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.

Chaos - April 23, 2020

A fellow that I follow on Instagram had re-posted an image of a downtown cityscape that someone had taken. He went on to find an old photo that he had taken at the same location with a similar view. I took it that he felt like he'd been copied so I replied to his post saying that that's where I was going to go shoot next. He replied and we LOL'd back and forth.

A few days later I was picking up Jen from work and realized that the place mentioned in the correspondence above was just around the corner from where I was parked. I grabbed my camera and ran around the block to try and capture it. When I got on scene I quickly discovered that I couldn't exactly remember the photo in question.. just that it was shot upwards and had a lot of leading lines pointing at the sky. I made a couple shots before heading back to the car.

chaos

Later I looked up the post and realized that I'd missed in my attempt but in spite of that I'd made my own image. From left to right the lines and textures become more chaotic, hence the caption.

Thanks for looking.

Gratitude - April 22, 2020

Earlier this morning I dropped Conor in the north west and was heading home along John Laurie past the southern edge of Nose hill park. Earlier we had looked up at the various paths rising from the trail heads and discussed riding a bike up the hill and whether or not I could do it. From where we were all the trails looked quite long and reasonably steep. Half jokingly I said I would. Now that I was alone I wasn't sure but decided to parking in the lot off of 14th street. Soon I was pulling my bike out of the back of the car.

A few weeks ago I'd parked at this spot for sunset and ended up taking some photos of a big cloud that was hanging over the downtown core. At the time I felt like there wasn't much for photo opportunities across the top of Nose hill because of the lack of features. Once on top it's really a vast expanse of flat prairie like conditions, perhaps once the grasses sprout and wild flowers bloom the mood will change. I pedaled up the hill and soon reached the top where I picked a path and rode off towards the middle somewhere.

What's cool is that you can completely lose sight of the city while you're up there and become lost in the natural setting. Being somewhat new to the area I wasn't sure where to go or how to get there. There seemed to be some main/paved paths and a bunch of boot worn paths that crisscross the landscape.

I pedaled across in kind of a north west direction and somewhere in the middle I stopped to take a photo of this lone hiker. The muted colours and light tones matched my mood. A kind of calm simplicity.

simplicity

I'd been riding quietly across the plains, just me and the whisper of the wind. After a while I started to feel a sense of gratitude and peacefulness for being in this place. I spent an hour or so just moving across the landscape and taking it all in.

Sandy Beach - April 21, 2020

I'd dropped Jen off at work this morning. Her office has been closed for a number of weeks because of Covid and she's been working from home but there was some work that she needed to do from the office.  Rather than pay 10 or 15 $ for parking it was just as easy for me to drop her off, the bonus was that I could find a spot to park and see about getting some morning photos along the river.

I'd parked the car at the bridgeland spot and kind of rode around a bit aimlessly before reaching the river. I wasn't too sure what direction I wanted to go and soon found myself at the east village. From there I thought about exploring something new again and perhaps riding south along the elbow river.

Crossing 9th ave at the Deane house, I could see the light facing downtown was nice for 8:30am.. (sunrise was about two hours ago). There's a path detour with a narrow section that I thought would make an interesting photo. I got off my bike and tried to scout out a photo that would include the bridge and the buildings in the background.

Initially I climbed up the side of the pathway and stood on some road barricade's to shoot over top the edge of the bridge. I could hear a train engine idling and wanted to include it in the photo.

industrial

Pirates and more! - April 20, 2020

I parked at the Bridgeland spot with the intent of heading up onto Tom Campbell hill to see if there were any prairie crocuses blooming. There's been a couple days of warm weather and we're well into spring now so I was hopeful that I'd find some.

After unloading my bike I rode over to the base of the hill and petaled my way up by following a boot worn path to the top. I was secretly pleased that I was able to ride up the hill and had a view dreams about heading out to the mountains to do some actual mountain biking. The old Powderface mountain bike loop in Bragg Creek is calling out to me.

Once on top I scouted for the flowers but didn't find any. I wasn't too surprised, it's only been a couple days of warm weather. Now that my photo idea was squashed I was free to go anywhere and decided to head down the other side of the hill towards the zoo parking lot where the light in the egg/art thing caught my eye. I stopped to take a couple of photos. It took a few minutes before I realized that the animal pattern was repeating and that there was some symmetry to the display.

animals in a cage

Downtown again.. April 16, 2020

Earlier this morning Conor and I drove out to the mountains west of Longview. Some friends had figured out how to get around some of the covid-19 restrictions that are in place to keep people from parking at public land use zones or recreation areas as everything is currently closed. The workaround involved parking at a spot more than 1 km from the trail head. They used bikes to get from the parking spot to the trailhead which seemed like a good idea. I'd hiked the trail in the past and thought it would be a fun objective for Conor and I to try.

Driving out there was nice and we both were excited to be out after spending so much time at home. Turning onto a secondary highway we discovered that it was covered in about 6 inches of fresh snow. We'd packed the van with bikes and our hiking gear and as we drove further into the back country I was getting more and more nervous about the potential of getting stuck. There wasn't any cell service and the van wasn't really meant to be driving these conditions. I was worried that later in the day it would be slushy, wet and really bad.. We ended up turning around and driving home but I was able to grab a few photos.

Winter? O Sure.. 

In the photo above, some skiers head up highway 40 at the winter closure.. note the fresh depth of snow.

The winter that wouldn't end. - April 15, 2020

It's been about five days since I've been out shooting anything.. or out of the house even.. I don't really remember. There's been a bunch of snow and grey and un-inspiring cold weather. Even the lunch time walks have been deferred. It's surprising how quickly it's already the middle of April. Today wasn't that great either so I was surprised when the suggestion of the lunch time walk was agreed to.

For a while now when we've walked the circle there have been gophers running around enjoying the spring like weather. I thought a capturing a gopher poking out of a hole surrounded by snow would make a fun photo. So I grabbed my camera and an old lens.

I don't normally bring the camera on the lunch time walk but maybe I should, cause you never know what you might see. As it turns out having the the camera with me also turns on my photographers eye and now everything I look at becomes a potential photo.

I brought a long lens (300mm + 1.4x Teleconverter) to take the gopher photo because you don't want to get too close to them or they'll just run away and pop down into their hole.  The long focal length also offers up a nice compressed view which I used for the photo below after asking Jen to go waaaaay down the path.

white

On the opposite side of the circle we ran into a cold north wind that surprisingly(!) diminished our enthusiasm for walking outside and we ended up cutting back through the community where the wind was largely blocked by houses. Due to the route change there would be no gophers today.