I’m not doing many shows this summer – in fact only one. I’ve had to narrow them down, but the one I’ve managed to keep is Folk Fest, which I’m super excited about! It’s always a great time, with lots of amazing music and friendly people. And I’ve got lots of new stuff this year. So if you’re one of the lucky ones who managed to get tickets, I’ll see you there!
Today was a beautiful day. The rain was steadily dripping from the leaves with an occasional heavier shower when a gust of wind came along. The loons were laughing and calling and the yellow warblers were busy in the branches overhead. I was out hiking with my camera, getting thoroughly soaked, taking lots of photos, searching for the birds whose calls I didn’t recognize. I went out prepared, with a mug of warm coffee for my morning breaks, and neoprene socks on (for the record – they are amazing. I will never hike in the rain without them again). It was the best morning I’ve had in a long time.
This summer I probably won’t have a lot of time — for hiking or blogging or all my other activities. I’m sad about this, but happy about the trade-offs. I’ll be learning lots and hopefully saving up some money. And I’m hoping to be a bit more free come September. So I’ll post updates as I can, but know that I’m learning things that will hopefully make this blog more interesting and give me a wider range of photo opportunities in the future.
I’ve now got some photos up for sale at Fresh Cafe & Espresso Bar, a new coffee shop on 116 Street just south of Jasper (10038 – 116 Street). Go check them out and enjoy a coffee and amazing snacks and sandwiches.
You still have almost a week to see “Water”, my exhibit at the Stanley Milner Library. I’m really happy with it, and hope you all get to see it! If you don’t get a chance to go see the prints, you can see a poor substitute here: http://joelkoop.com/pwater.php
Photo taken with a Canon 5d, 150mm macro, at f2.8, 1.6 seconds. (This isn’t one of the photos up at Fresh, but it’s one I wanted to share at some point. You’ll have to go to Fresh to find out for yourself.)
I got the chance to head out to Chickakoo Lake a couple weeks ago during a big spring snow storm. There was very little snow around at the beginning of the day, but by the end it was a few inches thick (I think Environment Canada said 10cm). This made for wonderful photo conditions and horrible driving conditions.
Birch (Paper birch around here — Betula papyrifera) trees always catch my attention. They can be so colorful or almost pure white, but they always have great contrast — light trunks and dark branches. They’re a lot less common than poplars around Edmonton, and often a forest will have a birch tree or two in it, but mainly consists of more common trees. At Chickakoo Lake the situation is almost turned around. There are still a lot of poplars around, but the birch trees outnumber them.
Taken in rainforest of British Columbia. Until we see green outside again, we’ll have to either enjoy photos and memories or the greyscale palette that nature gives us for a few months every year.
It’s all unclear, but beautiful.
Technical Note: I tried out a variable ND filter for the first time on this hike. ND (neutral density) filters block light, while otherwise (ideally) not affecting your image at all. This lets you have longer shutter speeds in bright light, which lets you blur subjects more easily. The above photo was a 4 second exposure.
The variable ND filter worked pretty well, but you have to be careful with ultra wide angle lenses. Like any polarizing filter, variable ND filters can create a dark stripe through your image if you use a wide angle lens, depending on the lighting.
A quiet walk along a forest trail. Warm yellow leaves lit by the setting sun. What more could you want?
This photo was taken in Cooking Lake Provincial Rec Area. Actually the name is “Cooking Lake – Blackfoot Grazing, Wildlife Provincial Recreation Area”, but that’s a ridiculously long name, and I don’t intend on typing it out every time I mention it. Anyway, this is the area just south of Elk Island National Park. It’s almost exactly the same, except it has a few fields and no bison. And you don’t have to pay to get in. All in all, a great area to go hiking.
This was an overcast day, and a little misty. There were water droplets on the grass and a bit of a breeze rustling the leaves too. It was in this muffled darkening atmosphere that I first noticed the elk. The bull was watching me, with his herd off to the side, behind a copse of apsen.
I crouched down and watched them for a while. A calf was still nursing, and many of the elk were grazing, but the bull kept watching me. As the light faded along with my vision, the herd moved off into the trees. That first photo was taken in the trees where the elk disappeared into, after it had become quite dark.
This was a 20 second exposure on a clear, still, moonless night in Dillberry Lake Provincial Park. This took some accurate esimating of the distance from me to the tree and a focus distance indicator on my lens. I’m not sure if some modern SLRs could autofocus in this kind of darkness, but mine certainly can’t.
I’m starting to enjoy night photography more all the time. It forces me to slow down — once it’s dark there’s really no rushing necessary. Sunsets and sunrises can be a little more stressful as they’re very time-limited. Finding the balance between enjoying the outdoors and becoming a professional photographer can sometimes be hard. There’s always pressure to get a better shot, a different composition. But coming up with something new is also extremely rewarding.
When you see an elk, what do you do? You stop and take a photo of course. And if the elk stays there, you get closer. After all, wasn’t it Robert Capa who said, “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.”?
But for some reason your brain starts to throw up little red flags. Wait a minute, you also want context — the animal acting in its habitat. And maybe you don’t want a photo of an elk eyeball, maybe you want the whole elk. And anyway, isn’t it bad for animals to get accustomed to people? And dangerous for the people?
And then, for some strange reason, you start to think of photographing weddings, of posing and of lighting. Direct evening light is pretty good — it’s warm and lends definition to shapes, but what if you backlight this? That would wash it out and give it a dream-like quality. But animals are not as cooperative as people who hire you to take their photos. You have to do the moving, and there’s no adding light. You know that flash would bother this elk and disrupt his feeding, possibly making him aggressive.
So you do the moving, far enough away that the animal is not disturbed. You wait for the animal to move into a position that works, you get the sun at just the right angle, and you get a photo. You don’t know if it’s a good photo or a great photo, but you’re pretty sure it’s not a bad photo. And that is satisfying.