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!