Ice and frost near the Bow River in Banff.
Ice and Frost Composition
Category: Photo of the Day
Palm Warbler in the Forest
I took my first Wildlife Biodiversity and Ecology class last night and it was fascinating. It was a three hour class on Ornithology (birds) and it seemed way too short. It’s always awesome to see a whole new world open up before you, that you vaguely knew was there, but had no idea what it involved. I hope I have the time and motivation to follow up on this brief introduction (although I suspect I’m going to hope the same thing for every other class). John Acorn is a very interesting prof, and I’m really looking forward to the rest of this class.
I thought I’d post a bird photo in honor of the class, but ironically I wasn’t able to identify it. I obviously need more classes and/or experience. So I suspect this is some sort of warbler (maybe a Palm Warbler? edit – yup, it’s a Palm Warbler — Dendroica palmarum). I found it in a poplar forest in northern Saskatchewan.
GH1 Thoughts and a Photo
For this trip I tried out an interesting new (well, actually almost 2 years old) camera. Panasonic’s GH1 is actually a very capable camera. In good light the image quality is very close to my Canon 5D (mark I – more than 5 years old, but with a larger sensor). The battery lasts a very long time (I lost 1 tick on the battery meter on a 5 hour hike in -25 weather while taking 332 photos). I had problems with my 5d battery dying, although, to be fair I have an old third party battery for my Canon. The 100-300 lens for the GH1 is a very sharp lens with good image stabilization. For a small light telephoto setup, it is great.
The one area where is fails completely is at night. The previous night photo I took with my 5d turned out pretty well, while it was impossible to get anything with the panasonic. I might have been able to get something if I had a lens for it with a focus distance indicator, but with the 14-140 lens there is no way to focus a night shot. The screen was completely black, and of course autofocus would not work on any camera. The photos are also much more grainy than my 5d when long exposures are used.
Here’s one area where the GH1 does better than anything else around – telephoto (at a reasonable cost and weight). Flowing water and ice in Johnston Canyon. Taken with a 600mm equivalent lens.
Moonlit Night on Lake Louise
I pick the worst times for vacations. The roads were as bad as they’ve been in recent memory and in Banff it was either close to -30 or snowing the whole time. I think I got some good shots though – this was from yesterday, a frigid night on Lake Louise.
In the Caverns of the Deep
After a long and occasionally scary drive to Banff (after 10 I stopped counting cars in the ditch on highway 2), we’re here safely, I’ve now finished my design work for the day, and I’m finally ready to go out hiking! Hello -20 weather!
Here’s one from last summer.
Prairie Winter Storm
A strange storm on a very cold January day in southern Saskatchewan.
Opening Doors & What Might Emerge
In my photography I often attempt to capture a sense of the peace that comes in solitude and darkness. But sometimes I want to push beyond what is there into a world of the fantastic where stories lurk just around the corner. These stories are at the edge of our reality, flitting through our collective dreams.
Huts, Doors, and Feelings
“He stretched out on his back and looked up into the spring sky. It was a clear dark blue straight above him and a sea green over the tree tops. Somewhere under his hat the tune began to move, one part expectation, and two parts spring sadness, and for the rest just a colossal delight at being alone.”
Tales from Moominvalley
by Tove Jansson
Snowy Letters
I’ve often seen the alphabet photo people spelling out “love” or “joy” at craft fairs, and always thought the letters are kind of interesting and a little cheesy at the same time. But our minds often see random shapes and interpret them as symbols we recognize.
Anyway, I’m sure this photo says something, not quite sure what.
Taken in Lois Hole Centennial Provincial Park.
Melting Ice on a Tamarack Branch
Another shot from the same day (as the last pic of the day). It was a warm December day and a fresh snowfall was melting and re-freezing into ice on the Tamarack trees (Larix Laricina).
The background is a completely natural artifact of having a large telephoto lens, leaving the aperture as open as possible, and having a fairly low quality lens. The telephoto focal length along with the wide open aperture (f5.6 in this case) made the background completely blurred out. The bright highlights become circles. If I had a much nicer lens, they might be softer-edged and not as distracting. I kind of like the way they turned out though. I suspect the little specks in them mean I had a lot of dust on the end of my lens.
