 Sunset under heavy clouds If you’ve signed up for my newsletter you’ll recognize these past few images that I’ve shared — this one is from a trip to Jasper National Park that I took this spring. I was lucky enough to drive into the mountains just as the sun dipped below the clouds for a few minutes before sinking behind the mountain peaks. I don’t recall my camera settings for this particular image, but I was definitely thinking of the golden rule for landscape photography — “f/8 and be there”.
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 Spring storm over Devona Flats I recently had the chance to get away for a few days, and had the pleasure of being able to do some photography in Jasper National Park. The day that I took this photograph started out clear and sunny, and as the day went along these large clouds spilled out of the Athabasca River Valley to the west, coming east towards Pochahontas where I was staying. And while the clouds made it less appealing to sit out on the deck in the afternoon, they sure made for much more dramatic photographs later in the evening — well worth the trade-off.
I really like the contrast in this image of the heavy, wet sky and the falling rain streaking down — contrasted with the dry river flats still awaiting the melt of higher elevation snow and the start of spring and summer weather patterns.
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 Strathcona Refineries #307, August 2010 I am very excited to let you all know that I will have a solo show of my photography at this year’s The Works Art & Design Festival here in Edmonton. If you’re not from Edmonton, The Works is a large festival that runs for a couple of weeks in the summer, with artists from all over the world displaying their work in various downtown venues. My show will be displayed at City Hall from the start of the festival on June 23 through to July 5 and there will be a reception for my show from 2-3pm on Saturday the 2nd of July.
As for the work itself, it is much different in content than my usual landscape and nature photography, but I think that my personal photographic style still shows through quite a bit. The exhibition will be twenty large prints of images I made last August when smoke from large forest fires in BC shrouded the refineries just east of Edmonton (and everything else in central Alberta) in a dense, orange haze. I wrote an entry about it at the time (click here), but haven’t shared any of these images since then. I am busy setting up a new website for this collection (it just doesn’t fit on this site), and I’ll post here once it’s up.
*UPDATE* The new website is now live! I invite you to have a look at www.strathcona-refineries.com.
*UPDATE* The exhibition is now up! Thanks to the whole Works crew that did such a great job — it looks terrific. While The Works Festival isn’t “on” yet, if you’re downtown you can drop by City Hall and have a look at the prints on display. I would really appreciate hearing your reactions and comments — either here (by leaving a reply below), by contacting me personally, or in person at the show reception on July 2nd.
*UPDATE* You can read a short interview that I did with Steve Waldner of The Works Festival about the show at http://theworksfest.wordpress.com/2011/06/16/strathcona-refineries-august-2010/
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 Great grey owl hunting from thin aspen sapling The photographs from my two previous posts were both taken while I was doing owl surveys and waiting for the sun to set (with camera at the ready, of course). So I thought I’d post an image of what we were out there looking for.
I don’t shoot a lot of wildlife, but I simply could not resist filling up a memory card while watching this owl hunt for rodents under the thick, spring snow. It was amazing to watch him (or her, I’m not sure) listening from the tops of these small aspen trees before swooping down and diving feet-first into the snow after his prey. I had the pleasure of watching from a distance for over an hour before he finally gave up, or got full, and slowly moved off.
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 Fiery sunset over snowy horizon I’ve been out conducting nocturnal owl surveys in south-central Alberta for the past few weeks, which has given me the chance to take some great sunset photographs, and to try out photographing at night — lots of fun (but lots to learn too!)
This photo came after a whole day of cloud that finally broke at just the right time to allow the setting sun to peek through. If they cooperate, a sky full of clouds sure makes for more interesting photography than a “perfectly” clear sky.
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 Fresh snow on two black spruce Here’s another photograph from the same outing to Wagner Natural Area as my last post. I like how the wispy-ness of the clouds contrasts the solid, high contrast forms of the snow-covered trees.
These are pretty classic Alberta winter clouds — high, thin, light diffusing layers without much definition (see this post that I wrote last winter). In this case though, I used a polarizing filter to darken the blue sky showing through these thin cirrus streaks, and that added enough contrast to show the delicate patterns of the cloud.
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 Snow cap on thin black spruce After receiving huge amounts of new snow over the past few weeks, we finally got a day where the sun managed to peak — weakly — through the clouds for a few hours. Since I was already on the west side of town, I decided to head out to the Wagner Natural Area where, I hoped, the dense spruce trees covered in deep snow would provide an interesting photographic opportunity or two.
It was more challenging than I expected — the huge amount of snow often looked like just a big pile slumped over everything, rather than contrasting or complimenting the forms of the trees. But a challenge can be good fun, and I did get a couple images that I’m quite happy with — I’ll share some more over the next little while.
 Non-vignetted The processing in this one was inspired by an image by a local photographer who I’ve mentioned before, Joel Koop. He posted an image on his blog that was heavily vignetted (darkened in the corners) in post-processing — and it looked great. I had already processed this one with a little bit of vignetting, but his image inspired me to try pushing it a bit further, and I think I like it this way. What do you think? (I’ve included the non-vignetted version here for comparison — use your arrow keys to switch between versions.)
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(Click photos to enlarge)
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