Spring Storm

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Canon 5DmkII, Canon 100-400mm L]

Polson Park

This image goes back almost a year. My family made a trip out to B.C. last fall and on one of the days we visited Polson Park in Vernon. The day was a perfect, for me, fall day with  high clouds, so no harsh shadows, and just slightly on the cool side, enough that you wanted to wear an extra layer over your t-shirt. One of the ponds alongside Vernon Creek had  many many mallards, and some swans, swimming about waiting for someone to throw them some feed. The fall colours were near perfect and were reflecting in the pond beautifully, making for a very abstract background, looking a lot like good camouflage. I made many images, mostly of the females with their gorgeous brown colouring. I could spend a day at this small park quite easily photographing and people watching. I would imagine just sitting alongside the pond watching the ducks slowly swimming about, creating endless new abstract patterns in the water, could make for a very relaxing afternoon. Maybe bring along a nice warm cup of coffee and a good book.

Five cows facing east

Banff National Park

I had a great opportunity this past weekend to get into the mountains and do a bit of photography. Dwight Arthur and myself took a small group along and did a bit of instruction(more so Dwight, but I did help some). Anyway we started out Friday evening by photographing along the Vermilion Lakes from 9:30 pm until about 12:30 in the morning and I managed to get quite a nice 3 image stitch of Banff’s lights and Mount Rundle.

We then retired to our room in Banff for about 4 hours sleep and got up at 5 am to catch the sunrise. Unfortunately the day dawned with a bright blue sky and no clouds to speak of. We travelled up to Moraine Lake to witness what many people travel from the far corners of the world to see. I have never seen Moraine Lake this low. It was like someone pulled the plug and drained it. I suppose it will fill up again once the high-up snow melts and turns a gorgeous green colour. This is a 5 image stitch made with the Canon 5DmkII and the 16-35mm lens. Click the image to enlarge it a bit as this blog cuts off at 800 pixels in width and the image here is 1000.

There were many opportunities for making abstract images – well at least for me. I tend to see many images in even the everyday mundane. Here is a close-up view (3 image stitch) from the same vantage point, except made with a 70-200mm telephoto lens.

We even got to see a hoary marmot (Marmota caligata) right near the top of the rockpile. He turned his head nicely allowing me to capture a nice catchlight in his eye.