Cecil and I took a walk around the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary today, it's something I've planned to do since we came to Calgary but the floods of June 2013 closed the venue for quite a while. During the closure we moved out to Cochrane and it slipped to the back of my mind. This week while looking for a steady walk I refound the venue and decided to give it a look. It's quite a small place (4km of trails in total) but has a huge parking area and an excellent diversity of wildlife in, on and around it's waterways, not least of which is a group of Wood Ducks bringing spectacular colour to venue (main image). We walked all of the short trail network and stopped numerous times to make images along the way, all in all it's a lovely little place in the heart of the city where all traffic noise is lost and nature is truly on the doorstep. The gallery below has captions to identify the birds in the images.
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The sky was quite clear last night and from the balcony I could make out that wonderful white cloud that signals the milky way is lurking above, so I roamed the garden for a couple of hours shooting a few sequences that I could stack and bring out the full image.
While catching the Milky Way shots I set up another camera over in the corner of the yard shooting a star trail sequence. I tried a new angle with some trees in the foreground but don't really like the finished product as it's not particularly interesting. I'm really pleased with the results of the Milky Way shots given the amount of ambient light in the area, I might have to start venturing out to make some nightscapes in the mountains. Sarah and I set out to hike my favourite trail this afternoon, Burstall Pass. It's one I've done several times now so there is no page write up for this particular one but if you are seeking maps, directions and full photographic tour you can click here to see a previous hike on this route.
We had a lovely afternoon in warm sunshine though it was cool at the top of the pass, the trees are just beginning to turn and another few weeks will see the autumnal colour filling this spectacular valley. We saw a big Grizzly in the first few hundred metres from the car park but he was less interested in us than we were in him and he sidled off and vanished into a scant few trees nearby, quite the disappearing act given his size. The trail was fairly busy and we met lots of people along the way but they were heading down leaving us to sit at the head of the pass and look back along the valley for quite a while with just each other for company. The 16km round trip with about 500m of ascent is a good workout but worth every step and we really did enjoy our time together in the mountains today. The gallery below has captions to help guide you along the trail with us. I have seen a partial eclipse 'live' before but never a total eclipse. When I discovered that some parts of the US were to experience a total eclipse on August 21st 2017 I began my planning. This week, months of planning and preparation came to fruition, I'd picked the right location, acquired the right gear, made the 12 hour drive, arrived on time, set up and captured this beautiful event entirely as planned. I couldn't be happier about it. I realise that for many just seeing the images it's a shrug of the shoulders 'that's cool' moment so I've made a page with all the shots in one gallery and the full story elsewhere on the site which you can see by clicking here. Alternatively you can click the image below for a larger version of the 'highlights' and watch the 2 second video and then move on with your life. It's just 10 days since we last walked on the riverside in Cochrane and how things have changed in that time. A lovely cool wind blew in from the north east and pushed the forest fire smoke back to the mountains today, so we decided to make our usual riverside trek from the house. The rock stack I made ten days ago is still there and other people have made more around it. The colours have changed so much in the last 10 days and we are clearly now closing in on autumn at some speed. Temperatures in the evening are dropping to single digits and the air has that wonderful crisp coolness about it without being cold. It has been a fantastic summer, incredibly dry even by our standards and we are now looking forward autumn, lets hope it stays true to form and we enjoy another few months of cool dry days and clear starry nights.
The smoke from the wildfires was clear enough to let me get out this morning and practice for the upcoming eclipse. I intend to drive 12 hours south to be in the area of totality over Idaho and (weather permitting) I hope to capture the event on camera. Anyway, during my practice session I captured this little string of sun spots so thought I would post the image, after all, how often do you get to see the surface of the sun. I should add that I had a solar filter on the lens and solar glasses on while doing this, do not look directly at the sun without the proper eye protection.
There are hundreds of 'how to shoot the eclipse' web pages so I'm not going to write one but if you hope to capture it you should read (a lot) and make a detailed plan. For those seeking my settings for the shot below it was made with a Canon 5DIII, and 100-400 IS USM lens with a canon 2x adaptor added. ISO was 100, f/11 at 1/60 sec and -1.5 stop exposure compensation. Anyway, fingers crossed for the weather and I'll be posting my eclipse efforts sometime next week. I had to get out today as I couldn't stand being confined to the house any longer by the damn smoke from wildfires that are still burning across our neighbouring province of British Columbia. Figures on the news tonight show an area over 8500 sq km (5200 sq miles) has been burned this year already in BC and there is no sign of a slowdown. That is almost 2.5 million acres this year alone, the vast majority of which are started by human activity, for the sake of all our lungs, please take care with your cigarette ends, campfires etc.
I couldn't go for any of the big stuff as I didn't want to be trying to breathe so deeply on ascent and talking in more of this stuff than I had too, so I made for Cox Hill, a nice little hike quite close to home. The hike is about 13 km round trip with approximately 800m of ascent. The main image below gives an idea of conditions and it's not that the smoke is over there, it's everywhere but thin enough to see through for a distance. I could have made the shots better with photoshop but thought I'd show the reality of the conditions 'unmolested'. The gallery below has captions and anyone wanting more information, photos, map and route guide can click here for a full description of a previous trip. The waning gibbous moon last night really illuminated the night sky making my efforts to catch the Perseids meteor shower almost impossible. You can see on the right side of the image where the moon is illuminating the smoke from distant forest fires and causing a 'white out'. Rather than give it up altogether I lounged around the back garden on the patio furniture making a star trail and catching what few meteors were visible. There was even a glimpse of aurora on the distant horizon and though I saw about 20 meteors in the 2.5 hours I was outside I only caught 7 on camera, most of which disappeared in the star stacking merge. I still really enjoyed being out there looking up at the stars and expect to be making more of these trails in the winter when the dry clear (smoke free) skies return.
We had a lovely afternoon in the Elbow Valley today with our friends Cecil and Arlene who are finally back from their 2 year stint in Singapore. We made a nice easy 10 km 'out and back' along the Big Elbow trail as the main mountains and parks are still 'smoked in' from all the wildfires. We remain without any real rainfall but the temperatures have reduced to the high 20's rather than 30's so it's much improved. After our hike we stopped off in Bragg Creek for drinks and cake before heading home from a really enjoyable hike with great company. Welcome home guys :)
Sarah and I had a lovely afternoon wandering the forests of West Bragg Creek today, we had little option in terms of hikes as the mountains are still 'fogged in' with thick smoke. We wanted to get out so we chose West Bragg because it's about as far from the fires as we can get and still have some shady forest covered hills to wander. We made a little 10 km circuit with 278m of ascent which was just nice in the heat of the afternoon. The main shot shows a clearing covered in one of our most prevalent pioneer species 'Fireweed' and the small gallery has captions to take you along with us.
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AuthorWe arrived in Calgary, Canada on 29th December 2011 to continue our journey. This blog is intended to keep our family and friends informed whilst we explore Canada.You can use the RSS feed below to stay updated. Categories
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January 2024
The Shaman, West Texas
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