Boreal colours at their autumn finest

Aspen, birch, reeds and grasses all glow golden in evening light along the shore of Oliver Lake at the Ministik Lake Game Bird Sanctuary

Golden autumn aspen shoreline

If you’re in the Edmonton area, and haven’t been out enjoying (and photographing) the fall colours this week, I have one word for you — go! I’ll let this photograph speak the thousand words’ encouragement.

I’ve been exploring the south-west corner of Ministik Lake Sanctuary, following game trails along the shore of Oliver Lake and coming across views like this one. This is one of my favourite autumn combinations — yellow aspen & birch, bright dried grasses, all against a blue sky reflected in a still lake, and with just a few dark spruce thrown in for accent. Gorgeous.

Related Entries:

— Early autumn sunrise at Ministik — Autumn foliage triptych — Birch tree along rocky shore —

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Early autumn sunrise at Ministik

A light fog hangs at sunrise in the yellow foliage of birch leaves just starting to turn to their fall colours

Morning mist and early autumn birch

I had the pleasure of spending a morning out at Ministik Lake, and what a morning it was. The forecast was for clear skies and the first good overnight frost of the year, with temperatures down to a few degrees above freezing. As the sun rose, light fog rose from the lakes and hung in the still air, frost hung lightly on the understory leaves, and the clear autumn light shone off the first of the birch trees just beginning to change colour — it was exquisite.

Related Entries:

— Boreal colours at their autumn finest — Birch tree along rocky shore — Autumn foliage triptych —

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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.

Related Entries:

— View from Sulphur Skyline trail — Bright sun on Whirlpool Mountain — Mount Geraldine in winter —

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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)

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]

Related Entries:

— Sunrise on Mount Edith Cavell — Bright sun on Whirlpool Mountain — View from Sulphur Skyline trail —

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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.

Related Entries:

— Winter stratus — Early autumn sunrise at Ministik — Warm light on winter day —

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Mount Geraldine in winter

Mountain Geraldine ridge

I took this photograph while driving south from Jasper along the Icefields Parkway on a very chilly, and very bright, (and very beautiful) winter morning. While it was nearly mid-day when I made this exposure, the sun is so low at these northern latitudes at this time of year, the ridge was still sidelit — defining the jagged line between the eastern and northern faces.

Related Entries:

— Talbot Lake Ridges — Sunrise on Mount Edith Cavell — View from Sulphur Skyline trail —

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