Keeping with my prairie road trip theme, I set out today heading north on highway 22. This time I had a specific target in mind, the small hamlet of Rowley about 2 hours north east of my home.
In the 1920's Rowley was a bustling little town with over 500 inhabitants, enjoying the agriculture boom in the area; less than 50 years later it was almost empty. This unusual little hamlet without water or sewer services now clings to life as a tourist hotspot and/or ghost town. In the late 1970's, the few locals still remaining began restoring some of the old derelict buildings, by the 1980's Rowley was back on the map as a film location and heritage stop on the railroad that passed through the town. Unfortunately, in 1999 the railroad closed and a steady stream of 'leg stretchers' who might part with a few dollars was taken from the community again. Still, here we are 100 years since it's heyday, Rowley and its 12 remaining inhabitants remain defiant, this tiny, stubborn little hamlet clings to life as a ghost town just 2 hours north east of a 21st century city that shares the same wide open prairie. The main image shows the setting sun lighting the old livery which has now stood empty for a greater period of time than it served. The captioned gallery below shows more of the town and the route I took to get there.
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With chinook winds sweeping away the snow yesterday, I decided to take a short prairie road trip seeking new images for the blog. It was so nice to be roaming the wide open spaces, on clear dry roads, with my music as an ever present soundtrack to the epic, slowly changing scenes outside the window.
My only plan was to travel south for an hour or so, then east for the same, north for a little longer then west again bringing me home. I had no targets, no pressure to be anywhere at any particular time, and just enjoyed the empty roads and beautiful surroundings. With Covid 19 still rampant I passed through most of the small towns I encountered along the way, and stayed out of public areas. So, no need for a mask, no radio or TV talking about Covid 19 and no other people around me with 6 foot long measuring sticks. In short it was a wonderful escape. I didn't see much wildlife, which was a surprise, but there were plenty of other photographic targets along the prairies. If nothing else it is a nice reminder of the other side of Alberta, east of the Rockies, equally as beautiful as the mountains to the west, the open spaces and arrow straight highways of the east bring a wonderful juxtaposition to the province. My main shot today is an abandoned prairie house, abandoned by humans at least. Still home to owls, hawks, bats, mice, voles, foxes, coyotes and so much more, they are a blessing for the thousands of critters who call the prairies home. The gallery has captions as usual. I returned to Kananaskis yesterday to shoot the sunset for the second time this week. The sky was predicted to be clear enough for a milky way shot, so I intended to hang around and do just that. The moon was going to be an issue, early in the waning gibbus phase it was still at over 90%.
Timing was going to be critical, the moon was to begin its ascent an hour after sunset and would need some time to rise fully before it bleached the night sky. I hoped astronomical twilight would arrive before that time. After shooting sunset I did some sparkler spinning by the lower lake, just to pass the time, then drove round to the upper lake for a milky way shot. With nobody around as usual and the sound of the lower lake pumphouse now blocked entirely, it was wonderfully quiet at the upper lake. I sat watching the night sky in anticipation as the stars began to fill the void between light and dark. After making a few images with the wide angle lens I switched to my 24 mm F/1.2 to make the most of its light gathering capabilities, as I changed the lens I fired off the remote trigger in my pocket by accident making a 'late Monet' style image which I've posted in the gallery below. Ultimately I managed to make a milky way image with moonrise just tipping the mountains, soon after that it washed out the sky and I packed away reluctantly and made the long drive home. The main image today is a scattered reflection of the sunset on the mountains across the ice of the lower lake. The gallery below is captioned where required. It has been some time since the skies were clear enough to allow a revisit to my favourite sunset location, Lower Kananaskis Lake. today threated to be just such a day (as does tomorrow). I intend to make the trip with Cecil tomorrow but thought I would take a recon mission today.
As it transpires, it's a good job I did. The lakeshores are not conducive to photography right now, warm temperatures have seen off the early ice and water levels are much higher than usual in the main lakes. At Barrier Lake the water is very low ,but this is the first lake available from the highway so it is where all the families go. As a result it is heavily trodden, with tons of sticks and stones scattered all over the ice leaving little for the photographer. I did see a Bald Eagle guarding a road kill deer carcass and he was in no mood for moving as I stopped and got out of the truck to grab a shot of him. I also got the usual sunset and wonderful it was too, I had the place to myself and the anticipated light hit at the anticipated time. I liked the main shot below as this snake of light ascended the summits opposite. The gallery has captions as usual. We awoke this morning to dense freezing fog which coated the grasses, shrubs and trees with ice, not dissimilar to the ice storm we experienced in Oklahoma in 2007 but nowhere near as severe.
So, on our daily circuit down to the river I decided to take the camera along to find a few 'foggy day' shots. Unfortunately the circuit we walk isn't really photogenic with houses in the background most of the way. So instead, I shot the ice covered fronds of the plant life. A nice little reminder (as if one was needed) of the winter lurking on our horizon. After 3 months of home renovation in the UK, and 14 days of isolation on my return to Canada, I was ready to get out of the house this morning. I awoke very early, 2 hours before my 05:30 alarm, immediately my head was chasing images around kananaskis. Is the Wedge Pond frozen over, could I go early and shoot some stars before sunrise, will sunrise be blocked out by low cloud, what is the temperature........
There was no point trying to get back to sleep, I was awake and mentally at least, ready to get moving. I think physically I would have rather stayed in bed a few hours more. After making tea, grabbing my camera gear and heading out, I got a couple of kilometers up the highway before reaching for my tea and realising it was at home on the counter top, not a great start, but I had time to turn around and go back for it. Finally I was underway, scooting along the almost empty TransCanada Highway toward exit 118 and highway 40 into the beauty of K Country. I stopped in at Barrier Lake, the stars overhead broke through crystal clear air, so much so that I could make out the Orion Nebula unaided, just a white haze with the human eye but welcome nonetheless. It was -12 at the lake with wind so strong I didn't believe the tripod would stand it to make a shot of the stars, and to be honest I didn't fancy setting up in the freezing temperatures. It was enough to see the lake still liquid and my hopes rose for The Wedge Pond and it's wonderful sunrise reflection, but that wasn't to be. Stopping at Wedge Pond I found the surface frozen over with a covering of snow on top. It didn't matter too much because I have, for some time, been looking for an excuse to go to the Upper lake for sunrise. I've never seen sunrise here but light direction always suggested that it should work. Online searches show very little, perhaps it's just too far for people to travel for sunrise. The heat in my vehicle was enough to convince me to get back in and travel further, besides I still had well over an hour to sunrise. On arrival at my chosen point the wind howled across the water and brought with it every degree of cold from the -19 now reading in the cockpit. Even if the sunset was forthcoming there would be no reflection today, heavy waves and mist rising into the freezing air would see to that. I sat in the truck waiting, engine running, heater on, looking for signs of light on the summits all around me. Generally sunrise can be seen on the summits well before the actual sunrise time, but not today. Today I suffered the agony of seeing the sky behind the summits light up red with no sign of light on the tops. I was worried for a while, but as you can see in the images below, I need not have been. Just a few minutes after 'official' sunrise the summits illuminated, slowly first with deep reds, then orange, and finally yellow, before the white light of day ended my session. I never stopped the truck in all the time I was there, leaving the heater running and hopping in and out to keep warm. It was great to be out, even if it was so cold, and I learned something new about these wonderful mountains. The images are nice, but I can get better with calm water and a slightly different location, I already have one specific shot in mind that should be a stunner, until then you'll have to make do with the shots below. You can click the main image for a larger version, the gallery shows the sequence of sunrise from start to end. For some time now I have been planning to capture the moon using a series of stacked images to obtain greater detail and reduce image noise. The full moon in August allowed me to try just that.
So, setting my tripod just outside the front door of our home in Cochrane, I aimed my 400mm lens at that stunning moon and messed around finding the right exposure settings, focus and position before fitting the remote trigger. With everything in place I stood back and admired the moon as I fired off a series of shots using the radio remote. Within minutes I was back in the house and on the laptop trying out the stacking process. It really does work, and shows the moon in much more detail. I think this is a good solid first effort and I will definitely try it out again in winter time when the air is clearer and even more detail might be exposed. Click the image below for a larger version. As I sat by the window of the living room last night, the incessant flashes of lightning outside kept on catching my eye. Mainly 'sheet lightning' behind the cloud illuminating that foreboding sky as it crept slowly across the horizon.
After a good 20 minutes or so, streaks of lighting suddenly began darting through the air between the horizon and the clouds. At first I just watched, but as they become more frequent and, in some sense at least, more reliable; I got the camera gear out and set up for very long exposures using the tripod, timer and some heavy manipulation of the aperture, ISO and shutter speed to capture multiple strikes. I 'lost' the sky and city to burnt out highlights as expected, but simply took another two much shorter exposures to capture them correctly, later merging them to make one correctly exposed frame. Not my usual thing but worth shooting, not just for the photography practice but for the impressive number of lightning strikes too. I stayed dry on the balcony with my camera gear in humid heavy air getting bitten repeatedly by passing mozzies....worth it I think. This week I bore witness to a great battle outside in the garden, thankfully my attention was drawn to the window because of the commotion. Looking out I saw an american goldfinch with heel spurs raised crashing into battle. Bouncing back through a cloud of feather dust after the initial confrontation he soon composed himself and returned to meet his adversary head on.
Because they were so equally matched the battle continued this way for several minutes, first backing off then charging heels up meeting perfectly together every time and bouncing back again. Feather dust flew, bits of feather wafted off on the slight breeze and no quarter was given as the battle drew out. Luckily I had grabbed the camera in time, and fired off a number of shots, looking straight on at this wonderful spectacle, perfectly aligned to capture the battle. I know what you are thinking....how.... how are you directly in line with the fight. My secret, this little fellow was fighting his reflection in the house window, and I was on the inside observing, what a wonderful angle to capture, maybe a once in a lifetime occurrence. 6766 years ago, our ancestors watched the last pass of Neowise, the retrograde comet currently illuminating our night skies with the most wonderful, slow orbit. Obviously it would have had a different name back then, and it definitely came with great foreboding for those few homo sapiens observing it's progress across the night sky. Thankfully we're no longer tied to ancient ritual and superstition, says I with tongue firmly planted in cheek.
Fortunately for me, the horizon was filled with noctilucent clouds, I have seen these several times but never understood exactly what they were, until Sarahs mum sent me some images of them just a few weeks ago and I looked them up. They are comprised entirely of ice crystals in the upper atmosphere and only visible during astronomical twilight. My response was that I would try to shoot some, so as they say in Canada, this is a twofer. As the evening continued an aurora put in an appearance, a weak one, but welcome nonetheless, it has been quite a while since we saw an aurora from the balcony, largely due to the current solar minimum and associated lack of solar activity. To complete the evening, or morning (as it was now 2am) a long raking 'Steve' appeared in the night sky. A 'Steve' is actually a Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement, not a rare event but only recently investigated. They are quite common in Alberta and were actually named by Alberta aurora watchers in 2016. So, all in all, nature has put on a spectacular show this evening, a comet, noctilucent clouds, an aurora and a STEVE. It wasn't until I went back into the house at 2:30am that I suddenly realised how cold I was. Turns out that standing outside in shorts and a T-shirt for 3.5 hours in the late evening/early morning is unwise, even in July. Fortunately, when I crawled into bed Sarah was far too hot and a cuddle met both of our needs.....well that's my take on it anyway. |
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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