Week 37: Back It Up, Bub!

backlight

Week 37 had me back on track and following my list.  Now, mind you, it was all last minute (I spent an hour at Whitefish Island on the Friday morning just before heading over the river for Oktoberfest in Frankenmuth, where I took zero photos) so I am not back to ideal but at least I followed the theme.

Speaking of themes, I get a weekly newsletter from the online photography school where I have taken a few classes.  Today as I was waiting for my new tires to be put on my car (the "old" ones had 35,000 km on them and had been purchased last September and still were worn out!!  The new ones are a better quality tire and I got them for half price), I checked my email and there was one entitled "photograph a theme."  Ha!  That's what I have been doing for two and a half years (give or take a week or two).  Anyway, he gave a huge list of ideas of which I took a couple of screen shots and from which I plan to freshen up my list for the rest of the year.  I'm feeling kind of re-energized after reading that article.  Hopefully the feeling sticks.

As I am writing this, a fifteen year old boy and a sixteen year old boy are taking a break  from playing some imaginary game about an alien invasion and watching ScoobyDoo while having pancakes for supper.  I have been smiling to myself for hours.  They are not all grown up just yet.

Here are some backlit flowers and leaves from Whitefish Island.

And now I am off to the movies.  Week 38 should be out tomorrow.

Week 36: The Sky's The Limit

skies

So, after two and a half years of diligently following my photography challenges (first the day by day 365 project, then the less rigid weekly 365 project then this one, the weekly project 52), I have blown it.  During the week immediately following our return, I took not one photo.  Zip, zero, zilch, nada, as Levi would say.

I got right back at it the following week but that left me without something for week 36.  I decided initially that I would just choose some of my favourites from the trip that didn't make it into the blogs because they didn't suit the topics but that seemed like the worst kind of cheating.  Instead, I chose a slightly less cheat-like plan... I selected a topic (skies) then went through the photos from the entire trip and found photos in which the sky was prominent or interesting.

This first photo was taken just after sunrise in Yellowstone Park.

Just before sunset in Custer State Park, Donna noticed the moon peeking out from behind this rock formation.

The stormy looking sky on our way to Sheridan Wyoming was beautiful.

We waited an hour and a half for Old Faithful to erupt.  While waiting, the almost full moon rose.

One of the geothermal features at Yellowstone with a cool sky behind it.

Early morning sky in Yellowstone.

I don't remember where this is.

Just before sunset in Dinosaur Provincial Park.

The sun was shining on the prairie dogs in the Badlands but look at that sky in the background.

The difference between the sunlit land and dark sky really caught my eye.  I didn't get this processed to my satisfaction but you get the idea.

And there we have my cheater week.

Week 35: Deep Space Nine

foreground, mid-ground and background

I'll be honest with you...I did not take these photographs with this topic in mind.  I was on vacation and frankly, I did not look at my list.  Instead, after I finally finished processing the trip photos on Tuesday, I chose a photo I wanted to showcase, looked at it to see if I could develop a topic around it and then found other photos from that week (August 28 to September 3) that met those criteria.  So we have photos that have a foreground, mid-ground and background that are important to the story or composition.

Week 35 began in Lake Louise, then continued into Banff, Drumheller, Dinosaur Provincial Park, straight through Saskatchewan into Manitoba and finally home to Ontario.  I was negligent in this last part of the trip, partly because the roads I was on had no shoulders and nowhere safe to pull over and partly because I think I was done...ready to be home and a little let down after the stunning beauty of the mountains.  That's not to say my little part of the country and those others I drove through aren't beautiful in their own way, I just think that I needed a little distance between the rugged mountain type of beauty and our own before being fully appreciative.

We begin with Moraine Lake in Lake Louise.  I was told by a Parks Canada worker to be at this lake before 9:00 am or we wouldn't get in because the road would be closed due to traffic and parking issues.  It would be okay to be at Lake Louise by 10:00 and we would still have parking.  Ugh, who can live in a place like that?  We got to Moraine Lake in plenty of time, walked the easy trail along the shoreline, got some awesome photos and when we left, the road was closed to incoming traffic.

When we got up the road to Lake Louise, it was cloudy and foggy and it was quite disappointing.  We decided that we had seen plenty of mountains and lakes by now and there was no need to stick around to see the beauty when the sun came out.  So this is all I could do...

This might be one of my favourite photos from the trip (I think I might have at least 50 favourites :)).  This was taken from the top of Sulphur Mountain in Banff.

 I think this one was too.

This is from somewhere on the Icefields Parkway which we went up and down again on our second day in Banff because the first time was so horrible weather-wise.  I highly recommend going both north and south on this scenic highway because the views are so different.

This was also on the Icefields Parkway.

This is Horsethief Canyon near Drumheller, Alberta.  Levi went exploring down in the valley but I remained safely and happily up top.

This is at the Hoodoos site near Drumheller.

We camped that night at Dinosaur Provincial Park and were woken quite alarmingly in the night by a pack of howling and yipping coyotes.

So those are the nine photos with depth to them.  The next one is just because I am amazed.  Who knew we had pelicans in Canada????  These guys live on the Red River near Winnepeg, Manitoba.

Week 36 shouldn't be too long...

Week 34: A Mountain of Mountains

landscape

The topic for week 34 was actually supposed to be a black and white landscape but I don't have any decent black and white software to develop the photos so I am going with just landscapes.  Week 34 began when I left Levi at his friend Sebastian's place in Kamloops (leaving took a little longer than expected as Seb's mom and I chatted in the driveway for quite some time just like the old days when they lived here and we would pick up the boys at each other's houses - we would tell the boys to get ready to go, then stand at the door chatting on and on until the boys went off and did their thing until we called them back).  I spent two days in Whistler, then traveled to a campground near Hope then  on to Okanagan Lake.  I picked Levi up again and we headed to Jasper then Lake Louise.  

So considering where I spent my time, all of the landscapes are likely to be mountains!

These first photos are from the top of Whistler Mountain during a chilly morning.  My B&B host checked the weather on the mountain for me...it was one degree with an expected high of ten.  I was deciding between shoes (which I hate to put on in the summer) and sandals and I went with the sandals.  It all started out okay...the gondola up to the first stop was enclosed.  As long as I kept moving up there I was fine.  The very top of Whistler however is accessed by a chair lift.  Yes, an open air seat going higher and higher and thus colder and colder.  I mastered getting on the seat okay but I hung on for dear life as the chair brought me up to the top.  I will admit that my toes did get cold.  They warmed up quickly as I started to walk around.  Did you know that mountains are hilly and the so-called easy hikes are also hilly?

The sticky-up part is called Black Tooth.

If I recall correctly, the little lake down there is called either Hidden Lake or Hidden Pool...or maybe nothing at all like that.

I had signed up for a sunset photography tour while I was in Whistler.  All I knew was that the photographer would take us up roads not available to the public, stop along the way looking for wildlife and photograph sunset.  As it turns out, we did go up roads not available to the public (we saw a few black bears but they were skittish and we didn't get to photograph them) but we went right back up to where I had been that morning - the top of Whistler Mountain.  Oh well, it was a completely different world at sunset and the lifts closed at 5:00 so it was just us up there in the freezing cold air.  This time I had brought socks and shoes and they were definitely needed.

The sunset photo at the beginning is from that evening.  So are these...

There were so many colours compared to what I saw in the morning.

Trying to capture the sun rays in the fog was tricky but with a digital camera and a huge SD card, you can take 50 or 100 shots to get "that one."

When I was up in the morning, people were climbing all over the inukshuk for photos so it was nice to see it on our own.

This is the eastern sky right after the sun went down in the west.

The turquoise water was fantastic.  My brother has told me the water is this colour because of copper in the water.  This lake was on highway 99 north of Whistler.

When we got to Jasper, we took a scenic drive to Moraine Lake (crap - I might be mixing that up with Maligne Lake).  This scenic view is on the way.  Too bad about the weather - rain and fog.

This is Moraine Lake (I think).  I would have killed for a sunny sky and some reflections in that gorgeous water.

Okay, this one isn't so much a landscape as it is a treescape.  When I headed back to Kamloops, I had lots of time to explore so I stopped at an ornamental garden.  The flowers were past their peak and it was hot so I headed to sit on a bench in the shade.  As I was walking toward the bench, I noticed that it was sitting under this fantastic tree.  Instead of sitting, I photographed.

That's this week done.

Week 33: Line Up!

leading lines

Lines that lead the viewer into the photograph have always caught my eye.  So too have lines that kind of lead nowhere.  I photographed many lines during the week we were in Wyoming and Montana and some lead you in, some lead you out and some lead you nowhere.  I have chosen a variety of photos from the time when we left the Black Hills in South Dakota, visited Devil's Tower on our way to Sheridan Wyoming, spent time there and then in Yellowstone and had our one day on the Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park.

Here is Devil's Tower.  This view is from a little-used lookout on the road into the park.  Too bad the sky was mostly white that day.

I don't remember exactly where this was but I am going to guess Wyoming because of those rolling hills in the background.

This canyon was on the down side of the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming.  I went a little further down the path but I was worried about snakes and scorpions so I didn't venture too far on my own.

On our way to Yellowstone, the water was beginning to have the turquoise colour.

At the back of the field, before the mountains, there are two little houses you can barely see.  I could live there!

Donna and I signed up for an early morning photography tour in Yellowstone.  This is one of the places our guide brought us.

Grand Prismatic Pool is one of the iconic geothermal features in Yellowstone.  It is best photographed from above and there is a trail leading to "Picture Hill."  I was foiled again and again in this park...first when our viewing of Old Faithful happened after dark so I couldn't properly photograph it and then the next day when we discovered the trail leading to Picture Hill was closed.  I had to be creative with my photography in this spot but ask Donna, Levi or Blake, I was grumpy.  These lines in the ground are slightly underwater and lead to one edge of Grand Prismatic Pool.

Leaving Yellowstone did not mean leaving the beauty behind.

Bonus pics:  two animal shots from Yellowstone.

Grizzly - young, I think.  He had just finished fishing in a stream by the side of the road.

Bison family bonding.

It will be a while before the next blogs are posted.  I have about 1000 photos left to process.