 Three autumn birch It’s been a long time since I’ve posted a new photo, and to be honest, it’s been a while since I’ve made any new images. I have been working on re-processing some images into black and white, including this one here.
I love a great B&W photograph, and after listening to this podcast by LensWork editor, Brooks Jensen, I’ve been inspired to figure out for myself what it takes to make a great B&W image, rather than a pretty-good image. And, thanks to the flexibility afforded by capturing and processing digitally, I’ve been going through my image catalogue and giving it a try.
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 Dried Goldenrod leaves with hoar frost Although this photograph was from a little earlier in the season than my last post, it was a similarly frosty, beautiful day. It’s amazing how a lining of frost can add definition and visual interest to an otherwise subdued scene. This is especially true when photographing with the sun behind your subject, the backlighting making the frost shine while the rest of the subject remains shadowed. I also added a fairly heavy vignetting effect while processing this image, to further draw attention to the lines created by the curled, dried goldenrod leaves.
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 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.
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 Paper Birch along rocky Ministik shoreline It is unusual to find exposed rock along the shores of the lakes in this part of Alberta, but this beautiful shoreline along Oliver Lake in the Ministik Game Bird Sanctuary just east of Edmonton had several hundred meters of this gorgeous blue-grey stone typical of the Beaver Hills/Cooking Lake moraine landform. Tall reeds and grasses, all dried up by this time, grew from between the stones and above the high water mark there were aspen, birch, and spruce. And then there was this tree — growing near the water in a little clearing.
My timing was just right — all the tree’s leaves had turned to this reddish yellow, with a few fallen to the ground to contrast the colour of the rocks (the next few days were quite windy, stripping most of these leaves for the season). When I first arrived at this spot, the sun was reasonably low in the sky, but the white bark of the birch tree was still reflecting too much light and the contrast was more than my camera could capture. Sometimes, bracketing exposures and combining them to an HDR image for processing can reign in such high-contrast scenes, but in this case a slight breeze was rustling the leaves and grass stems, which makes it very difficult to blend multiple exposures successfully.
Looking to the west however, I noticed that a bank of high stratus clouds rose a few degrees above the horizon in the otherwise perfectly clear sky. Normally, this is bad news if you’re trying to photograph dramatic late-day sidelighting and sunset colours (which I was trying to do). In this case though, I waited until the sun had just dipped behind the thin leading edge of the clouds, causing the light to dim a little and to diffuse ever so slightly — reducing the contrast in the scene, but still lighting the brilliant fall colours. I hurried to capture a few compositions that I’d determined while waiting for the light, and far too quickly — the light was gone. I walked back to the truck as the lacklustre sky simply grew darker with the sun hidden behind the advancing clouds — but I couldn’t possibly have been any happier.
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 Trumpeter Swan at Ministik Lake  Trumpeter Swan Pair at Ministik Lake I was walking the Waskahegan Trail though the Ministik Lake Game Bird Sanctuary a couple days ago (Oct 5th, to be precise), and came across this pair of swans. While it’s fairly common to see migrating Tundra Swans flying (and honking) overhead in flocks this time of year, I am pretty sure these are the much less common Trumpeter Swan — but I would really appreciate if someone more familiar with Trumpeters could confirm (or contest) my ID. These two birds were on Bray Lake, right in the middle of the sanctuary, and were there when I first passed the lake, and still there later in the afternoon on my way back. This is what I love about Ministik — there’s always something new to see, you just have to get out there and look for it.
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 Waterfowl rising from Ministik Lake Here’s another photograph I made last week, along Oliver Lake out at the Ministik Lake Gamebird Sanctuary. As the sun was setting, hundreds (if not thousands) of ducks were settling on the lake, rising in large flocks if unnamed photographers (or their dog) moved too quickly. I normally try hard when processing a photograph to make sure that there is detail in both the highlights and shadow. In this case however, I found that pushing the brightness up really did a better job of capturing the mood of looking west across the lake into the sun, watching the birds against the brilliant, backlit fall colours. They say the rules are there to be broken, right?
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 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.
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