 Turbulent summer storm over Brazeau Resevoir We had a terrific thunderstorm this afternoon in Edmonton, and the past couple nights as well—it’s easily one of my favourite things about summer in Alberta. So, I thought for my print today I would choose an image of a wicked summer storm that I had the pleasure of experiencing (and photographing extensively) last summer. This storm rolled in relatively slowly, or at least, I could see it coming for quite a while over the open sky of the Brazeau Resevoir (just south of Drayton Valley, Alberta). The texture of the underside of the cloud was amazing, and each minute it was more beautiful and scary than the last… until the very last minute… I was photographing from the beach, and after the first few big drops I ran (RAN) back to my truck a few hundred meters away, and was thoroughly soaked by the time I got there. But it was all worth it, of course. It rained so hard it wasn’t possible to drive away, but it didn’t last long and by the time it tapered off, I felt like taking just a few more photos…
Technically speaking, my favourite thing about how this print turned out is that I managed to hold the detail in the highlights in the upper-right corner of the cloud (yay!) If your monitor is reasonably accurate (most are not bad), and not set too bright (most are set way too high), you should be able to see faint wisps of cloud, even in the brightest parts.
 Silverton Falls textures Speaking of shutter speeds and water texture, for this image I used a fast shutter speed (1/640th sec at f/8) to freeze the motion of the falling water. It’s interesting to me that you can see how the water was accelerating as it fell—the texture gets blurrier near the bottom of the fall. I also like how the texture of the water matches the patterns in the rock faces surrounding the falls.
For printing this photo, I tried to make sure to retain detail in the shadows and in the highlights while maintaining the high-contrast nature of the scene. In the final print I did notice the highlights wash out just a bit in one spot of water (far right, about 2/3rds down), and when I checked the image on my monitor it also showed almost no detail, although it was not quite clipped. Funny how I didn’t notice it as a problem on-screen, but it stood out in the print immediately. Lesson learned…
 Yellow-rumped Warbler on budding willow I’ve always liked this photograph, and the memory of the day that I took it (which often confounds a photographer’s ability to tell if a photo’s any good or not). I’ve even written a post about this image before (which you can read here). Even so, I’ve never printed it, so I figured this Daily Print project was just the excuse I needed.
Bonus questions for this post: +1 point if you can tell me the sex of the bird, +5 points for the subspecies, and +50 points if you can tell me the age (hint: click the image to view it full size, and remember that this photo was taken in May…)
After my previous post “Athabasca Falls in black and white” with the motion of the water captured with a slow shutter speed to give a streaked effect, I remembered that I had also captured some video on that morning. So—for your interest’s sake—here is: a short video clip of Athabasca Falls shot at 30 fps with a shutter speed of 1/30th of a second at f/16; a still photo of the same composition captured at 1/5th of a second at f/8 and iso400 (the same settings as the image in my previous post); and a photo captured at 1/125th of a second (which I’ve been told best captures how our eyes/brains see motion) at f/9 and iso800.
 Athabasca Falls II (1/5th sec)  Athabasca Falls III (1/125th sec)
 Fine summer clouds over Jasper Lake In August 2008 I was working for the Canadian Forest Service, doing research in pine stands west of Edmonton. I made this photo after leaving from work for the weekend and driving through Jasper on the way to a friend’s wedding in northern BC. I could see the light getting good as I got closer to the park and, after a speeding ticket in Edson (d-oh!), I had a terrific evening making many images that I was really happy with. This Daily Print project that I’m trying out is a great excuse to look back into my archives to find these images that I’ve kind of forgotten about. Watch for more photos from this August evening in the next few weeks…
 Athabasca Falls I’ve noticed that I make a greater proportion of black-and-white images than I tend to print—so I’m going to try to correct that. I took this photograph the same weekend as this photo (it was a great weekend).
And, although it’s not an uncommon technique in landscape photography (especially of waterfalls), I also haven’t experimented much with slow shutter speeds and flowing water, although a fellow Edmonton photographer, Joel Koop (see an example of his work here), has inspired me to try more.
 Heavy clouds over Beaverhill Lake I made this photograph back in August of 2008 on a beautiful, calm morning at Beaverhill Lake but which didn’t last long—by mid-morning the clouds had completely rolled in, and I proceeded with getting soaked (all part of the experience).
I printed this photo today, as the first two prints (here and here) in my Daily Print project (explained here) were both highly-detailed, finely textured images with bold colours, so I thought I’d try something different, and a little out of the ordinary for me. It was interesting to see the finished print—the colours turned out great, but let’s say I need to practice printing more soft-textured images… (that’s what this whole exercise is about though, I guess, and I’m having fun doing it too)
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(Click photos to enlarge)
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