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Dried grass with green fringe

Dried grass seed heads glow in the warming evening light of early spring.

Tall dried grass

I’m try­ing to print a wide range of pho­tos as I start up on my Dai­ly Print project to give myself a feel for what kinds of prints I’m fair­ly good at mak­ing already, and which areas I could use more prac­tice.

I’m also try­ing to use a range of tools and tech­niques that I haven’t used before, to try to add them to my reg­u­lar work­flow to be used as required. This image showed just a hint of “green fring­ing” chro­mat­ic abber­a­tion, so I tried out Light­room 4.1’s new “Defringe” con­trols. I don’t know if the slight fring­ing would have been notice­able in a print orig­i­nal­ly, but it sure wasn’t after a lit­tle bit of extra tweak­ing. Cool.

A folio print of this image is for sale for whatever price you think is fair. Enter amount: $

Thunderstorm over Brazeau

A thunderhead cloud roils above the Brazeau Resevoir delivering high winds and a torrential downpour

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.

A folio print of this image is for sale for whatever price you think is fair. Enter amount: $

Athabasca Falls in motion

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.

The Athabasca river flows over the granite cliffs of Athabasca Falls in Jasper National Park, Canada

Athabas­ca Falls II (1/5th sec)

The Athabasca river flows over the granite cliffs of Athabasca Falls in Jasper National Park, Canada

Athabas­ca Falls III (1/125th sec)

 
A folio print of this image is for sale for whatever price you think is fair. Enter amount: $

Red-winged Blackbird flock

Red-winged blackbirds perch in the bare branches of early spring near Beaverhill Lake in Alberta

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).

A folio print of this image is for sale for whatever price you think is fair. Enter amount: $

ASA Forest Show in Hinton">ASA Forest Show in Hinton

The Forest Show

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.

Fire-blackened spruce tree stems stand in a valley laid bare by forest fire in 2003 in Jasper National Park

Tal­bot fire val­ley


ASA Forest Show in Hinton", posted Jan 14, 2011"> A folio print of this image is for sale for whatever price you think is fair. Enter amount: $

Raptor migration through Edmonton river valley

Coopers Hawk

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.

A folio print of this image is for sale for whatever price you think is fair. Enter amount: $

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.

A folio print of this image is for sale for whatever price you think is fair. Enter amount: $