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.

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January 25th, 2010 | Keywords: , , , , , , , , | Topic: New photographs | Leave first 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…

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January 24th, 2010 | Keywords: , , , | Topic: New photographs | Leave first 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]
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January 3rd, 2010 | Keywords: , , , , , , , , , , | Topic: Miscellaneous | 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.

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January 2nd, 2010 | Keywords: , , , , , , , | Topic: New photographs, Newly processed | One comment
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Flat light and high-key greys

Fresh snow covers the forest on a cloudy winter day

Min­is­tik shore­line in white

To con­tinue the line of thought from my last entry, another type of com­po­si­tion that I find can work on grey, over­cast win­ter days when the light is per­fectly flat and even is a “high-key” image like this one. If there’s fresh snow, the whole land­scape can turn the same colour – light grey. I find the trick is to ensure that my expo­sure is bumped up a lit­tle bit to turn the greys to white, and to find a lit­tle bit of con­trast (spruce are great for this) for visual inter­est. These very sub­tle, almost monot­one, images really cap­ture the feel­ing of these most-subtle of win­ter days.

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December 31st, 2009 | Keywords: , , , , , | Topic: New photographs | Leave first comment
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