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ASA Forest Show in Hinton">ASA Forest Show in Hinton

The Forest Show

I am real­ly excit­ed that one of the pho­tographs from my “Tal­bot Burn” port­fo­lio has been cho­sen to be a part of the “For­est Show” curat­ed by the Alber­ta Soci­ety of Artists. The exhi­bi­tion is cur­rent­ly mount­ed in the Hin­ton Pub­lic Library (Jan 5–31), and will be mov­ing to the Edson Library (Feb 2–28), the McMullen Gallery in Edmon­ton (open­ing recep­tion on March 24, 7–9 pm), and the Leighton Gallery in Cal­gary (open­ing recep­tion June 4, 2–4 pm). My piece was also select­ed to be one of just a few pieces that will be in a trav­el­ling exhi­bi­tion show­ing through­out Alber­ta until 2013. I hope that you can make it to one of these venues, but if not, you can have look at the image in my “Tal­bot Burn” port­fo­lio (it’s the third image, enti­tled “Tal­bot Fire Val­ley”), or sim­ply click below to view the image full screen.

Fire-blackened spruce tree stems stand in a valley laid bare by forest fire in 2003 in Jasper National Park

Tal­bot fire val­ley


ASA Forest Show in Hinton", posted Jan 14, 2011"> A folio print of this image is for sale for whatever price you think is fair. Enter amount: $

Hoar frost on lakeshore trees

Thick hoar frost covers the birch and spruce trees along a frozen lake edge at the Ministik Lake Game Bird Sanctuary

Frost cov­ered trees on bright win­ter day

It’s been too long since I last post­ed a new photograph—my apolo­gies. Here is an image I made recent­ly, on a par­tic­u­lar­ly gor­geous after­noon at the Min­is­tik Lake Game Bird Sanc­tu­ary just east of Edmon­ton. All of the trees, shrubs, and even each blade of grass was bear­ing a thick cov­er­ing of frost. The sky was per­fect­ly clear and every­thing was sparkling—it was beau­ti­ful (and cold).

When I was pro­cess­ing this pho­to­graph, I used the dig­i­tal equiv­a­lent of the tech­nique of plac­ing a red fil­ter in front of the lens to dark­en the blue sky. This tech­nique (a favourite of Ansel Adams) adds a dra­mat­ic look to the sky and mak­ing the bright­ness of the fore­ground trees stand out even more.

A folio print of this image is for sale for whatever price you think is fair. Enter amount: $

Off to Banff…

View from Wilcox Pass

I will be away from post­ing for a lit­tle while (although to be hon­est, I haven’t been post­ing a whole lot anyways—sorry), as I’m off to Banff Nation­al Park to go camp­ing for a cou­ple weeks. I’m pret­ty excited—I spend most of my time pho­tograph­ing in the Rocky Moun­tains in Jasper Nation­al Park, so it’ll be fun to explore some new areas (with my cam­era along the whole time, of course).

Hope­ful­ly, I’ll be able to share some new work with you once I get back, but in the mean­time I thought I’d post this pho­to tak­en half-way between Jasper and Banff, along the Ice­fields Park­way (one of the most beau­ti­ful dri­ves in the world). We parked near the Ice­fields Inter­pre­tive Cen­tre, and climbed up along the Wilcox Pass trail on the oth­er side of the val­ley as the glac­i­ers. What I love about this pho­to is the scale of the view. If you click to enlarge the image, you can just see the trail run­ning down to the right, and there’s even a cou­ple of (very small) hik­ers on it.

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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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Talbot Lake Ridges

Miette range from Talbot lake

Miette range from Tal­bot lake

One of my favourite pho­tographs I’ve tak­en, (yes, I’ll have a copy at the show this week­end), is this one which I called “Miette range from Tal­bot Lake.” I made this expo­sure back in Feb­ru­ary of 2007 as I was dri­ving home through Jasper Nation­al Park. The dead trees in this pho­to were killed in a con­trolled burn for­est fire in 2003. The still-stand­ing, black­ened trunks con­trast­ed beau­ti­ful­ly with the dust­ing of snow on the ridge. What I real­ly love about the post-burn Tal­bot Lake area is that you get to see the sub­tle ridge and val­ley topog­ra­phy of the hills, which is nor­mal­ly cov­ered by a thick blan­ket of spruce and fir trees. Com­bine that with a lit­tle side light­ing, a dust of snow or bloom­ing fire­weed, and me with a camera–I could hap­pi­ly spend all day.

A folio print of this image is for sale for whatever price you think is fair. Enter amount: $