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!

Hope and Care Take Flight

Article for Wildlife Rehabilitation Society of Edmonton Newsletter   It was a wet misty day, threatening to turn into an outright downpour, as I made my way to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Society of Edmonton (WRS). Rain or shine, I was not going to miss this visit. Visitors and tours are not the norm in this facility that provides assistance to injured, contaminated or orphaned wild animals. I had been invited to the release of a Swainson’s Hawk that had been recuperating in their care and I planned to photograph the event.

Inside, I was greeted by the Development Coordinator, Caroline Barlott, and learned that the WRS is assisted by over 220 volunteers in roles like animal care, pen maintenance, public education and drivers to pickup their wards from veterinary clinics from around town.

Animal Care Manager Stephanie May led me out the back field to the ‘flight pen’ where the hawk was kept. WRS does all they can to keep their animals wild and that means limiting interactions so wildlife do not become habituated to people whenever possible. With what must be practiced efficiency, Stephanie and her assistant deftly and gently cornered the hawk and transferred her from her perch in a spruce bough to a soft-sided carrier for the trip to a release site east of Edmonton.

The mist had turned to a light rain once we were at the release site but the mood was upbeat in anticipation of releasing a healthy raptor back into the wild. This hawk had come to the rehabilitation centre last year at the time she would have just been learning to hunt. The release site and timing were chosen to provide a habitat with lots of open rolling fields, a healthy gopher population and a mature tree line to provide perches.

I chose a spot well off to the side so I could photograph the hawk’s release but not be a concern to her. At first she was reluctant to leave the confines of her carrier but once Stephanie tipped the carrier upward to provide a perch, she stepped out of the carrier and took a minute or two to view her new environment. 

Finally, she hopped from the carrier, stretched her wings, and lifted into the air. We were rewarded with a long sweeping flight out and arcing back towards us – perhaps a final parting gesture as she flew off to resume her life in the wild. 

The WRS is a non-profit organization which relies on donations to be able to care for injured wildlife. For more information, please go to: http://www.wildlife-edm.ca.

Fund Raiser

May was a hectic month for me but productive.  I started with the usual creation and publishing of the Imagery newsletter.  Then early in May,  I attended a presentation by Alberta Wilderness Association about Alberta's Lakeland Provincial Recreation Area that featured photos from Images club members.  These were shot for AWA in and around the Lac La Biche area in late 2008 and 2009.  

It was there that we met Ian Urquhart, the editor of AWA's journal, Wild Lands Advocate.  Ian invited three of us to write photography related articles for their June edition.  I chose to write about photographing wildflowers and one of the photography workshops at the WatertonWildflower Festival that runs every June in Waterton National Park.  The Advocate should publish June 17.

I also became involved with a fundraiser for Wildlife Rehabilitation Society of  Edmonton which is a charitable organization that provides compassionate care for injured, contaminated and orphaned wildlife and educates the public on the importance of wildlife in our community.  This photo and another will be part of a Silent Auction and Art Show at the Smart Gallery in David Morris Fine Cars.

This lead to an invitation  to photograph the release of a Swainsons Hawk that had been in their care.  Since writing this post, the article I provided to WRS's newsletter has been added in a recent post..

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Framed photo sold at WRS Silent Auction

Pelican Mist: Hastings Lake Alberta, Fred Rushworth 2009

Who You Looking At?

Did you know that in order to be falconer in Alberta, you must apprentice for a year under an experienced falconer?

This was as close as I dared get to this 6 year old male Peregrine falcon.  I'm not sure if he was watching his reflection in my lens or was just waiting to grab my finger.  Either way, I had to respect that steely look not to mention his sharp beak.

Goose Stepping

I borrowed a friend's 2x teleconverter and tried it on my Canon XTI with  my Canon 75-300 zoom.  It gave me a really tight zoom but I had to manually focus when I pushed the lense past it's 200 point.

I went down to a couple of ponds where I knew the Canada Geese would have their goslings and played with the lense/teleconverter for about an hour to see  what it would do for me.  This is one of the shots untouched except for crop/frame/title.  EXIF says ISO 400, aperture 5.0 zoom 160(x2=320). Shutter 1/200,  hand-held because I had left the tripod behind.

I couldn't resist adding a caption to this one.

Frosted Veil

A warm late fall followed by a hard freeze and snow left most treees with a full load of leaves in November.  The next week we had heavy fogs through the mornings that left this aspen in Elk Island National Park bearing a fine frosted veil of leaves.

This image was a 2nd place winner in the Medium Print category in January.

Aspens In The Wind - First Place

I was thrilled to have two of my images place in the Medium Format Print category in January.  This one was a 3 way tie for 1stt but I will take it!



This shot of an aspen grove in Waterton National Park was taken last summer following a workshop at the Waterton Wildflower Festival.  Our instructor, Paul Gilbert,  had been talking about the power of lines and patterns and breaks in patterns.  I felt that this stand of aspen are on the Red Rock Canyon Road worked with those prinicples.. 

I wasn't pleased with the initial photograph because I felt the wind had created too much movement and caused a loss of sharpness inthe image.  After I did a little sharpening and a touch of selective dodging to bring out the light in the trunks and grasses, I was much happier accepting the motion  - and focused on the cause in the title.