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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.

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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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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.

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Winter stratus

Frost covers birch catkins at Ministik Lake Sanctuary near Edmonton, Alberta

Branch­es and catkins against a flat win­ter sky

In cen­tral Alber­ta the cold snap is over, and a pro­longed case of the “win­ter-stra­tus” has set in—stratus clouds, that is. These are low, fea­ture­less clouds and in win­ter, when there isn’t much mois­ture, they are gen­er­al­ly light grey to near­ly white. Some­times, like yes­ter­day after­noon, they’ll lift a lit­tle to where you might call them alto­stra­tus, and you’re more like­ly to catch a lit­tle break for the sun to peak through. These are prob­a­bly the most com­mon clouds (stra­tus and alto­stra­tus) over Edmon­ton dur­ing the win­ter when there’s not enough solar ener­gy to build a decent cumu­lus cloud. (I think I may be let­ting the cloud-watch­er nerd in me show a lit­tle here).

Pho­to­graph­i­cal­ly speak­ing, stra­tus clouds make the light per­fect­ly flat and even, which can be both a curse and a bless­ing. Gen­er­al­ly, the con­trast of side light and shad­ows makes for more dra­mat­ic images than the flat light under a stra­tus ceil­ing, but I find that some­times detail-ori­ent­ed com­po­si­tions ben­e­fit from the “huge soft­box in the sky” effect. I enjoy the chal­lenge of find­ing these pho­tographs on days that would nor­mal­ly be con­sid­ered pho­to­graph­ic busts.

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Grouse tracks

Fresh Ruffed Grouse footprints in deep snow at Ministik Lake Game Bird Sanctuary

Grouse tracks in fresh snow

I was sent a pho­to recent­ly of an uniden­ti­fied bird out at Elk Island Nation­al Park that turned out to be a Ruffed Grouse. The same day I had been out tak­ing pho­tographs at Min­is­tik Lake Game Bird Sanc­tu­ary, which is just south of Elk Island, and had come across a fair num­ber of grouse tracks in the dust­ing of fresh snow that had fall­en overnight (this pho­to was tak­en at Min­is­tik, but a cou­ple years ago). The tracks are quite dis­tinc­tive with the wide snow­shoe-like toes, and it’s inter­est­ing to see where the birds come and go. Keep an eye out for these next time you’re in the fresh snow.

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Singing ice at Islet Lake

Cold early winter evening at Islet Lake

Cold ear­ly win­ter evening at Islet Lake

Last week I took my cam­era (and my daugh­ter) out to the Cook­ing Lake-Black­foot Nat­ur­al Area, about 30 min east of Edmon­ton, for an after­noon walk while the weath­er was still rel­a­tive­ly mild. There has been just a dust­ing of snow so far this year, so the ice on the lake was bare and exposed to the quick­ly cool­ing air. As the sun moved low­er in the sky and the tem­per­a­ture dropped the ice began to make ter­rif­ic heav­ing, groan­ing and boom­ing sounds. The fre­quen­cy increased until there was near­ly con­stant, resound­ing, echo­ing sound com­ing from the ice. Every­thing else was per­fect­ly still, and the singing of the ice was the per­fect back­ground music while I took this quick photograph–just as the last sun­light made the bare aspen on the far shore glow a warm orange-red, in con­trast to the cool blue of the shad­owed lake ice in the fore­ground.

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Beautiful grey day at Ministik

Receding Ministik shoreline

Reced­ing Min­is­tik shore­line

This pho­to­graph is not brand new (it’s from ear­li­er this win­ter), but I have been work­ing with it recent­ly, and would like to share it here. It had been a while since I’d had the time to hike in to this lake in the Min­is­tik Game Bird Sanc­tu­ary, and it was a shock to see how far the water had reced­ed since I’d last seen it. Not that I was ter­ri­bly surprised–every lake at Min­is­tik (and in most of Alber­ta) is show­ing the effect of the dry years we’ve had. What did sur­prise me was the colour of the mudflats–the pink­ish-red­dish hue in the pho­to is an accu­rate depic­tion (as much as is possible–but that’s anoth­er debate). The grey sky com­ple­ment­ed the mud­flats and dried grass, giv­ing a very sub­tle, sub­dued pal­lette.

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