S and K take the scenic route

If you've been following along you know that my friend Sean and I periodically go on photo rambles together. Sometimes we meet up in town at a place of mutual interest, such as Fish Creek, or along one of the rivers. Sometimes we go for a drive, usually with at least some thoughts of a route, or a destination, or a particular photo idea. 

Most of the time the deal is he drives (his car is bigger and more comfortable) and I buy lunch and keep the eyeballs looking for possible photo opportunities. As a bit of foreshadowing, lunch on Thursday was at the Twin Butte General Store. It's really good!

I'm at a bit of a loss for what to include here. There were many photos captured as the light changed and we travelled from place to place. Some are good, some are less so. One was taken for the specific purpose of amusing a friend, and she was. I'm thinking about if the point is to tell the story of the trip in photos, or just to share the best?

After all, one of the "rules" about creative work is to only show your best work. As I've come to realize, 'best' is a complicated word. Not going to go down that rabbit hole here and now. 

Sean picked me up at oh dark thirty, and we headed out highway 22, first west, then south. Then south some more instead of turning in Turner Valley, I mean Diamond Valley. We found a nice mountain vista just before sunrise, and bundled up to wait in a surprisingly chilly breeze. 

1. Looking south.

2. A small herd of critters were watching us, curious but not alarmed. Soon after they decided we were boring and wandered out of sight. I saw this essentially as a silhouette image and initially edited it that way, but that didn't look right. I knew there was some detail in the grass along the ridge.

Looking west was many photos as the light changed and I saw different compositions. Mountains and landscapes in general can be difficult subjects, especially at early dawn. Shadows can be really dark, and seeing a blot of black in a photo typically isn't a good look. Doing an HDR to get a bright, medium, and dark photo for later merging can usually cope with bright and dark portions of the scene, but caution is needed. Sometimes an HDR scene can look fake or overdone. We can see the light is coming from a particular direction and the lack of shadow can look odd. Trying to brighten just the shadow can create an odd look, or introduce a bunch of noise with random coloured pixels as the software tries to create an image out of little information. I was struggling to decide which of the many photos to edit. Still that's a good problem to have, compared to the inverse of none of them working out.

3. Here's the big picture of where we were. This is quite a wide panorama, about 5 x 2 feet, taking up almost a quarter of the horizon. Just looking at them, the mountains are right in your face, but the camera sees things differently. 

4. This is about as good of the iconic pink sunrise mountain photo that I got.

5. Working our way south of Longview, looking east, then west. Shadows can be interesting and lend definition to what is normally a pretty flat and uninteresting landscape.

6. That shadow in the middle is an example of the difficulties. My eyes could see detail in the shadow, but the camera struggled, as did Lightroom.

7. We knew Lundbreck falls was going to be in shadow, but since we were right there, why not? We were pleasantly surprised at the light.

8. One of the main features of south west Albert is wind turbines. I'd far rather look at these, than the hole in the ground, or deal with the water pollution from strip mining coal.

9. One of the many wind farms, near an old farm.

10. A surprisingly moody but brooding view on a sunny day.

11. Another mountain view. We stopped on a narrow mountain road as this came into view because we knew there wasn't much traffic. We didn't waste any time, but sure enough, a Parks Canada truck showed up, but he didn't seem cranky with us.

12. I'd texted Linda to let her know we were on the way back home, and she replied, 'Maybe you'll get a nice sunset.' Not 5 minutes later we pulled over for this.

13. I was amusing myself watching the shadow of the car and eventually reached for the camera. Of course we didn't stop.

14. We didn't stop for this one either, as we headed north from Clairsholm.

It was dark again when Sean dropped me off. There's a few more photos to share, good (I think), documentary, cliche, and amusing. I'll do them as extras over the next little while.

In other news.

I think today I'll pass on the usual of the day suspects, but the feature will return.

We mourn the closing of Clay Oven, for nearly 30 years the best Indian restaurant in town. Their naan bread alone was worth the drive across town. We last ate there mid-August, and thought that either the chef was having a bad night, or management had changed, or something. It wasn't as good as usual, and there weren't many people during prime dining time. It used to be so busy reservations were a must.

The 2025 in Photographs book has arrived and I love it! The photos all came out really well. The local readers that wish to see it need only invite me out for a coffee. I'm starting to work on the New Brunswick book.

The film project is off to a good start. Now that water restrictions are over (till the pipe breaks again, or planned repairs in spring are underway) I'll start developing film. I am unsure what sharing I'll do for these.