The downtown wetlands walk

Earlier this week you know I went on a frosty wetlands photo ramble. Some of you have probably figured out it was Prince's Island, at the very east end. From the photos alone, you'd never know it was in the heart of Calgary. Well, there are a couple shots with some clues if you look really carefully. I took these photos the same day, but they would have given away the location.

It's a beautiful walk, and I'm going to have to go back there to work on reflection shots. Last time I was on the island for that, the wetlands were fenced off. I think at the right time of the year it would be good for sun or moonrise shots along the river.

Here's more of the geese. They seemed unusually skittish and most flew away as I walked by. Normally geese are obnoxiously belligerent, standing their ground, giving people the stink eye, almost demanding a toll to let you pass.

I like how the tops of the taller buildings disappear into the clouds or vapour from other buildings.

I knew the camera would struggle with this, but I wanted the image to just barely see the lines of the buildings, have the vapour from the top of The Bow be dark and foreboding, with the sun poking through just enough to complicate things.

 The buildings, clouds, streams of vapour all riding on the wave of the building facade amused me a great deal.

A temporary crane in East Village. For all there's a downturn in the economy, there sure are a lot of cranes working. The difference is that only a few of them are on office buildings in downtown proper.

East Village used to be a place nobody wanted to be any longer than necessary to get their fix. I felt sorry for the elderly people living in a couple of the buildings there. Now the place is exploding, with new buildings going up left and right. I was in one of them for a photo shoot, and it was surprisingly big. The ones I'd seen in showroom model for looked cramped and utilitarian, aimed at young adults. The building I was in was for well off adults.

There have been a lot of those sorts of condos going up in Calgary. Yes, there has to be a market for those empty nest boomers to move into smaller and more efficient spaces, but who knew the market was this big? Then again, I wonder how many out of all those new suites are actually sold to people that actually live in them, as opposed to people that bought in the hopes of flipping them. Always a dangerous game in the Calgary market.

I did a U turn to come back and get this shot. The light isn't quite as good as when I first saw it, but I liked how the buildings emerged from the fog and clouds. Oddly enough, the white building on the left was the sharpest clearest part of the image when I first saw it, looking like it was ready to explode into the camera. I'd never seen white on white looking quite like that.