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...