Abraham Lake, Alberta

Abraham Lake in southwestern Alberta has amazing colour as you can well see. The water level has been allowed to drop substantially in anticipation of the snowmelt to come off the mountains in the next month or so and it should be right back to full again. There seems to be plenty of snow to melt high up, even Bow Summit on Highway 93 still had maybe 2m or so of snow on the ground. My family stopped by the lake yesterday on our way home from Banff and Lake Louise. I used my Olympus E-M5 and the wonderful Olympus 12mm f/2.0 lens for both these images. Thankfully, this camera has amazing image stabilizer as the wind was screaming down the lake with nothing to stop it, which is pretty normal here, but non-the-less, it was buffeting me around and I really had to concentrate to hold steady.

 

 

My youngest son Alexander modelled for the second image with his armed outstretched in the wind. the two of us had a great time exploring the shoreline right down to the waters edge.

 

 

[Olympus E-M5, Olympus 12mm f2.0]

 

 

 

 

Spring Storm

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

Deep Dark Night

 

 

[Canon 5DmkII, Canon EF 50mm f/1.4]

Pavan Park, Lethbridge , Alberta

A couple of images from Pavan Park in Lethbridge. A very beautiful park that you really shouldn’t miss if you get the chance to visit Lethbridge.

[Canon 5DmkII, Zeiss 21mm Distagon]

Dogrib Creek Burn

These images were made a few years ago when my friend Gerard and I went out on an expedition to the mountains along the forestry trunk road in a snowstorm. Crazy maybe, but we did get some great images. There had been a very large fire that swept through the area earlier in the year when the forest was tinder dry. The snow blowing through the trees contrasted so nicely with the charred trees. It was pretty hard to leave the area, but we were getting quite cold. If you look closely in the top image you can see where a woodpecker has chipped the bark off the large tree just right of center.

Movement 6

Some of these movements images were taken in some very challenging conditions. The wind was really howling through these trees and even though I used image stabilized lenses, virtually all the images I made were ruined from me being buffeted by the strong gusts. Image stabilization in lenses is amazing technology, but can only do so much.

Movement 5

Movements 1 & 2

Movements and its effect on images can be very interesting to say the least. Some movements are made by nature and others by myself. With the wind gusting to around 60kmh it was nearly impossible to aquire any sort of sharp image as I generally try to accomplish. Failing to bring a tripod along on my walk I decided instead to start exploring what could be found in movements. While not an exact representation on nature, I feel that they still tell a story of things we can’t see, but are out there to be found with an inquisitive eye.

Wind on the Water

One of the challenges I give myself is trying to explain the action of wind with a photograph. It’s not very often that I feel I have been able to capture the right effect. Here is an example of a chinook wind blowing over the Bow River in Calgary. This one I feel works nicely. I did need to play with a few different lengths of exposure and wait for a fairly strong gust of wind to catch just the right amount of movement.
[Panasonic LX2]