Lake O'Hara, British Columbia, August, 2012

This past weekend my family and I went to our favourite place, Lake O'Hara, British Columbia. The weather was fantastic! I took many photos and have only processed a few.

This is a 6 vertical shot panorama of Lake O'Hara, taken August 5 at 8:30 am, just as the sun peeked over the mountains. I was trying to get there before the sun, but got caught up in other photos.

This is about a 180° view.  I took 5 shots at each of the 6 positions, processed them with Photomatix, tweaked and sharpen in Photoshop CS5,  then merged using Photoshop Photomerge.

Hope this gives a fair impression of what Lake O'Hara really looks like. 

Lake O'Hara looking west to Mount Odaray.  The white spot is not dust but the moon! 5 shot HDR processed in Photomatix Pro and ACR, a bit more tweaking in Photoshop

This is the first day:

1. The beginning of the hike to an alpine lake called Lake Oesa. This is the bridge over the Lake O'Hara outlet stream.  Mount Lefroy (3426m/11959ft) is in the background. Katherine on the bridge.

2. About half way to Oesa. The waterfall is on the outlet stream of Lake Oesa. Matthew observing the scene.

3. Closer to the waterfall. The peak in the background is Glacier Peak. (3283m/10834ft)

4. The trail to Lake Oesa. It is just above the escarpment in front.

5. A friendly marmot. They were everywhere and not really afraid of us. This fellow was about 8 feet away.

6. Starting the climb up to the Yukness Ledges Alpine trail. This is looking back at Lake Oesa and the outlet stream. Yukness Mountain is the pointy peak. (2847m/9395 ft)

7. Further up the trail and looking back at Lefroy Lake, Lake Oesa, Glacier Peak and Mt. Lefroy

8. Approaching the cliff edge on the Yukness Ledge Trail. It may look steep, and there are several sections where one would not want to slip, but generally it is very safe and all ages from 4 to 80 hike it.

9. A Pika peeking. These animals are heard often and rarely seen - they hide in the rocks.  They are in the same family as rabbits. This guy was as curious about me as I was about him.  This is cropped about 50%.

10. Waterfall seen from the trail.

11. View from the cliff edge. Yukness Lake in foreground, Lake O'Hara in background and Mt. Odaray (3123m/10305 ft). For perspective, Yukness Lake is about 320 meters/1056ft below this point.

12. A good example of the type of terrain - large broken rock. It is not all like this, but narrows to a better defined trail.  My boys are in blue - another hiker behind.

13. Another view of Lake O'Hara and Mt. Odaray from the Yukness Ledges.

14. Back at the campground. This is the evening, about 7:20 pm -  the sun was catching Wiwaxy Peak (2665m/8794ft) 

This is a 3 shot HDR taken on day three. Posting here because I processed it today! The outlet stream of Lake O'Hara and the peak in the distance is Yukness Mt.

And another HDR shot, 5 images this time, of Mt. Odaray on the morning of August 5.

That covers day one ( and a bit of day three)!!  When I get the others done, I will post in a new thread as this is rather long.  Please forgive my verbosity, but I wanted to give you a bit of a feel for this beautiful area.

Garth

As we always do, we went to the interior of British Columbia, Kamloops, to visit family over Easter. On the way in, we saw many eagles including ones in the nest that I had photographed last year. So Saturday morning I was up at dawn and off about 15 km to where this nest is located. Spent about an hour walking towards the nest, when the female would leave and call for the male, then away so they would go back to the nest. I assume there were eggs in the nest and I didn't want the birds to be out of the nest for long. Used my Pentax K-r as it has better high ISO than my K20, and it has a faster shooting rate. Sigma 170-500 on a tripod most of the time, but stopped using the tripod to try to get better in flight shots.

292 shots later, I have a few that I am happy to post. The real challenge when the birds were flying is trying to locate them with the lens at 500mm. Had to zoom out to 170, then back in. Really quite hairy and exciting to get some reasonable shots. It was a beautiful morning, too!

 

When I was done, I spent a bit of time shooting around an old hop processing factory and the homes that were company homes. In the 1950's hops were grown here for Molson Breweries.Converted to Black and White.

 And back on the bird theme, these are from April 1. We saw Trumpeter Swans in a pond near our house, so I was out there with the 500mm lens at this time too.  Unfortunately, as I approached, the swans swam to the other end of the pond - it is a big one- and I really had to crop the shots. 

Then, when I was getting frustrated that the birds were so far away, the swans took off, circled around me about three times and flew off.  I got a few reasonable shots, this being one:

 Thanks for looking.

Early this morning I headed out west of Okotoks, Alberta to photograph the "Big Rock" in the sunrise.  This is a very large erratic - which means that it is a piece of rock that broke off the top of the Rocky Mountains in the last Ice Age, about 18,000 years ago, and was carried by the glacier out onto what is not the prairie/foothills.  As the glaciers melted, the rock was deposited where it is now. There are many of these all over the prairies.

This particular one apparently came from the summit of Mount Edith Cavell, which was above the glaciers, near Jasper Alberta, a distance of about 350 km as the crow flies. It is pure quartzite, as is Mount Edith Cavell.

It was quite cold, minus 13C, with a breeze and I had fun other than freezing my fingers.  They are tender as I type this.

For those of you who live in western Canada, Big Rock Beer, a great brew IMO, is named after this.

In this and the following, you can see the main ranges of the Rockies in the background.

This is a detail that I converted to Black and White

Garth

Magazine Cover

A Realtor I do work for had me shoot a house in Calgary for the cover of this promo mag.  Took three trips there to have a decent sky, but nice to have the credit given on it.

There is some writing from the inside page bleeding through on the scan, if you were wondering what that was.

Garth

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!