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Warm light on winter day

Angled sunlight creates warm colours on a mild winter day at Whitemud Ravine in Edmonton, Alberta

Warm win­ter colours

I took this pho­to­graph dur­ing a beau­ti­ful lunch-time walk through the White­mud Ravine. Although it was mid-day, because of the sea­son the light was angled low and fil­tered through a very light haze, giv­ing it a warm tone. It’s unusu­al to see warm-toned colours much dur­ing the win­ter, but if you catch it just right they can add an inter­est­ing mood to an image.

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Chickadees taking flight

A Black-capped Chickadee takes flight from a bare winter perch

Chick­adee wings I

Chick­adee wings II

I have been set­tling into a new rou­tine, hav­ing start­ed a new work con­tract in the new year, and part of this rou­tine often includes walk­ing through Edmonton’s beau­ti­ful White­mud Ravine dur­ing my lunch break. The chick­adees in this park have become accus­tomed to humans, and will come in close to see if you’ve brought them any­thing. I couldn’t resist tak­ing a cou­ple pho­tos of them, and the ones I liked best were always just before they took off. I set a high enough shut­ter speed to catch the details of their feath­ers, and hoped for the best. When­ev­er I tried to catch one as it took off, I got a pic­ture of a bare branch—I was too slow. By the time I could react, the bird was gone. I had to watch through the viewfind­er and wait until I thought the bird was going to jump. Let’s just say it’s a good thing I’m shoot­ing dig­i­tal…

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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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Merry Christmas

Red berries are backlit by the sun on a bright winter morning in Whitemud Ravine, Edmonton

Moun­tain Ash berries on bright morn­ing

A good friend of mine recent­ly asked if I had a pho­to of a moun­tain ash tree, and this one sprang to mine. I took this pho­to in Jan­u­ary 2004, hav­ing just trad­ed in my film cam­era for my first dig­i­tal SLR cam­era. I still remem­ber the walk—it was a clas­sic spark­ly, crisp, bright Edmon­ton win­ter morn­ing. This is one of my best-sell­ing christ­mas card images, so I thought I’d share it, and wish you all the best for the hol­i­days and in the new year.

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Another photo from Whitemud Ravine

Light frost on aspen sapling

Light frost on aspen sapling

Here’s anoth­er pho­to from my recent ear­ly morn­ing walk at White­mud Ravine. This pho­to is much more mono­chro­mat­ic than the one I post­ed yes­ter­day, and per­haps cap­tures the cold, frosty feel of the morn­ing bet­ter. I made this pho­to­graph per­haps twen­ty min­utes after the last pho­to, but this sapling was shad­ed in behind some large white spruce trees which are vis­i­ble in the back­ground. What do you think? Do you pre­fer this one or the pre­vi­ous, more colour­ful pho­to? I always appre­ci­ate the feed­back, you can just click the “Leave a com­ment” link below–Thanks!

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Frosty morning at Whitemud

Late autumn willow thicket

This morn­ing I went out ear­ly to White­mud ravine. It has been a long time since I’ve been there for sun­rise, and I’d for­got­ten how long it takes after the “offi­cial” sun­rise for the light to reach the bot­tom of the ravine. In the mean­time, I enjoyed the chilly late-autumn air and the lit­tle bit of frost on the bare wil­lows and aspen saplings (and I froze my fin­ger­tips for the first time of the sea­son). After walk­ing most of the morn­ing with­out find­ing much to pho­to­graph, I found the sun final­ly reach­ing down onto this frost-cov­ered wil­low and alder thick­et. I had to bal­ance on a fall­en stem to get the right per­spec­tive for this shot (shoot­ing down­wards, so the bright sky wouldn’t blow out the top of the pho­to).

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