12 Days of Christmas - Lunar Eclipse

Let's see if I can manage 12 consecutive days of posts through the Christmas season starting with the winter solstice.

Here is this (early) morning's lunar eclipse.   See you tomorrow!

Time After Time After Time

Here's a little extra time as you rush about this Christmas season. 

Taken in Wostok General Store at the Ukrainian Village Cultural Center east of Edmonton.

Ukrainian Village is a favourite location for capturing pieces of our history from button jars to old farm machinery and outhouses to grand churches.  It is a working museum with character actors throughout the village bringing us a glimpse into the life of the early  settlers with examples of sod huts, early frame houses, an elevator and train station, hotel, hardware, blacksmith, school, gas station and general store and more. There is never enough time to cover everything!

Yellow Bug, Black Sky

IMAGES ALBERTA CAMERA CLUB's

annual fall outing to Alden's Salvage was a great success again this year with over twenty members in attendance.

Every year that I go to these events, I am fortunate to find new material or new approaches to presenting a piece of our automotive past.

This was a fortunate find at almost the end of the day.  Something caught my eye, either the oddity of the little car, its sad little face or the fact that it sat apart from its large North American peers.

A low angle shot and a circular polarizer proved the approach to separate this car visually.  Finally, a quick bit of post processing using curves allowed me to blow the blue in the sky and pull the faded yellow in the paint.

Moon Over Yellowknife Bay

Sitting in the Yellowknife airport waiting for a weather delayed plane and the camera batteries are dead.  Not much to share from today as it is snowing creating a low flat light.  I made a few images down at the pier in Old Town, a favorite spot for me.   The house boats are freezing in for another winter but a few hardy souls are breaking the think slushy ice with their motor boats as they commute from home to work across the bay.  By noon, the water has a fresh layer of soft ice set again marking their path.  Soon the house boaters will have to stay put or camp out with friends in town until the bay freezes hard enough to cross by foot or snowmobile.  A few dogs manage to romp back and forth across the ice further down the bay, the ice strong enough to support their play.



These shots are from April this year as the ice was just starting to melt.  People were still running snowmobiles across the bay but there were temporary gangways bridging the 2 or 3 metre gap between the shore and solid ice.






And finally, a Cross Fox - named for the lighter cross shaped marking across it's shoulders and back

Playing in Photshop with new graphics for 'imagery' newsletter

 

 

 

 

Created a mask using text them erased the rest of the image, embossed and shadowed

Mask of text over Downtown Reflections in Scotia Tower

Time Warp

Just back from an IMAGES ALBERTA CAMERA CLUB outing to Alden's Salvage Yard with a card full of rust and old paint.  This is my second visit and I decided I needed a theme to my shoot to keep me interested and looking for new details.  Today I decided to go after hood ornaments, lettering and design.  It made for an interesting day exploring the old cars from the 40's 50's and 60's.

Here is a multiple exposure of the trunk of a late 40's Buick 88.  It's interesting how the chrome has still retained most of it's shine on the globe.

Here is a single exposure of the same ornament - taken at a slight angle.  The 'ring' around the globe normally is horizontal.

Images at the Alex

Twenty four Images Alberta Camera Club members have photographs on display and for sale at the Royal Alexandra Hospital Galleria from August 3rd through the 29th.

Photographs may be purchased with twenty percent of sales go to the Royal Alexandra Hospital Foundation.

These works represent the diverse photographic style of Images members who range from beginner to professional and includes Alberta flora, fauna and landscape, world travel, fine art, and industrial images.


The Galleria is on the basement level of the Active Treatment Centre, and is open to public viewing during hospital hours. The Royal Alexandra Hospital is located at 10240 Kingsway Avenue, Edmonton, Alberta.

My Pelican Mist is for sale, framed and with archive double matte  for $125.  This image was shot last summer shortly after sunrise at Hasting Lake, Alberta.  The combination of a high ISO and the mist created a grain in the photograph that gives the photo the look and feel of being a watercolour painting. 

Chasing the Aurora

RED ALERT! my email read - 90% chance of viewing Aurora activity due to increased sunspot activity August 1st .  A glance at the sky didn't hold much promise at 7pm as it was raining again.  I quickly checked the Environment Canada forecast and there was hope of clearing later in the evening.


11PM rolled around and the stars were peaking around cloud with some promise.  I quickly loaded my gear into the car, stopped by Timmies for a hot one to-go, and headed off to the dark sky preserve of Elk Island National Park east of Edmonton. 

The cloud cover was now only patchy as I set up my tripod and camera in the dark.  As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I spotted the big dipper with a foreground of spruce trees but no sign of the northern lights yet.  I tried a few different settings and shot several exposures while I fine tuned my manual focus before finally setting the camera to BULB for some exposures over 30 seconds using lower ISOs for less noise. This image was shot at ISO 800, for 30 sec, aperture 3.5 and overexposed by 1 2/3 stops.  

I shot a several more starscapes and played with the half moon rising through some more spruce boughs until the moon started to light the fine, high cloud reducing visibility again. I finally abandoned my search - for now.  Another night I will receive a warning and return to catch the dancing lights of the Aurora with a little more experience to assist me.

Current Aurora activity can be monitored and you can subscribe to receive email alerts when there is a high probability to sight the aurora at
http://corona-gw.phys.ualberta.ca/AuroraWatch/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/. 

Prairie Storms

A business trip to the border town of Lloydminster (Alberta or Saskatchewan depending on your point of view) presented me with fields of canola.  I worked a couple of fields on the morning trip out but they lacked anything really dynamic until this evening when a series of severe storms rolled through the  region.  No tornadoes here tonight but heavy rain and scattered hail pelted the area.  These image was taken between downpours south of Lloydminster.



Low shutter speed for the wind.......

There is nothing like a bold dark sky to give a counter point to the yellow of the canola field.

 

Life Imitating Art

June 12 &  13  I was one of seven volunteer photographers (5 from Images Alberta Camera Club) who documented the MS Leduc to Camrose bike tour.  Almost 2000 cyclists raised over 1.6 million dollars in pledges and rode the 180 km round trip course with an overnight stop in Camrose. 

We started shooting a 530 Saturday morning at the Richie Brother's staging area, followed the cyclists through to Wetaskawin and into Camrose.  We culled about 250 photographs from the 2500 shot and prepared a 10 minute musical slideshow featuring the riders, sponsors and volunteers by 4pm for their evening supper, then continued to photograph events through the evening.  Sunday morning we were back behind our viewfinders for the return leg.

It was an incredible experience to work with such a group of dedicated volunteers, riders and organizers.

This shot was taken at a farm that hosted one of the checkpoint/watering stations on day 2.  Most everyone's spirits were high even if legs were cramping and other parts were saddle sore!