Diamond T and Elbow Falls - March 13th, 2011

Conor and I went skiing at Canada Olympic Park in the afternoon. They closed at five and have four hour rentals which worked out pretty good. It was busy though. After two hours we'd made a total of about four runs. The runs take about 4 minutes to get down the hill. The rest of the time was standing in the line waiting for the lift. While we were in line Conor said he had a headache so we decided to leave. We got some lunch which helped his head and he was feeling better.  Because it was such a nice day and still early we drove out to Bragg Creek and walked on the Diamond T trail at Station Flats.

The hike was fun, I shot some photos of him and we had a few snowball fights and even made a snowman whom we named George.. Click on the picture below to see some other shots from our hike.

After we finished the hike I drove down to Elbow Falls and tried to take a few shots of the river. I was hoping to try out my ten stop filter again.  I've posted two pictures, the first - "In Motion" was at 1/250th of a second and the water motion is frozen the second - "Flow" was a 20 second exposure. Both shots are from the same camera position and almost redundant but I like how both of them turned out individually. I hope you do too.

The second image..

Just for fun, here`s another shot of the river.

Thanks for looking.
brad

Early Morning - March 13, 2011

After getting up and stumbling around a bit I noticed that the time on the TV/PVR said it was 7:30am.. it wasn't jiving because it still looked pretty dark outside. I checked my phone and it said it was 7:30 too. I looked  at the weather app because it shows the sunrise time, and it said the sun was suppose to rise at 6:57am which confirmed what I thought.

I'm standing on the deck in the back yard now and definitely can see that the sun has not risen.  From the light it looks like could be a nice sunrise. I make my way downstairs and check on the computer and find out that today is daylight savings time (as I type this, I'm remembering that I need to check the clock on the camera and make sure it's in the right place..) So I decide I'm going to go out and take some photos of the sunrise.

I grab my stuff and start driving out towards the city limits. I now had less than ten minutes before the actual sunrise so I wasn't going to go far. As I waited for the light at 68th and McKnight the sky was all orange and I made this shot.

I like orange. It's one of my favorite colours. The lines are wavey because of atmospheric turbulence. I scaled down a copy of this one and made it my computer desktop wallpaper.

I drove down the road and stopped by a field with some trees.

In this next shot, I like the colour gradient that the light is making. I tried to hide the sun behind the tree so the brightness wouldn't overwhelm the image and black out the rest of it.

In the next image I like how the sunlight is hitting the snow in the foreground. It didn't last long though the sun soon moved up behind some clouds and the light was muted. I setup for a more involved shot with the tilt-shift lens which let me get the foreground and background in focus but the light was flat and missing the playfulness that this image has. Something to take away for next time. I like that I can review images and see what works and use that to think about what I should be looking for when I'm in the field. I think it helps to try and pre-visualize what I might do differently next time.

Thanks for looking.
brad.

In the field - March 9th, 2011

I had a few minutes and the sun was setting so I parked the car and made my way into the field. I liked how the trees looked against the sky which had some nice clouds rolling through. I used the tilt-shift lens to throw some of the frame out of focus.

I hope you like it.

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

PSA Hockey - March 5th, 2011

I was lucky to get to shoot my Nephew's hockey game - he wears number 15 in the white jersey. They were playing in a playoff match with the Trails West team at the Calgary Village Square leisure center. When I got there they had just taken to the ice. I was able to stand on the end of the players bench - which was a pretty good spot for this arena. The rink is surrounded by plexi-glass and topped with netting. If I wasn't on the bench I would have had to shoot through either of those obstacles, and I don't think anything would have turned out.

The place was pretty dark from a photography perspective, I made most of the shots iso3200, f3.2 at 1/320th on my D300 using the 70-200mm lens, and still had to push the exposure in post processing.

Click on the picture above to get to the photo gallery.

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