Grain Storage

When it gets thick enough, ice fog can eliminate any evidence of a horizon as it did on this day. I drove quite extensively around Red Deer County in the fog, which I find very enjoyable! Everything becomes very isolated and a feeling of loneliness pervades. Sounds become muted and whenever I stopped to have a look around or take a picture, I am sure to turn of the vehicle to enjoy the silence. Usually I’ll here a magpie, raven or maybe a distant farm dog barking. One day while out I heard a rather loud gunshot! I couldn’t see who was responsible and I’m certain whomever it was couldn’t see me, so I hightailed it out of there pretty quick!

 

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Protected

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“If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer.  But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.”
–  Henry David Thoreau   

 

 

This lone tree was possibly being protected by the farmer due to it’s beautiful shape or perhaps this used to be the site of an old homestead and he wanted to preserve something of the heritage of his farm. Of course there were other trees around, but in Kneehill County there are not near as many as in the parkland biome of Alberta. Mostly the tree are planted as windbreaks around farmyards, but every now and again you’ll find nice pockets of protected trees especially in the northern parts of the county. The further south you travel, the more sparse the  trees become. I quite liked how the cloud patterns resemble the snow patterns on the stubble field and the vehicle tracks on the right are mirrored in the clouds as well.

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Drilling for Fish

I suppose with almost no drilling for oil in these parts right now, an alternative might well be drilling for fish! Gull Lake in south central Alberta has it’s fair share of winter sportsmen who enjoy hanging out on the ice waiting for a fleeting glimpse of a fish. I for one don’t care for the sport, oh I’ve done it, but likely won’t ever again. Fly fishing – you bet, ice fishing – not so much. However, being that I enjoy photography so much, who is to say I can’t make a few photos of those that are still exploring the sport?

I have most Mondays off work(I usually work Saturdays, so please don’t get too excited thinking I get three day weekends!) and I have been waiting for a Monday that shows up with a nice cover of high clouds to enable the photo I am after for quite awhile. Sometimes my Mondays get rather full of things I need to get done, but this past week, I had a few hours available to go photographing and the conditions were ideal! I set off after driving my wife to work and enjoying a coffee with her.

It is a fairly short drive from Red Deer around a half hour or so. The day use area of Aspen Provincial Park is gated for the winter so a short half a kilometre walk got me to the beach area and just off shore were some of the fishing huts I was after.

 

 

I attempted this image last year, but the one time I made it out, the windchill was hovering around -30ºC, and I only took the time to make a photograph on 35mm film, which unfortunately was very far outdated 400ISO, so the resulting image was lacking shall we say!

As I was walking down the beach I noticed the one hut on the far right of the above image looking a bit lonely at the edge of the herd and I decided to isolate it with a telephoto lens to really give it the feeling of being lonely out there.

 

 

Then just before I was about to leave the beach and head back to my car one of the sportsmen decided to drill a new hole far from all the others. He had walked quite a distance with his ice auger and started drilling. I slang into action hoping to get set up in time to get at least one image before he finished the chore. I don’t know if he trouble starting the machine, but he seemed a bit delayed allowing me the few extra seconds to get my tripod set up and ready. I like this image the best from the time I spent at Gull Lake and would like to try printing it large with a white wood frame.

 

 

6.7″ x 10″ – Open Edition Printed on Ilford Galerie Prestige 310gsm, signed, numbered, and shipped  http://www.paypal.me/collinorthner/45

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Little Mere Lake

Little Mere Lake is along the northern border of the Chickakoo Lake Recreation Area north of Stony Plain, Alberta. My in-laws live fairly close to the area and so I try and travel along the roads and trails whenever we are visiting. I have been doing this now for more than 25 years and it still remains one of my favourite areas to be, although Parkland County has allowed a great many acreages to be built immediately bordering the small park with a lot of wells being dug, and I think that may be partly causing a drastic drop in the lake levels. The trails are fantastic and well maintained either for hiking, biking, or horseback riding in the three seasons without snow and in winter cross country ski trails are put down. As some of the lakes are now stocked with fish as well, the park has become quite busy and it would be a rare day now to have a trail to oneself, unlike in the past. I suppose I miss the days of the area being very quiet and unpopulated, but it is great to see so many who are out to enjoy the outdoors. I just hope it is managed in a way that prevents the destruction of the park.

 

 

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Gull Lake, AB

Going back to what was an almost unbearably cold day with a high windchill. I really was in the mood to go after some images on this day, so I headed the 30 minutes up to Gull Lake to see what I could find. Well, I almost froze my fingers off! The wind was howling over the snow and ice. I trudged through the snow along the shore until there were no distractions in the foreground and fired off a frame capturing the fishing huts out on the ice. Immediately, I thought I had found a unique image and threw my hands back in my pockets and headed straight back to the car. I had the film in the camera for a while before I finished the roll. It’s always nice to see images I almost forgot about! I think sometimes it’s more about me being able to simply get out to see, and not so much about the end result. Capturing what I found exciting to see on a piece of film is quite gratifying though, and it allows me to show others my vision of the world we are living in.

 

 

[ Leica M3, Zeiss ZM 50mm f2 Planar, Lomography 400 film ]

 

 

 

Piper Creek – Spingtime

The water is running nicely in Piper Creek with all the warm weather we are having, although the recent dump of snow cooled things down for a few days. We also got to enjoy some fresh clean whiteness as well before it all melted again.

 

 

[ Olympus E-M5II, Olympus M.Zuiko 14-150mm II ]

Late Snow (at least for this year)

I am calling it a late snow, as we had none on the ground last week and the weather had me thinking it was really spring just like the calendar said, but nooooooooo I was wrong!

I spent some time back in Bower Woods again this morning. 🙂

 

 

 

 

[ Olympus E-M5II, Olympus M.Zuiko 14-150mm II ]

 

 

Comet Lovejoy

I went out a couple nights ago in the hopes of seeing Comet Lovejoy before it starts to get to faint to see. I couldn’t see it, but had a pretty good idea where to look more intensely and to point my camera in it’s direction. I made a few images zoomed in, but really it is just a smudge in the sky and so decided to make a wide-angle view of the sky over Red Deer County tonight as well. You can easily see Sirius, Orion and the Pleiades, and there, just to the right of the Pleiades, is Comet Lovejoy, a small green smudge.

 

 

[ Olympus E-M5, M.Zuiko 9-18mm ]

 

 

Along the Clearwater River

 

 

 

[ Sigma DP2 Merrill ]

 

 

 

Ice And Snow Will Break The Stone

Snow gathers on stone ledges along the Red Deer River southwest of Sundre. There are many tiny pull-offs along the roads in the foothills of Alberta and many times I enjoy stopping to wander around and have a look. This was one of those pull-offs, that my friend Gary and I spent half an hour wandering along the rivers edge watching an American Dipper fly back and forth and listening to the water gurgling along the edge of the ice on the river where it had remained unfrozen.

[ Leica M3, Zeiss ZM 50mm Planar, Fuji Superia 400 ]