 Blackbird flock in bare trees I recently received a request from a woman to use this photograph in a blog post she’s writing, which gave me the great excuse to re-visit this image and to share it here (it hasn’t made it into the new website yet, but watch for it in the Birds section of my catalogue, hopefully in the next few months).
I took this photo near the Beaverhill Bird Observatory near Tofield, AB in the spring of 2007. At the time, I was experimenting with defocusing images, or portions thereof, for creative effect. In this case, the original image was mostly sharp, and I “painted in” the blurred effect in post-processing. I was inspired to try this technique by another photographer who would create the same effect in the darkroom by spilling chemicals over the drying print and using a brush or sponge to blur the image.
It’s always fun to try new techniques, and although I haven’t taken many defocused photographs lately, you can view a selection of these images in my “Boreal Impressions” portfolio. I’d also recommend having a look at William Neill’s “Impressions of Light” portfolio for more great blurry images that were an inspiration to me (although he achieves the effect mostly through long shutter speeds and camera movement, rather than manually defocusing the lens).
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I am really excited that one of the photographs from my “Talbot Burn” portfolio has been chosen to be a part of the “Forest Show” curated by the Alberta Society of Artists. The exhibition is currently mounted in the Hinton Public Library (Jan 5 – 31), and will be moving to the Edson Library (Feb 2 – 28), the McMullen Gallery in Edmonton (opening reception on March 24, 7 – 9 pm), and the Leighton Gallery in Calgary (opening reception June 4, 2 – 4 pm). My piece was also selected to be one of just a few pieces that will be in a travelling exhibition showing throughout Alberta until 2013. I hope that you can make it to one of these venues, but if not, you can have look at the image in my “Talbot Burn” portfolio (it’s the third image, entitled “Talbot Fire Valley”), or simply click below to view the image full screen.
 Talbot fire valley — —
 Cooper’s Hawk Today, after a couple days of bad weather, I went for a walk at the Strathcona Science Park, a provincial park on the eastern edge of Edmonton (follow 17th street north from baseline road (101 ave)). The early autumn colours were starting to come out, but most striking was the number of raptors moving through the river valley. During my relatively short walk, I saw a pair of Swainson’s Hawks, several Red-tailed Hawks, a Bald Eagle perched in a snag, and a Cooper’s Hawk hunting Yellow-rumped Warblers in the shrubs along the river bank.
I didn’t get any photographs of the birds I saw today, so I thought I’d share this one — a Cooper’s Hawk that I caught while working as a bird bander at the Beaverhill Bird Observatory in Tofield. As you may judge from the photo, he was none too happy about the situation, but I really enjoyed getting a close-up look at one of these terrific birds.
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 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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 Bright morning after rain I’m slowly working my way to a major update/revision of my galleries (which, I apologize, have not been updated in a long time), and part of that process is a ruthless editing-down of my collection to best showcase my favourite images. Unfortunately, that sometimes means leaving out ones that I really like, and this image is an example of that. While it’s currently in my “Summer 2007″ gallery, and I like it at least as well as some of the ones that “made the cut”, it just didn’t fit with the other selections. So, I decided to post in the journal here instead, where hopefully it can still be enjoyed all on it’s own.
I made this photograph between Rocky Mountain House and Nordegg, Alberta in early June 2007. It had rained heavily the night before, and the branches and lichens in this dense black spruce stand were dripping wet as the sun came up. Each drop acts like a tiny prism, catching the light of the low sun. When the lens is de-focused as I did here, each specular highlight becomes a glowing circle of light, each with a slightly different colour depending on the angle. I know my blurry, out-of-focus work is not everyone’s cup of tea, but in this case I think it really made for an interesting image (I’ve included a “straight” shot of the same stand below for interest’s sake), and it’s also a great example of how the optics in a lens can create effects “in the field” that are unattainable using post-processing software (i.e. Photoshop). I’d love to hear your reactions to this image, just click below…
 Bright morning after rain – in focus — —
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!
 Mountain Geraldine ridge Along the Icefields Parkway [ Click for more details]
 Pale winter sky through poplar canopy Ministik Lake (in the winter)
 Chickweed blooms and fern Waterton National Park
 Brooding cloud over Ministik Lake Ministik Lake (in the summer) (I know that’s cheating a little)
 Athabasca River island at dusk Jasper National Park
 Birch stems and early autumn colour Goldbar Park (North Saskatchewan River Valley)
 Late autumn willow thicket Whitemud Ravine [ Click for more details]
 Ice fog frozen on alder saplings Strathcona Science Park [ Click for more details]
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 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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(Click photos to enlarge)
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