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Magpie tracks in fresh snow

The imprint of a magpies wing and tail are left behind in fresh snow

Mag­pie wing­print

After a cou­ple cen­time­ters of fresh, pow­dery snow, I went for a walk at the Strath­cona Sci­ence Park along the North Saskatchewan Riv­er. In one area there were near­ly a dozen spots where a mag­pie had dropped into the snow, leav­ing these beau­ti­ful impres­sions of its wing tips and long tail—thrown into beau­ti­ful detail by the low angle of the sun these days. I couldn’t tell what it was after under the snow, and I didn’t see any oth­er mag­pie tracks out­side of this one small area. If you have ever seen some­thing sim­i­lar, I’d love to hear you think this bird might have been up to.

January 25th, 2010 | Keywords: , , , , , , , , | Topic: New photographs | Leave a comment
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Chickadees taking flight

A Black-capped Chickadee takes flight from a bare winter perch

Chick­adee wings I

Chick­adee wings II

I have been set­tling into a new rou­tine, hav­ing start­ed a new work con­tract in the new year, and part of this rou­tine often includes walk­ing through Edmonton’s beau­ti­ful White­mud Ravine dur­ing my lunch break. The chick­adees in this park have become accus­tomed to humans, and will come in close to see if you’ve brought them any­thing. I couldn’t resist tak­ing a cou­ple pho­tos of them, and the ones I liked best were always just before they took off. I set a high enough shut­ter speed to catch the details of their feath­ers, and hoped for the best. When­ev­er I tried to catch one as it took off, I got a pic­ture of a bare branch—I was too slow. By the time I could react, the bird was gone. I had to watch through the viewfind­er and wait until I thought the bird was going to jump. Let’s just say it’s a good thing I’m shoot­ing dig­i­tal…

Related posts:
: Portrait of a Ruffed Grouse :
January 24th, 2010 | Keywords: , , , | Topic: New photographs | Leave a comment
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A selection of my favourite landscape photographs from 2009

Sev­er­al of my favourite Alber­ta land­scape pho­tog­ra­phers have been post­ing small gal­leries of their past year’s best land­scape pho­tographs, so I decid­ed to do the same. It was fun to look back through a year’s worth of pho­tos, and impos­si­ble to decide which were my “favourite”. I decid­ed to pick one favourite pho­to from each of the loca­tions in Alber­ta that I reg­u­lar­ly make pho­tographs includ­ing: Jasper Nation­al Park, Water­ton Nation­al Park, and the Ice­fields Park­way in the Rocky Moun­tains; and Min­is­tik Lake Game Bird Sanc­tu­ary, White­mud Ravine, Gold Bar Park, and the Strath­cona Sci­ence Park clos­er to my home in Edmon­ton.

I’ve post­ed all of the pho­tos below as a group (in chrono­log­i­cal order) but I will also cre­ate a sep­a­rate entry for each pho­to to pro­vide extra details about the image like I usu­al­ly do—just click on the link below each pho­to to go to it’s detail page. (It will take me a lit­tle while to get them all up)

I hope you enjoy this small col­lec­tion, and I do always appre­ci­ate it if you leave a com­ment with your thoughts or reac­tion. Hap­py New Year, and I wish you many fine pho­tographs in 2010!

Sun, shadow, fresh snow, and thin cloud on Mount Geraldine along the Icefields Parkway in Alberta, Canada

Moun­tain Geral­dine ridge

Along the Ice­fields Park­way [Click for more details]

A darkening sky on a cold winter day through the bare branches of aspen and poplar trees

Pale win­ter sky through poplar canopy

Min­is­tik Lake (in the win­ter)

Delicate white flowers bloom in front of a background of fern

Chick­weed blooms and fern

Water­ton Nation­al Park

Low clouds loom at dusk over a glassy calm boreal lake

Brood­ing cloud over Min­is­tik Lake

Min­is­tik Lake (in the sum­mer) (I know that’s cheat­ing a lit­tle)

The evening sky is reflected in multiple channels of the Athabasca River in Jasper National Park

Athabas­ca Riv­er island at dusk

Jasper Nation­al Park

Several birch trees stand bare in front of subtle fall colour in the North Saskatchewan River valley

Birch stems and ear­ly autumn colour

Gold­bar Park (North Saskatchewan Riv­er Val­ley)

Frost-covered willow thicket at dawn in the Whitemud Ravine in Edmonton, Alberta

Late autumn wil­low thick­et

White­mud Ravine [Click for more details]

Heavy frost coats young alders saplings during an extreme cold snap in Edmonton, Alberta

Ice fog frozen on alder saplings

Strath­cona Sci­ence Park [Click for more details]
January 3rd, 2010 | Keywords: , , , , , , , , , , | Topic: From the archives | 15 comments
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Wintery details

Frost and snow cover a dense tangle of thin branches near Edmonton, Alberta

Tan­gle of win­ter branch­es II

Here’s anoth­er detail-ori­ent­ed image tak­en dur­ing our recent spell of grey, over­cast win­ter days. As I men­tioned in a pre­vi­ous post, when the light is dif­fused so even­ly by the low, bright stra­tus clouds that are com­mon over cen­tral Alber­ta in the win­ter (espe­cial­ly the past few weeks), it’s often these close-up, detail ori­ent­ed com­po­si­tions that I find work best.

I don’t com­mon­ly con­vert images to black and white, and even less often do I process them quite as heav­i­ly as I have here. While the con­trast was fair­ly strong to begin with, I’ve “crushed” the darks all the way down, and bumped the back­ground sky all the way up, to real­ly empha­size the some­what abstract pat­tern of the tan­gled branch­es, accen­tu­at­ed by the lin­ing of snow and frost. Per­haps I’ll also post the orig­i­nal ver­sion as well, and I would love to hear your com­ments as to which you pre­fer.

January 2nd, 2010 | Keywords: , , , , , , , | Topic: New photographs, Newly processed | One comment
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