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.
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Sarah and I watched another striking sunset from the balcony last night. Much of the cloud drifted away before the very best light, but what remained was illuminated perfectly and put on a lovely show. We particularly liked the ribbon of darker cloud loops that danced along the upper edge of the array. So, at Sarahs insistence, I made a few shots, after all, we all know that I do as I'm told.....some of the time.
It was too nice a day to let it go without a photograph of some sort yesterday, so I set out to kananaskis with the hope of a sunset shoot. When I got to my usual spot the wind was howling across the lake and killing off any potential for reflection.
Because of the location it was too late to find another spot so I got the 70-200 mm lens out and shot the mountains without the lake at all. As it turns out the images were quite nice and it was good to try the same location in another way, even if forced to do so. There's a small gallery below with captions showing location, all in all not the most successful trip but better than being indoors I think. When making the final shot in the gallery of my previous post, I commented to Cecil that I thought Mt Nestor might make a good sunset location. After waiting a week for conditions to be right, I tired of waiting and decided that tonight was the night to give it a go.
All of the sunset predictors pointed to a 'moderate' event with low colour and almost no high cloud to help provide bounce light, but I was keen to test the theory. I left home late in the day and made the 90 minute drive with ease in the traffic free conditions, arriving in good time to get set up. I didn't shoot anything at all except for Mt Nestor today, I had a cursory look around along the way, but didn't see anything that grabbed my attention enough to warrant stopping and making an image. The perfect vantage point for the mountain is the kananaskis helipad car park, which was surprisingly cold this evening. I set my tripod in the back of the truck to give me a better view over the forest but kept some trees in the frame to provide a foreground. I'm not sure how I feel about the output from the evening, the light along the ridgeline in the image below did help in producing something interesting but there's a lot of dull light below it. Before this shot, the light was very yellow and didn't carry any colour until it drew close to the summit, which is a real shame because it's a beautiful mountain. I think I'll give it another go one evening when the sunset forecast is better, until then here is the best of tonight, a sunset tentacle reaching along the south western ridge of Mt Nestor with Goat Mountain illuminated directly behind. The gallery shows the transition from daylight, through sunset and into to the blue hour beyond (which today was more pink than blue) With a new moon due on wednesday, dark skies were guaranteed over kananaskis lakes on tuesday night. I checked my resources and found predictions for almost cloud free, low humidity air so decided to make the trip out there in the hope of making a sunset and then hanging around for a milky way shot.
There's no galactic centre visible in the northern hemisphere at this time of year, but on a moonless night with dry clear air you can still make a nice shot of the northern arm of this beautiful array of stars. Having this vast wilderness to myself is common on a winter weeknight and tonight was no different. I had the full winter gear on for the first time this year, and a flask of tea for the stargazing later. I had the whole of the lower lake to myself for sunset shots. When I first arrived the lake was incredibly calm and I quickly set up and made a nice multi shot panorama of the Opal and Elk mountain ranges reflected in the mirror like surface. I followed this with a number of sunset shots from various locations along the shore. Once sunset was over I packed away the gear and made my way to the upper lake, again I had the whole area to myself. I had taken along some sparklers to mess around with during the blue hour and my 24mm f1.4 lens to grab as much starlight as I could. Kananaskis Lakes is an official 'dark sky' site so on a moonless night it is an incredible spectacle to be a part of, but that lack of light makes it challenging to shoot with any foreground. Fortunately the mountains now have a dusting of snow to reflect what light is available and the 24mm f1.4 has no trouble finding it. It was another wonderful evening in the company of those enormous star filled skies. The bitter cold was kept at bay by my winter gear leaving me the simple pleasure of sitting on a rock stargazing, and drinking hot tea, for quite some time.. There are no captions today, the sunset shots are at the lower lake and the rest at the upper. You can click the main shot for a larger version as it squeezes approximately 20 km of mountain range into one shot. After a successful pursuit of sunrise last week I already had my eye on a sunset, largely because I'd rather stay up late than get up early. After checking out the conditions for today I decided to head out to lower kananaskis lake this evening.
I called Cec to see if he fancied coming along, he didn't take much persuading and we were soon in the truck heading west. We stopped off at the junction of highway 40 and highway 742 at a small pond there and made a few shots of the reflections, more to kill time than anything else. We arrived about 30 minutes early so decided to call in at the upper lake and make a few shots there too before dropping down to the lower lake for the main event. The lower lake had enough calm area to provide a great reflection and we rattled off some nice shots. At one point a little dipper walked right by us as he tried to get a last meal before dark. I found a piece of driftwood along the shoreline that looked promising so wandered that way to make the main shot for today before calling Cec over to share the find. From the driftwood we returned to our starting location to shoot some 200mm telephoto close ups of the last light on the summits, then, just as the blue hour took over I got one shot of a perfect anticrepuscular ray stretching out across the horizon. Anticrepuscular rays, as you might expect, are the opposite of crepuscular rays (which most folks just call 'sunbeams') Anticrepuscular rays occur when something blocks the light from the sun which casts a long shadow across the sky away from the sun. They aren't really rare but they are interesting and a single one cutting through the evening sky was nice to capture. You can look for these by turning your back on sunset and looking to the opposite horizon, usually when the sun is very low in the sky. I feel we did well today and made some nice shots in just a couple of hours, it was the kind of day that keeps you coming back for more. It's that time of year again where everything seems to be on fire. Road closures are scattered throughout the rockies and thick smoke fills the air 24/7 as hundreds of firefighters battle raging infernos throughout this vast wilderness. Hiking, biking or just about anything outdoors is a choking affair and photography is made difficult by the ever present haze.
There is little to celebrate, except perhaps those wonderfully diffused sunsets that drift across the horizon behind the house. I made the effort tonight to frame that striking orb between the branches of the trees close to home and thought the result was worth sharing. It's been a while since I last posted a sunset, we do see them almost every night but having photographed so many it takes a pretty good one to get me out with the camera.
Tonight the mid level cloud was illuminated by the long slow sunset which is prevalent at this time of year and I had to go out and make a few images. It's not the greatest sunset we've seen but it's the best we've seen for a few months. As an added bonus while out on the balcony shooting, the local coyote pack howled out a sunset chorus to keep me company. This afternoon Cecil and I headed back to kananaskis, this time with Josh (who we met last week in Banff) I'd talked to Josh about sunset on the lower lake and he was keen to see it running along the ridgeline. Predictions were best for thursday so we met at the usual spot and hit the road at 11:30. We stopped here and there along the way, killing time and making a few images around the area until 3:30pm when we pulled into the car park at the lower lake. Loaded down with tripods and other gear we made our way down to the waters edge which was again frozen over.
Having picked our spot and set up we waited eagerly for the promised sunset to arrive. The research paid off around 4pm when the golden light finally made an appearance and 45 minutes later when the sun was gone and the light cloud shone pink in front of a perfect blue sky. I'm glad it paid off for Josh who put his trust in us to get the shots and was not disappointed. It was a great afternoon, really enjoyable and we all got some good shots to take home and brag about. The images are virtually all from the upper and lower lakes so I haven't captioned the gallery today, the main shot is one of the last of the day and perhaps one of the best. On monday this week I made the trip to Kananaskis Lakes and managed to find some nice images (as you can see in the post below this one ). Today I returned with my friend Cecil to continue my 'photoclass'.
We stopped along the way to work on standard composition while gathering up reflections along highway 40. As we arrived at lower kananaskis lake around 4:30pm the clouds were breaking up and the promise of a golden winter sunset flickered through the gaps. We opted to end the day there just as I had a few days before, only this time in a different area below the dam where liquid water was abundant today. A short hike through the snow covered ground soon saw us setting up our tripods on a rocky outcrop and in no time at all capturing the beautiful light across the lake. It was a perfect end to the day and one we really enjoyed. The gallery below has captions to guide you along with us. |
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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