August Image of the Month

August was a big photography month, both in terms of quantity and quality. Over 11,000 photos (some of which were paid client photos and thus not treated the same as my own photos), and 34 are 4 stars.

So there's lots of choice. I will dither.

Several days later, this has turned out to be one of my better dithers. There's 12 from the birds of prey facility, and if I'd got those shots in the wild, they'd be 5 stars. Especially if I got away without the birds trying to eat me. The eagles at least, are apex predators. But taken from a facility? Hmmm.

There's a really good flying dragonfly shot, with it facing me, clear enough to see details on it's little face. Some sweeping landscapes, a couple of portraits, moonrise with landscape, a couple Perseid meteors, a sunset reflection, and a couple unconventional skylines. As I say, decisions, decisions. 

2nd Runner up

A Perseid metor shot from MacLean Dam provincial park during a Zeller road trip. Plus the galactic core, of course.

First Runner up

Why not the dragonfly shot? Well, I've been working on full moon shots since I bought the good camera. The full moon is a hard photo. It only comes around once a month (duh!) and it takes 19 years to get it back to the same place on the horizon if you've got a particular shot in mind. So I could well be dead by the time the full moon gets around to rising in the same place for a similar shot. And even then, what's the odds it will be cloudy, or some greedy developer will build an ugly condo development overlooking the river valley?

Plus I've always wanted to do landscapes by moonlight, and that's tougher than you might think for a variety of reasons.

This was shot during a Southern Alberta road trip with Neil Zeller.

Image of the month

Shot on the way home during a Neil Zeller Southern Alberta road trip.

Normally I don't talk much about my image selections, thinking that if an explanation is necessary the image isn't that good. Yet I kept coming back to this one, and the more I thought about it kept finding more imagery in it. Yet in some ways it's a bit of a banal image, a prairie landscape. No mountains, because I'm looking SE from near Vulcan.

A field of harvested crops, representing the past. A train representing the industrial present, but it's going from right to left, so read into that what you will. There's the wind turbines on the horizon, representing the future. You can't tell from the photo but some were spinning, some not. Then there's the clouds. Oh my, the dramatic skies! We were in brilliant sunshine, but there were shafts of light and bands of rain, representing the uncertain world we live in.