Photo of the Day – the life of a nature photographer

Guiding Memory 13

Friday, April 24th, 2020

Most of my recent paddling has been on rivers, but the lake circuit in Lakeland Provincial Park is beautiful! Another bonus is that as a leader there is less to worry about on lake trips. In some ways you have to work a little harder: there are portages which are usually sweaty and mosquito filled. Sometimes you have to work hard paddling into the wind. But you get to explore a little more – you are not being swept down a single path. It has been fun to change it up. One of the next lake trips on my radar is the Bowron Lakes Circuit in BC.

This series is during spring 2020, when all my trips are likely going to be cancelled for this next summer due to COVID-19.

The Best is the Enemy of the Good

Landscape, Mountain, Photo of the Day

Thursday, January 9th, 2020

This has resulted in very few blog posts for a very long time. So I’m going to try to post something as opposed to nothing, which hopefully is an improvement.

Evening in Kluane National Park – clouds are sometimes hard to shake.

The title quote is attributed to Voltaire.

Adventure Sizing

Landscape, Marshes, Photo of the Day, Prairie, Travel

Wednesday, June 12th, 2019

Time in nature is important for everyone. It doesn’t require a long trip. It doesn’t require a canoe. It doesn’t require fancy camping gear. It doesn’t even require much knowledge, although all these things help.

When I’ve had time to post lately I’ve been posting photos from multi-week expeditions in remote locations that not a lot of people get to experience. These adventures have been really exciting for me and have helped me develop my outdoor skills. This spring, I’ve been leading week-long canoe trips for high school students, enabling them to see places and have experiences that they wouldn’t get to normally. And I’m convinced these are all good things.

But for most of us, taking a week off work is tough. And figuring out how to acquire camping gear, a canoe, and the knowledge to safely paddle a river is often unrealistic. To experience the outdoors, you don’t need these things. My hope for the high school students I’m leading on trips is that they will gain an appreciation for spending time outside, not just on trips.

I live in Edmonton, and though I rarely post pictures from here, I run through the forest in the river valley close to my home every week. This is an essential dose of nature for me that anyone can experience. Our trails in the river valley in Edmonton are great and everyone here has access to them!

If you have a car, Elk Island National Park is an easy place to get to for an evening walk or picnic (or try Cooking Lake Recreation Area if you don’t want to pay the National Park fees). All these photos are from a two hour walk in Elk Island. This time and nature is no less valuable than weeks in the wilderness. It does the same thing for me – it renews my sense of wonder and joy.

I hope everyone reading this takes the time to enjoy nature in the next week, even if it’s just a short walk in your local park. This still counts as an adventure!

Kingaunmiut Falls

Canoeing, Landscape, Photo of the Day, Tundra, Water

Thursday, April 4th, 2019

After Skull Rapids, we had a couple uneventful days of paddling and portaging. Then we got to a slightly longer portage, which would be just a small warm-up for our real portage (more on that later). But at the end of this long sweaty ordeal, we got a beautiful, flat campsite at the bottom of Kingaunmiut Falls, with a Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus) scolding us for a bit before it accepted our presence as inevitable. Or maybe it realized we couldn’t scale the cliffs to get to its nest. This is also where we saw a distant herd of muskox for the first time.

Notes:
1. All of these photos were taken near midnight.
2. I was saying it “King – gun – mute”. If any speakers of an Inuit language are reading, I’d love to be corrected!

Canoeing on Ice

Camping, Canoeing, Photo of the Day, Tundra, Water

Friday, January 11th, 2019

Ice on Cave Lake beside our first campsite.

To canoe in the arctic you either have to wait until late in the summer or encounter ice at some point. There was still plenty of ice on the lakes when we started on the Hood River in late June.

On Cave Lake, we started by trying to skirt the shore where the ice was mostly melted. We quickly ran into solid ice right up to the shore. The ice was still thick enough to support us in most spots. With the normal canoes, you could take a run at the ice and if you had enough speed, the front of the canoe would pop out of the water and you’d launch yourself onto the ice. Then the bow paddler could quickly jump out and pull the canoe all the way up.

With pakboats it was a little more tricky. You would have to sidle up to the ice and try to step out onto a relatively slippery surface without pushing your boat away from the ice. And since the bottoms of the pakboats are a sticky rubber material, we had “crazy carpets” that we would tie to the bottom of the boats so they would slide easily on the ice, similar to the regular canoes.

Then we would pull the loaded canoes across the ice, sometimes for quite a few kilometers at a time. Occasionally there would be breaks in the ice where we would have to get in the canoes, paddle for a meter or two, and get back out and pull further.

The trick for not falling through the ice is to stick to the whiter areas. The darker spots are where the ice is starting to melt and get soft. Usually it was still pretty thick there, but the lighter colored ice was definitely more solid.

No one fell through the entire trip!

Pulling canoes over Esker Lake a few days later.

Ice piled up on the shore of Cave Lake. You can see a little band of water we had to canoe over in the distance.

The trickiest parts were where water and ice mixed.

Sunlight

Camping, Canoeing, Landscape, Photo of the Day, Travel, Tundra

Saturday, December 15th, 2018

Camped for the evening on the south shore of Cave Lake on the Hood River, Nunavut. If you look closely you can see tents on the bottom right.

Sitting at home writing this in the evening, I’m wondering about this place now. I wonder if there would be a glow of lights on the horizon from a distant mine or if it would be the complete darkness I imagine. Although complete darkness isn’t accurate – there would be stars and reflected light from the moon – all reflected off a sea of endless snow.

When I was there in late June it was light all the time. The night was one long sunset/sunrise. People ask me if I had trouble sleeping – not at all. It was a tiring trip and I usually fell asleep quickly, but I really wished I had energy to explore the area at night. Sometimes we would go on hikes until around midnight and the sun was still up. But mornings came early, and with them the constant work of camp life and paddling.

Focusing

Photo of the Day

Thursday, May 24th, 2018

Cutting a hole in the lake ice for drinking water. Taken in Lakeland Provincial Recreation Area.

I haven’t posted here for a while now. If you’ve been following me on Instagram or Facebook, I haven’t been there either. What’s up?

A bunch of things. I’ve been on many different journeys lately. I’ve been moderately successful trying to spend more time in the natural world with people and rivers and trees and a little less on my computer or phone. I’ve also been spending more time learning. Focusing. I don’t mean to say these things can’t be compatible with an online presence, but for me lately it has been helpful to take a break. And I will be continuing to take a break. This summer I will be canoeing in the arctic for two months – on the Hood River and MacKay Lake! But I won’t be live-blogging or checking messages. I hope to do a lot of photography and maybe some video up there, but the focus will be the people I’m with and the learning and research I’ll be doing.

I’ll leave a few photos from some of the adventures I’ve been on over the last few months. There has been some photography trips for the Royal Alberta Museum, some really cold snowshoeing, some winter camping, some spring camping, and quite a bit of canoeing which will continue throughout the summer. I hope you have your own adventures planned – anything from walks in the park to epic expeditions. Even looking at pictures of nature (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4690962/) can lower stress levels, but nothing compares to actually immersing yourself in it.

Sunset over Medicine Lake in Jasper.

Taking pictures for the Royal Alberta Museum in dreadfully cold weather.

Poplars and willows reflected in spring floodwaters.

The Rockies in winter.

Sleeping under the stars at -20. Yes, there’s someone in there.

The joy of a fire in winter.

Clear lake ice.

Warm winter camping at -40.

Swamps are perfect for winter camping – lots of firewood and easily accessible.

Winter camping is a lot of work – cutting firewood, thawing food, finding or melting water, stamping down the snow under your tent, setting up camp, and staying on top of wearing the right layers depending on how hard you’re currently working.

Opening up the water hole in the morning – 4 inches of ice had formed overnight.

A curious whitetail deer.

A herd of Bighorn Sheep in Sheep River Provincial Park – how appropriate.

Getting a little tippy at Devil’s Elbow on the North Saskatchewan River. They saved this one though.

New Stuff!

Galleries and Shows, Photo of the Day

Monday, October 16th, 2017

Tix on the Square has a completely new batch of stuff from me. They have new prints if you’ve been and haven’t found what you’re looking for. They also now have cards, postcards, and some new jewelry for you to check out (cufflinks are back, and there are some new earrings and cuffs).

Also, updated galleries for this website are on their way. Watch for those in a week or so!

Come Visit At Folkfest

Badlands, Galleries and Shows, Photo of the Day

Thursday, August 10th, 2017

If you are lucky enough to be going to Edmonton Folk Fest this year, you should come say hi at my booth! I have lots of new prints, new styles of jewelry, and some new postcards I’m trying out. The market is open Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Chipmunk visiting me in Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park
210mm, f4, 1/400 of a second

Instagram

Photo of the Day, Wildlife, Winter

Sunday, February 5th, 2017

I’m not great at keeping up with social media, but I was recently convinced to start putting up photos on Instagram. If you’d like to see my photos fairly regularly, you can follow me https://www.instagram.com/joelkoopphoto/. I’m going for a photo every day – not quite succeeding so far, but getting close. However, there will be a two to three week break soon when I’ll be up north without a cell signal. I’ll keep the details under wraps for now, but I’m pretty excited to be able to share some photos with you when I get back!