alberta :: Photography Journal by Jonathan DeMoor :: Silvicola borealis Images

Mushrooms at Ministik

I took a great walk through Ministik Lake Game Bird Sanctuary yesterday afternoon—always one of my favourite places to photograph (click here to see why). The weather we’ve had this year has been just right for growing mushrooms (warm days, lots of afternoon showers), and there was a fantastic selection of beautiful species on show. I’ll not write too much, just post a bunch of photos to inspire those of you who—like myself—have both photographic and mycological tendencies, to go out and find some fungi.

: Shaggy Mane

: Bolete

: White Anise-scented Clitocybe

: Bracket mushroom

: Scaly Hedgehog

: Northern Roughstem

: Green Russula

: Puffball

: Tinder Conk

: Bracket fungus

: Small unidentified mushroom

: Amanita mushroom

: Branched Hericium

: Northern Russula

P.S. My mushroom ID skills are not terrible, but do not take my word that these are what I say they are. Instead, I’d recommend taking the word of Helene M.E. Schalkwijk-Barendsen in her gorgeous book Mushrooms of Northwest North America by local Edmonton publishing company, Lone Pine.

And, on that note, if you think I’ve gotten the ID wrong on any of these or you can be more specific (latin names would be great!) I would really appreciate a note left in the comments.

Raindrop mosaic

Deliberately out of focus, a mosaic of light is created by light glinting through raindrops in a dense boreal forest stand.

Bright morning after rain

I’m slowly working my way to a major update/revision of my galleries (which, I apologize, have not been updated in a long time), and part of that process is a ruthless editing-down of my collection to best showcase my favourite images. Unfortunately, that sometimes means leaving out ones that I really like, and this image is an example of that. While it’s currently in my “Summer 2007″ gallery, and I like it at least as well as some of the ones that “made the cut”, it just didn’t fit with the other selections. So, I decided to post in the journal here instead, where hopefully it can still be enjoyed all on it’s own.

I made this photograph between Rocky Mountain House and Nordegg, Alberta in early June 2007. It had rained heavily the night before, and the branches and lichens in this dense black spruce stand were dripping wet as the sun came up. Each drop acts like a tiny prism, catching the light of the low sun. When the lens is de-focused as I did here, each specular highlight becomes a glowing circle of light, each with a slightly different colour depending on the angle. I know my blurry, out-of-focus work is not everyone’s cup of tea, but in this case I think it really made for an interesting image (I’ve included a “straight” shot of the same stand below for interest’s sake), and it’s also a great example of how the optics in a lens can create effects “in the field” that are unattainable using post-processing software (i.e. Photoshop). I’d love to hear your reactions to this image, just click below…

Bright morning after rain–in focus

Dried fireweed detail

Even lighting, a close crop, and shallow depth-of-field accentuate the curves of a dried fireweed seedhead

Curves in dried fireweed

I know it’s odd to call this post “Dried fireweed detail” when 95% of the photograph is out of focus. For me however, this image captures the essence of the detail—and the depth—of the dried seed pods. The title’s also a bit if a play on words—using “detail” in the sense of a close-up of a portion of a larger work, like when a small section of a painting is enlarged in a book to show a painter’s technique, for example. I really enjoy getting in close to a photographic subject to look for an angle that can capture the greater “whole” of the subject while showing only a small portion.

Warm light on winter day

Angled sunlight creates warm colours on a mild winter day at Whitemud Ravine in Edmonton, Alberta

Warm winter colours

I took this photograph during a beautiful lunch-time walk through the Whitemud Ravine. Although it was mid-day, because of the season the light was angled low and filtered through a very light haze, giving it a warm tone. It’s unusual to see warm-toned colours much during the winter, but if you catch it just right they can add an interesting mood to an image.

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!