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Johnston Canyon waterfall

Low­er John­ston Canyon falls I

I had a great time camp­ing and pho­tograph­ing in Banff Nation­al Park, and now I’m back in town for a few days and then off again to do some bird sur­veys in the bore­al for­est of north-west­ern Alberta.I haven’t had much chance to go through the many pho­tographs I made while there, but I thought I’d quick share this one to tide you over until I get back to post­ing more reg­u­lar­ly.

I took this pho­to­graph along the low­er sec­tion of the gor­geous John­ston Canyon, just a half hour north of the Banff town­site. The path through the canyon is nor­mal­ly packed full of tourists, but I had the plea­sure of being there mid-week and ear­ly-sea­son, giv­ing me plen­ty of time (and room) to do some pho­tog­ra­phy. This pho­to shows the beau­ti­ful clear, green colour of the water flow­ing through the canyon, and gives a feel for the almost claus­tro­pho­bic close­ness of the over­hang­ing rock cliffs.

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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.

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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)

The evening sky is reflected in multiple channels of the Athabasca River in Jasper National Park

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]
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Mount Geraldine in winter

Sun, shadow, fresh snow, and thin cloud on Mount Geraldine along the Icefields Parkway in Alberta, Canada

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.

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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.

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View from Sulphur Skyline trail

Colour and sun patches on mountain ridge

Colour and sun patch­es on moun­tain ridge

This week­end I’m going through pho­tos that I’ve tak­en in the last year or so as I pre­pare for this year’s Gold­bar sale (see pre­vi­ous post for details). It’s great look­ing back at these pho­tos, remem­ber­ing the times I was out to cap­ture them, and real­iz­ing that it’s been far too long since I’ve updat­ed my web­site to share some of these with you. So, per­haps for the next few posts I’ll show you some of the images I have par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoyed re-dis­cov­er­ing as a teas­er for the web­site updates I’m cur­rent­ly work­ing on (shouldn’t be too long now…).

I took this pho­to­graph while hik­ing the Sul­phur Sky­line trail in Jasper Nation­al Park. It’s a short­er hike, with pret­ty steep (and con­stant) ele­va­tion gain, and the view from the top is incred­i­ble. This one is from the way back down (eas­i­er to think about mak­ing pho­tographs once the pulse has slowed down a lit­tle), look­ing south­east I believe–which would make this either Utopia Moun­tain or Mount O’Hagan. Does any­body know for sure? Besides the view, the best thing about this hike is that the trail­head is a few hun­dred meters from the Miette hotsprings–definitely a great way to end a day of climb­ing, I would cer­tain­ly rec­om­mend it next time you’re in Jasper.

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