at seeing the river with the textures created by the light and shadow, it was exactly the kind of scene I was hoping for. The challenge to shooting out of the plane window is that it moves pretty quickly and you don’t have a lot of time to make the composition, and if you miss - it’s gone. I zoomed out to 22mm to capture as much of the river as I could and also was able to frame in the mountains. What I like about this photograph is the different textures that appear across the frame, from the deep bold cuts in the foreground to the soft, almost ethereal, mountains in the distance.

Later, I was able to locate the same view on Google Earth and discovered that the river in question is the Oldman river that flows through southern Alberta just south west of Fort Mcleod.

Thanks for looking,
Brad.