This winter I got my first taste of ski touring and backcountry winter camping! Besides the blisters from borrowed boots, it was incredible and I look forward to many more trips. This trip I fell a lot, so not a whole lot of picture taking happened. I promise I’ll get better at skiing and deliver more photos in the future.
Taken in Molar Meadows, Banff
23mm, f7.1, 1/1000 of a second
The prospect of backpacking this summer has me pretty excited. It’s come up a few different ways in the past few weeks and it has me studying google maps, reading trip descriptions, dreaming, and remembering past trips. It’s not the most immediate thing, but it is a familiar thing I can come back to. In a couple weeks I’m going ski touring and winter camping for a few days, which will be new for me. New things come with both excitement and nervousness. But backpacking will be like climbing into a warm sleeping bag, like curling up with a purring cat. This photo is from quite a while ago in Banff National Park. I was looking through some old photos and reliving some old trips.
Banff National Park
32mm, f6.7 1/180 of a second
Thanks to everyone who made it out on Wednesday night to the St. Albert Photo Club! We had a packed room — I got to meet lots of photographers, and see some familiar faces. I had a great time and appreciated all your comments and questions! Best of luck to all of you in your photography adventures!
Bighorn Sheep in Jasper National Park
210mm, f4, 1/640 of a second
On Wednesday, Jan 13th (yes – in two days) I’ll be giving a talk at the St. Albert Photo Club. There will be a lot of practical photography advice, plenty of photos to critique and enjoy, and hopefully some inspiration. It will include a lot of nature photography, as that is mainly what I do, and it will also include other photos that I’ve never shown before. This may be slightly embarrassing for me, and hopefully entertaining and educational for you. I hope to see you there!
Jasper National Park, AB
210mm, f4, 1/5000 of a second
It’s been ages since I’ve been backpacking and this fall I went up to Aster Lake in Kananaskis Country and stayed for a couple nights. It was very quiet and beautiful. I didn’t see any other creatures the whole time I was there, human or animal.
Apparently I need to go backpacking a whole lot more because I found out how out of shape I am. And as I was setting up camp after a gruelling day getting up the mountain, I found out I packed two extra sleeping mats (in addition to my kind of heavy comfy mat) up inside my tent bag without realizing it (they were still packed in there from camping with Anna a few weeks back). Obviously I need to get my act together.
One thing I loved were the replaceable batteries in my phone. Of course there’s no signal up there, but I got to read a few books this way without any extra weight. I’m thoroughly enjoying a Kurt Vonnegut reading spree at the moment.
This photo is one of the many waterfalls on the outlet of Aster Lake, not far from the campsite. The moon was incredibly bright (you can see the shadows cast by the moon, especially on the waterfall).
7mm, f4, 25 seconds
Why have the updates been so slow this summer and fall? There are many reasons, but one of the main ones is that I’ve taken on a large graphic design project with Alieo Games, an Edmonton startup working on educational games. Specifically (at the moment), an online creative writing game for kids. And it’s been a lot of fun. I’m really happy with how it’s shaping up, and I’m working with great people!
But even an exciting project like this can not stop my photography. It has, however, cut down on my computer time for processing pictures and blogging, and I’m not planning on doing any shows this Christmas. If you’re looking for prints, you’ll have to email me, talk to Tix on the Square, or the Daffodil Gallery. So the backlog of pictures is growing on my computer, and I’m excited to share them with you as I get to them.
I’ll try to post when I can, and I expect things will pick up around here again next year.
12mm, f5, 1/500 of a second
A few weeks ago I saw part of this canyon from the highway in Jasper and I had to go investigate. There wasn’t really a clear trail to it, but quite a few people have been here before. I tried walking up the lower canyon to get to this wall, and it might be possible if I wasn’t carrying a bunch of camera gear. There is a lot of scrambling past boulders, trees, and dry falls to get up the canyon and I eventually gave up and climbed the ridge beside. I’d like to go back in spring and see meltwater pouring out of this slot in the rocks — that would be a sight to see.
I was late getting to the park, so I started hiking around 6 in the evening. This was taken after sunset. If you look carefully at the tiny trees (you might have to click on the photo to see them), you can see the scale of this thing — the large tree on the left is more than double my height.
OK, I just had to show you these, and I have questions. Not exactly a spectacular photo until you notice the colors in the waterfall. I haven’t changed the colors at all, this is what I saw as the sun rose over the ridge. Not sure if the color change is from the sun rising or from a slightly different angle on my part. I was climbing as the color changed, but these are only a few minutes apart. They lost all color shortly after. I’ve seen rainbows in waterfall mist before, but never the waterfall itself. Maybe someone with a optics or physics background out there could tell me how this occurs. Do I have to be this far away for the whole waterfall to change color? If I was closer would the rainbow just be a stripe across the waterfall (which is much more common)? Is it just the angle created by the sun, waterfall and me?
300mm, f11, 1/640 of a second
60mm, f2.8, 1/1250 of a second
The first day in Crowsnest Pass I climbed McGillivray Ridge, thinking it would be an easy re-introduction to hiking up mountains again since it’s been a while. Turns out the I need to climb a lot more mountains! It’s only 600m elevation gain, but I was pretty tired by the time I got to the top. Maybe the problem is that I always haul a lot of camera gear along, and I eschew hiking poles in favour of having a camera in my hand. Despite being a very warm sunny day at the bottom, by the time I got to the top I was wearing two jackets and a touque and I wished I had mittens along. I didn’t see anyone else the whole time though, so it’s a great hike for getting away from the crowds.
The crocuses near the top were spectacular. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen crocuses this purple. And they were everywhere. I got a chance to give my new Olympus 60mm Macro a good workout and I’m super impressed with that lens. Focusing is really fast for a macro lens, and it’s extremely sharp. My only complaint is that it doesn’t have a manual focus switch on the lens. But for being 1/5 of the weight of my Sigma macro and giving me similarly impressive results, I’m really happy.
60mm, f2.8, 1/1250 of a second
This year has been a year for starting new ventures and hanging on to some of the old ones I like. My friend and fellow photographer Eric have started shooting together (Threaded Studio) and teaching photo classes together (St. Albert Photo Classes). All the while, I’ve been trying to keep up with my photo jewelry and prints in stores and still get to the odd craft sale (I’ll be at Edmonton Folk Fest again! Woohoo!). This hasn’t left much time for soul-soothing wilderness, but a couple weeks ago, Anna and I managed to get out to Crowsnest Pass for a few days. This photo is of Mt Ward, which is on the continental divide. It was taken from near Crowsnest Mountain a little after sunset. I’ll have a lot more photos from this trip coming in the next few days.
100mm, f7.1, 1/400 of a second