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was hovering around -30ºC, and I only took the time to make a photograph on 35mm film, which unfortunately was very far outdated 400ISO, so the resulting image was lacking shall we say!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

20″ x 30″ – Edition of 9 + 1 AP  Printed on Ilford Galerie Prestige 310gsm, signed, numbered, and shipped  http://www.paypal.me/collinorthner/385

30″ x 45″ – Edition of 4 +1 AP  Printed on Ilford Galerie Prestige 310gsm, signed, numbered, and shipped  http://www.paypal.me/collinorthner/825

40″x 60″ – Edition of 4 +1 AP  Printed on Ilford Galerie Prestige 310gsm, signed, numbered, and shipped  http://www.paypal.me/collinorthner/1650

On the way to Swartz Bay

The mountains of Ruckle Provincial Park on Saltspring Island loom on the horizon as we threaded our way through the gulf islands on our way between Tsawwassen and Swartz Bay aboard Coastal Celebration. The light was soft and gorgeous on a bright overcast day. What a beautiful view!! I think I need to live out on the coast.

 

 

 

[ Sony RX100III ]

 

 

Cougars Touchdown!!

My family attended the rival high school football teams, Notre Dame Cougars and Lindsey Thurber Raiders, play their final match of the year this evening at Great Chief Park along the river here in Red Deer. The Raiders won handily tonight, but that didn’t hamper the celebrations when the Cougars got a touchdown! These guys were into the game in a big way – such a fun atmosphere!

 

 

 

[ Panasonic GF2, Panasonic 20mm f1.7 ]

 

 

Heading to the Game

Last week on Thursday we headed to Great Chief Park as a family to watch my wife’s cousin’s son playing in his high school football game. It was very pleasant out as darkness gathered for the evening, but my two sons were not taking any chances that it wasn’t going to get cold and were bundled up pretty good. Can you tell if there is any difference between personalities between them? LOL Love them both!

 

 

 

[Panasonic GF2, Panasonic 20mm]

 

 

Great Chief Park

My family headed off this evening to watch the rival high school football teams, Notre Dame Cougars and the Hunting Hills Lightning, play at Great Chief Park here in Red Deer. It was a spectacular evening as it was very warm and completely calm. Unfortunately “our” team (Cougars) got kicked pretty bad, but the atmosphere was great with over 550 people at the game.

 

 

 

 

[Panasonic GF2, Panasonic 20mm]

 

 

Sun-Oka Beach

Sunny Okanagan is my highly educated guess for the shortened name Sun-Oka! Took me forever to figure that out too……. 😉 Well the picture lives up to the description anyway. The colours of the umbrella drew me in and the I noticed her beach chair matches too. Looks to me like she is having a great holiday. As I am getting out my camera to make the image a tiny cloud formed allowing for a sky that isn’t just an ordinary blue.  Nice.

 

 

[Sigma DP3 Merrill]

 

 

Out For Sushi

Yes, it’s a photograph of a person! I know, you don’t often get the chance to see these sort of images on this blog very often. It had been a great evening so far. We had attended my youngest son Alexander’s grade 9 grad and after dropping him off at a friends home for the rest of the evening we, not having eaten since lunch, needed to find some food. The decision was made for sushi and off we went. After ordering we were joking around and Thomas turned to his mom grinning. I barely had time to grab my camera off the table and grab this image. The background shapes were fantastic and the lighting was great. I only wish Alexander would have been there too, but he really wanted to be with his friends for a bit.

 

 

[Olympus E-M5, Panasonic 20mm f1.7]

 

 

Thinking Time

After enjoying my own Vanilla Latte this evening, I noticed this fellow through the window of our car and quickly rolled down the window to grab an image. I cranked up the cameras ISO to 800 and managed a 1/10 sec shot. I figured it would be a total failure as hand holding such a long exposure in a car that was running didn’t seem possible. Looking at the image on the review screen it appeared sharp but I had badly blown the highlights of the painting on the wall behind him. With nothing to lose I fired up SPP (Sigma Photo Pro) to see if the RAW data held any details. Wow! I easily pulled back at least a full stop if not more and the resulting image is completely acceptable to me. It’s also very sharp!

 

 

 

[Sigma DP2 Merrill]

 

 

Inglewood, Calgary

This camera reminds me so much of shooting Kodachrome! The colours are accurate, saturated, and pure, but not over the top, just like you were standing and looking out a window.

 

 

[Sigma DP2 Merrill]

 

 

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]