The road trip with that sunset

Early in the pandemic, someone on Facebook joked that their car was getting a day per litre as milage. We normally filled up every 10 days or so. That changed to about once a month early in the year. Even now, it's 15 to 20 days between fill ups. 

There aren't a lot of places to go, and many of those aren't much fun. Go, (remembering to take a mask), stand in line to get in, follow the arrows on the floor, try to be polite while shouting through a mask and plastic barriers at cranky people tired of explaining the rules, remembering to keep your distance, and all that.

I'm not complaining. It's the way to deal with a pandemic. But it does put a crimp on some activities. As most of my readers know, I'm a shy, reclusive creature. It hasn't been particularly difficult to be home.

However, I do get the itch to get out to new places with my camera. Sunday was that day. I'd been thinking about Image of the Month, and November had been a bit of a skinny month for photography. I had a few I liked, but not a lot of choice. I got to thinking some new sights for my camera might be a good thing.

Wyndham-Carseland is just south of (duh) Carseland, a bit south and east of Calgary. It's mostly a boat ramp just upstream of a drowning machine. There's a bit of a bend in the Bow River, and I thought there was potential for lots of old log jams and dead wood. There's a bit, but not so much as I had hoped for. It's mostly scrub bush and some kind of trees.

And a serendipity shot from the Yukon in 2017.

I'd thought of this mostly as a scouting trip, just to see what was there. But as I was driving out I kept looking over my shoulder. The chinook clouds promised some interesting light later in the day. I had hopes.

Not many of the shots within the park did much for me. Even what turned out to be the Image of the Month was almost a speculative shot, just to see if the camera would pick up the sheen of light on the water. Here's another example of trees reflected in the water. Kind of blah, compared to the other one, don't you think? And yet I didn't do anything particularly special to that one. I didn't paint in those colours.

Once done exploring I zoomed up and out, and headed south across the bridge on highway 24. Sometimes bridges in nice light can be fascinating, but this is a boring bridge, and the river valley is nothing to write home about.

However the light was getting fantastic. I was thinking of a scenic hilltop mostly on the way home and was pretty brisk about heading to it. Along the way I passed a ruined round bale in the ditch. I could see the shots, and I darned near stopped, and thought about it for the next couple K. But I didn't, I had high hopes for the sunset, and it's better to get there too early, rather than too late. 

Seeing some kind of deer in the other ditch just a bit further tempted me. I had the right lens on the camera. They didn't seem spooked. There was no stupid fence in the way. The light was nice. I could have shot without getting out of the car. But I didn't stop. I'm not particularly a wildlife photographer.

However, remember that shed in the sunset from Tuesday? (Same link as above.) I stopped for that. While I was doing that, another car stopped and asked if I was ok. When I said I was photographing the shed in the sunset, they looked baffled. Oh well. It was nice they stopped to check.

I didn't get to the spot I was thinking of, but found another much like it. I could see Calgary downtown off in the distance, and tried for some of the leading lines in the clouds. Not.  There were lots of shots, and I had time to play with different lenses.

Rule 4 in photography is always look around, no matter how interesting the view in front is. When I turned around I got this, looking east. Again, no special work done to the photo to add colour. That's the way it looked.

The first photo in todays blog, the road westward, was taken about now. Then I nearly drove into the ditch when I looked south. Of course I stopped.

There was one failure coming home. Typically when coming home from the south I'll exit onto 22X, and go over to 37th St to avoid city traffic. However, construction. Eventually there will be a superhighway connecting the exit off MacLeod Trail to the entrance to our neighbourhood. Let's just say it's a work in progress.

Part of that progress is to change the exit ramp, and remove the signs. It's changed a lot since I was last there, and I was still sort of looking at the clouds to the west, and what with no sign, I missed the exit. Crap. I'd sort of hoped to see the state of construction along there. Another time.

Sometimes sunrise and sunsets are blink and you miss it. This one went on and on. I don't know how long exactly but at least the better part of an hour, maybe more. It was so nice to get out. I'll have to do this more often.

Of the Day

Driftwood

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