Calgary Early Morning Lights

Katherine has been insisting that I go to downtown Calgary to view the Christmas lights.  Today I forced myself out of bed way before the crack of dawn and took her advice.  The following were shot between 7 and 8 am. This first is looking west along 8th Avenue SW, which is a pedestrian mall, except for City and emergency vehicles.

Row of interesting lights outside the Theatre

Detail. These were interesting to shoot as the colours changed from red to blue to green. With the long exposure, the colour out of the camera was rather putrid.  Photoshop helped get back to what I saw!

The plaza in front of City Hall.  The building in the background is the old City Hall, completed in 1911.

Decorated trees in front of City Hall

View towards Olympic Plaza, where the medal presentations for the 1988 Winter Olympics were made.  It is a great public space - music in the summer and skating in the winter. Didn't take a photo of it as there were many workers setting up stages for new Year's Eve celebrations.  Recently vacated by the Occupy Calgary people. Tall building in the background is the newest tower, built by Encana and Cenovus Energy companies -oil and gas.

Same view only different (dawn is starting to come!)

 City Hall Plaza

 Another view of the trees in front of City Hall Plaza - light is changing

The Calgary Tower peeking from behind. The Tower was built in 1967 as a Centennial Project - Canada's 100th birthday

Another view looking west along the 8th Avenue Mall

 And finally the full Calgary Tower

It was about -3C when I was taking these, so not too bad. But it was nice to get back into the car to warm up - particularly my hands as I had the gloves off many times.  All photos with my Pentax K20D and either the Pentax DA 18-250 or Sigma 10-20 lenses.  Camera on a tripod for all.

Thanks for looking and comments always welcome!

Winter Morning

We had snow over the past couple of days and this morning it dawned beautifully, with frost/snow on the trees.  I headed out before sunrise around the yard, then over to a viewpoint of the Rockies as the sun was coming over the eastern horizon.  Was about 5 minutes late for perfect light, but was happy with what was available.  Driving home I realized my cell phone was missing and had to return to seek it. Fortunately, I found it easily in about a foot of snow.  No damage, just cold! Took some more shots on arriving home with the sun back lighting the frost.  these are in chronological order.

Before the sun was up. The moon is visible at the white dot.

The Front Ranges of the Rockies.  The sun was about 1/2 way up on the eastern horizon.  Still had the pink light.

A closer view (zoomed in). I liked the almost monocromatic look. 

Back home and a frosted poplar with the sun behind

One of my neighbour's horses.

A frosted fence

Comments and critiques welcomed and thanks for looking

Garth

Beauty and the Beast

On November 20th, I shot the production of Beauty and the Beast at my son's old high school.  I have done this before and it is always enjoyable.  This year the school and members of the cast requested copies of the photos, so I burned a DVD of the best ones and also did a 16 x 20 print for the school to frame and hang in the threatre department.

This is the cast photo that will be framed.  I put the logo on with Photoshop and was pleased how it turned out.

I packaged the DVDs in a folder with a photo on the front. This shows the front, back and the DVD that has a printed label on it.

A few of the shots:

Belle and the Beast

Lefou and Gaston

 

Lumière and Cogsworth

The Beast

Madame de las Grande Bouche,  Lumière and Mrs. Potts

  

 For a couple of the shots, I went up on the catwalk for a different view of the action.  This is the culmination of the "Kill the Beast" scene.

The production was fabulous and the students did an incredible job.  It was a challenge to photograph, but fun none the less!

Kananaskis Country October 21, 2011

As I had a day off this past Friday, my wife, Katherine,  and I headed out to Kananskis Country, which is a wilderness area/park on the east side of the Rockies. We had reasonable weather, although there had been a bit of snow at Highwood Pass, elevation  2,206 m (7,238 ft), the highest road in Canada, and the road was icy.

1 - Heading north up Route 40 into the Pass:

2 - Getting closer

3 - Details of the folding of the mountains. Makes you wonder what forces were at play here:

4 -Rocky Mountain Sheep on the road, with one fresh one

 

5 -Curiosity of youth

6 -Stacked Sheep

7- Lower Kananaskis Lake.  This was a natural Lake, but it and Upper Kananaskis Lake were dammed in the 1930's and there is a hydroelectric  generator.  The damming raised the levels of the lakes a fair bit.

We saw lots of wildlife. It was great! Not too many people around and perhaps because of that, the wildlife was on the side of the road, making photos easy!

8 - White Tailed Deer

9- Same one, different look

10- A lone larch in full autumn foliage.  I found it curious that there were several larches on their own.  I would have thought that if one got going, then others would grow around it, but apparently not so here.

11 - Perhaps the highlight.  Katherine and I have hiked literally thousands of kilometres in the Canadian Rockies and our total bear sightings are two black bears.  Actually, Katherine wasn't there when I saw the black bears - just my boys and I, so Katherine had never seen a bear.  This female was digging up roots in a meadow.  It is actually a meadow near the Visitor Information Centre for Peter Lougheed Park, so I was able to take these shots from the safety of the balcony of the centre.  This Grizzly female had two cubs this year, but both died, one they think killed by a male and the other they don't know.  The first shot gives you an idea of the distance.  It is taken at 500mm on a APS-C camera(750mm on a 35mm camera) and cropped about 40%.  It was really exciting to finally see a grizzly!

12 - about 100% crop

13 - about 150% crop, backlit

Then we headed down a road to the lake and I was driving.  A coyote ran in front of the car, I slammed on the brakes, grabbed my camera and got this - not razor sharp, unfortunately.  That is a snowshoe hare.  I didn't leap out to follow it as wild animals  with freshly caught prey can be a bit possessive.

14 - Coyote and hare

Then it was time for moose!

15 - Two Meese ( everyone knows that the plural of moose is meese!) I'm pretty sure this is a mother and her young one.

16 -  The young one became curious and started coming towards me.  I was out of the car, took a few shots (at 250mm), got back in the car and drove away.  I wasn't in any danger, but moose can get ornery and they are huge!

17 - A final shot of Upper Kananaskis Lake

It was a great day!  There were very few people on the road and around Kananaskis Lakes, we bumped into the same people time and again and shared experiences of the animals.  Everyone was enthusiastic and we directed each other to areas where we had seen different species.

So you get an idea where this is and if you have Google Earth, the coordinates for the lakes are: 50° 37' 45.76" N by 115° 08' 04.31" W.

Thanks for looking and as always, comments are welcome.

Garth

Hummingbirds

Last August we were at Kootenay Lake, British Columbia.  There was a hummingbird feeder and it was visited by hummers. I set up my camera on a tripod about 10 feet away and spent several hours and about 600 shots trying to get the perfect one.  Don't think I got the perfect one, but here are a few of the better ones!

Lake O'Hara August 2011

As many of you know, Lake O'Hara in Yoho National Park in British Columbia is about my most favourite place on the planet.  My family and I were able to get there in late August for 4 days; perfect weather!  One morning my son and I were up at about 7 am and I noticed that the sunrise was just hitting the peaks.  So the next morning I was up at 5, out the tent by 5:15 and hiked about 4 kilometres (2 1/2 mile)in the dark and up 200 meters (600 feet). Dawn was approaching as I went up to an over look and I really pushed hard to get there in time. Racing the sun is unfair as it goes 1600 kph (1000 mph) and I hike at a significantly slower pace.  But I made it. Set up the tripod and took multiple shots.  I was experimenting with HDR as well and the following are 5 shot brackets, processed in Photmatix. Pretty much what I recall seeing.  I am thrilled with Photomatix.

Looking northish. 7:20 am.  the high peak on the left is Mount Odaray, the pointy one on the right is Cathedral Mountain

Looking east. 7:38 am August 28. Lake O'Hara is the larger lake on the right.  The one on the left is Mary lake (it is actually just one lake - can't see where it joins.)

This is on the Opabin Plateau, behind where the first two photos were taken.  Mount Schaffer in the right background. 7:58 am.

And finally Lake O'Hara in the evening, the same day.  We had a great sunset, too!  9:08 pm.

Just a sampling of a beautiful wilderness area.  Hope you enjoy them and comments are appreciated.

Garth