Scenes from Yellowknife Bay, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories

Daily commuters, Houseboats and kayaks in the bay.  I wonder how much the parking ticket will be?  Do they tow away?

Edith Cavell Meadows -Jasper National Park

We spent a weekend learning to photograph wild flowers with professional photographer Paul Gilbert earlier this summer at the Waterton Wildflower Festival in  Waterton National Park.  That has created an interest and new skills that have me exploring through the Rockies with a new view.  

Here are a few shots from the Mount Edith Cavell Meadows in Jasper National Park.  Don't be deceived by the term meadows, these are not flat by any means as you will see in some of this pictures. 

Marmots

We took a run out to Jasper National Park for the weekend and one of the spots we explored was Mount Edith Cavell, the Angel Glacier and the Edith Cavell Meadows. While climbing through the boulder jumble to get into the meadows, I came across this group of Marmots. They are about the size and build of a beaver and live in the higher altitudes of the mountains.

Another Early Morning

Staying on the early morning theme, I was once again out with the thermos of coffee in hand to catch this morning's fog. Taken at Hastings Lake just east of Edmonton, I waited in semi darkness with the sound of wings whistling around overhead but out of sight until I had enough light to capture these pelicans on a spit reaching out into the lake. Hastings Lake has a sizable pelican population and they are often seen in their serene glide and wave flight pattern. This group seemed content to sit out the fog.

Why I packed the alarm clock on vacation.

Why would anyone get up before 6am on their vacation? My answer lately has been "To catch the morning light".

When you're just days from the summer solstice, as we were in early June in Waterton National Park, that means getting up and rolling early. The sky just starts to show light about 5:45 and suddenly at 6 the sunlight is streaming across the prairie and straight in to the mountain valley. Luckily my wife shares my early morning obsessions some days and we were up and out chasing the first light.

Thank goodness we had prepared a thermos of coffee the night before!



Many balsamroot plants at the valley level had flowered in late May or early June and were starting to show to look pretty tattered by the time we were there in mid June. We were lucky to find this cluster in good condition and I wanted to shoot them from an angle other than our usual downward looking viewpoint. I was struck by the low angle sunlight striking these and had the advantage of both a mountain ridge and a glorious blue sky as a backdrop.

From Welch's Chocolate Store - Waterton

Many thanks to Welch's for access to the store one evening and to all those great afternoons on the side deck eating fresh pies and drinking great coffee after our photo expeditions. Oh, and did I mention the fudge? This is a MUST DO in Waterton.

Sorry folks, Photobucket has discontinued their musical slide show option. 

Here are a few of the images

Kid's In A Candy Store.

Welch's Candy Store.


Double click to expand and pan this banner.


During a recent trip in to Waterton National Park we discovered a true gems in Waterton village. Welsh's Candy store - a mere block from the town campground - is a wonder that needs to be explored.

A first glance it is a busy little store offering ice cream and shelves of fudge and confections to visitors from all over the world. A short tour of the shelves reveal confections imported from the British isles, Germany, Switzerland competing with fudges and chocolate produced in store for the attention of visiting for sweet tooths.



Here's a first draft of it's glory.

http://i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff101/skinny_skier/waterton%20candy%20store/?action=view¤t=05062324.pbr

Portrait of a Queen

The Edmonton river valley, with it's system of parks and trails, offers many photo opportunities. Over the last year, I have returned to the river just below the downtown to shoot the Edmonton Queen Riverboat.




Riverboats were an important part of Edmonton's history providing both passenger and cargo passage up and down the river. Today, the Edmonton Queen Riverboat provides Edmontonians and visitors a chance to relive a piece of our history with short cruise through a portion of our river valley. The 'Queen' often plays host to weddings and schools and corporate events. It isn't unusual for a Saturaday afternoon to have a wedding booked for both afternoon cruises.



In the early years of the last century, riverboats carried party goers upstream as far as Big Island for an evening of dining and dancing. The river depth doesn't permit the Edmonton Queen as far a range but they still have a evening Buffet dinner and cruise.



These photos were taken over the last year as a photo study of the riverboat. I have just completed a project with the Provincial Archive of Alberta where I worked to recreate an 1896 riverboat photo taken by the prominent Edmonton photographer Ernst Brown. That photo along with some 20 others by members of Images Alberta Camera Club will be part of an exhibit at the Provincial Archives starting October 2009.





I hope to post both the original photo and my own but I am awaiting copywrite approval from the Archives before I post the original photo.

Fawns of Waterton National Park

Middle of June was fawning season for the mule deer herd in Waterton and we had lots of opportunity to take pictures. We missed seeing any being born but several, like these, are only an hour or two old. Twins were common and we even spotted a few triplets.


These two were born about an hour ago. Mother is keeping them down and hidden in the grass if I move at all. I was tucked in behind a tree and sitting still for 10 minutes or so before she let them venture this far.


Once the fawns have had a few hours to gain their legs, the doe will move them from the birthing site to another secluded area. If we saw a single doe, not attached to the herd, grazing then her fawns were usually stashed in the grass or a little stand of shrubs nearby where they were out of sight.


During out time in Waterton, we had cougar warnings posted in the town site and there was a cougar that had come in from the surrounding mountains that had killed a few fawns. People living in Waterton have chicken wire fences around their shrubs and gardens to keep the deer out and the same under their decks to discourage the cougars from stashing their kills which they will later return to finish eating.

North to Alaska - Part 1 Grande Prairie/Dawson Creek

A recent work trip saw me based in Grande Prairie, Alberta from which I then traveled out to various locations. While some consider these road trips an inconvenience, they present many new and interesting photographic subjects. I often travel early in the morning and late in the evening to accommodate business hours. This also means I travel during the golden hours of photography. Here are some shots of a day trip out to Fort St John British Columbia, up the first 100 or so miles of the famous Alaska Highway.

During WW2, in 1942, the Canadian and US Governments combined forces to build a roadway to link Alaska with the rest of the USA.

The Alaska Highway stretches from Dawson Creek, British Columbia (Mile "0") to Lower Post in the Yukon covering about 885 kilometres (595 mi.) It continues from Lower Post and crosses the Alaska border at "Mile 1221" (1965 kilometres). The original finishing point of the Alaska Highway is in Delta Junction, Alaska at "Mile 1422".



Dawson Creek is named after the watercourse of the same name, itself named after George Mercer Dawson who led a surveying team through the area in August 1879; a member of the team labelled the creek with Dawson's name. I believe this sculpture is depicting George Mercer Dawson. It is mounted in the traffic circle right at mile zero and points onward to the west.

My next post will include some early morning shots of fog on the river banks at Taylor BC and ... the original timber curved bridge on the old Alaska Highway.