The surprising skyline

I seem to have developed a bit of an infatuation with the Calgary skyline. It's always been there, of course, even back in the day when the Palliser Hotel and the Grain Exchange were the tallest buildings. Now you have to work to get those to show up in a Skyline shot. (Never fear!)

There are all sorts of places you can see the skyline in Calgary, and some of them are a surprising distance from downtown. Like 22 K. I've got it so I know it can be done, but I want to get a better one to put here.

As you run or bike around the reservoir, the skyline pops up here and there. Like this. Go a few feet to my left as I take this, and the tower essentially disappears.

Then I turned a little and got these upturned water craft with the beautiful colours. That tells you where I was, if you hadn't figured it out.

But the real treat this morning was to figure out where the sun would be coming up, finding a place that should give the desired reflection, and to get the shot. I took 146 shots so as to be sure I'd get a choice of what to develop. Even though it was cloudy the sunrise still painted the buildings a gorgeous rosy pinky orange. This took surprisingly little editing in Lightroom, mainly to bring up the colour swirl in the clouds, and a bit of cropping to fine tune the frame. From the same place, if it had been clear, you'd get the mountains as a backdrop. Another time.

My buddy Bart came along, but I haven't seen any of his shots yet. It was nice to watch the sunrise, chatting as the cameras clicked away. We were fortunate that the rain held off just long enough. In some ways photo shoots are like workouts. You never know what the weather is going to do, so you go anyways, and go prepared.