Enjoy!
During a freak April snowstorm, which has since hit many more times and carried over into May, I decided to go for a walk. Actually.... I think this may have been on my birthday... Some gift to myself eh lol
In any event, for a walk I went and these geese I did find. They of course, swam across to the other side of the river but on the way I got a couple decent shots! In the background would be Mount Norquay but the ceiling was low that day, of course, so all you get is clouds!
On March 10th pretty much our entire house meandered out to the ranch at Cochrane for the annual trimming. This is when the ferrier class from Olds College gets to come practice their trimming techniques on the horses while exposing us to their inflated ideas about well behaved horses. In any case, it was fun listening to these folks, even more fun catching the horses and of course, a great photo op! I wanted to try a few of the photos in sepia but for some reason I never like my sepia shots like others. Instead, I stuck with good ole' black n' white!
Here we have Tuffy's fat, white bum as a background with his tail stuck in the fence as the focal point. Black and White didn't change this shot much since Tuffy's white and the fence is dark... but still, it brought out good contrast! This is a shot I'm submitting to the Calgary Stampede Western Showcase. We shall see how it stands up next to other photos!
An unknown mountain just south of Saskatchewan Crossing on the Icefield Parkway (Hwy 93) in Jasper National Park. I played tourist on this on and just pulled over on the side of the road and jumped out of Georgie (my truck). I like the lighting and cloud coverage of the shot. It's one of many from the day trip Sara and I took up to Jasper and back around via the trunk road, back to Banff. It was an awesome, albeit long day, that was a refreshing change of mountains and great opportunities for more photos that you're sure to see posted on here!
After a wonderfully helpful friend helped - actually did all the work - and fixed my truck, I once again can go for drives! On the first test outing to see if it would work, Sara and I found two separate bachelor herds of elk. The second was of larger males and they were closer to the road. This big fella actually crossed the road in front of us so he wasn't totally in the bush and hiding behind trees. Unfortunately, because of the time of day and he just kept moving! the shot was fairly blurred. I've been testing varying types of sharpening processes on him but to very little avail on the larger image. Small it looks half decent, larger... not so much lol Still, enjoy as much as you can! :D
**NOTE: Larger version is poor quality**
After some recent decisions that needed made I thought I'd do a post with a little bit of a meaning. I love this shot because of the way the mountains are illuminated but not the valley. It was too early in the morning for the sun to have come up above Sulphur mountain and this gave a lovely lighting situation for me. I think the bench helps to offer up a focal point for someone to sit and watch the illumination of the range. It may help shed a light on the persons life as well. Ya never know these things :D
The Fairmont Banff Springs is a world renowned hotel. Apparently because it's a Fairmont hotel but really... the only Fairmont's I'd ever heard of were Banff and Lake Louise.... Either way, it's world famous and has been called the Castle of the Rockies. Personally I think Lake Louise has a better view but hey, that's me :D Anyhoo... this is the back view of the Banff Springs hotel. It's facing up the Spray Valley, towards Mount Rundle and, as you can see in this shot, is bordered by the Bow River (The Spray River is also just to the left in this shot, off screen). This shot was taken January, 16th, 2010 after a couple weeks of extremely warm weather. Normally there's be more snow and possibly more ice on the river as well.
On this particular day I went for a nice long walk around the back side of Tunnel Mountain. The trails there eventually turn into one trail that runs along an over flow for the Bow River and then back along the river itself. It apparently makes it to Hoodoo's as well but since I was alone and there were no tourists venturing in the same direction I decided to limit myself from going to far from town. The ice on the river is constantly cracking which is surprising when you walk along beside it. Hard not to jump. They were also doing some avalanche blasting that day on Mount Norquay which is like thunder multiplied by 50 on a nice sunny day. You do more than jump when it goes off lol All in all was an awesome walk though and definitely made me feel my legs.
Now, onto the photo!
