Sunrises lately, especially today

Wow! I didn't even start to make coffee this morning. The sunrises and sunsets lately have been pretty nice, but today! Double wow! One glance out the window and I was running for my shoes and the camera. The lovely light took up a huge part of the sky.

Looking east.

Looking south west.

 West and bit south.

A reflection in the front window.

A polyptych for you

There was a photo ramble today with my buddy Sean starting at the traditional time of oh-dark-30. Exactly so, as it turns out.

It's easy to tell where we started. Just behind us was a medium sized motorhome that was rocking a little as we pulled up. Sorry buddy if we interrupted something. Yes, my version of these photos have stars.

We had a lovely drive down sort of towards Chain Lakes, and stopped several times when the mood or view took us. Sean has talked several times of how images placed near each other provide context, and one has to consider the relationship between them. I finally got it, on a simplistic level today with these two images. Neither works particularly well alone, but together I was quite charmed. Yes, the two are looking at each other. It's kind of a pity my blog format doesn't really let me display photos side by side. You'll just have to arrange them that way in your mind.

This will amuse several of my readers, if they look closely. Of course there was coffee in it.

The light was kind of odd, mixing in with some mist on the ground, and some atmospheric haze to producing some ugly sky in the HDR shots. So ugly I took it right out of several of the shots. This is the only one where I left it in, since it's at least a little bit believable.

These were tough edits, and I'm still not entirely pleased with what the camera captured as opposed to what my eyes saw. I was thinking of the fog shots in Arrival, and trying to go for the same thing.

I'm not sure if I should show this photo. This is merely a scouting photo. I think in the right light it will be stunning. I'll have to return to this.

Finishing with the traditional Alberta landscape canola shot, and then breakfast in Turner Valley.

Over breakfast we spoke, as always, of many things. One of them was the apparent waning popularity of blogging, and if blogging was easier in retirement. I suspect it is. In any case Sean wondered if my blogging frequency had changed. As it turns out, I'm blogging a little more frequently than my traditional blog every day and a half.

........................................Blogs...........Days......................Days per blog
Oct 27, 2007 to today....2755............3921...........................1.42
2017 (mostly retired).......322..............365............................1.13
May 2018 to today............69.................82............................1.18

I strongly suspect my word count per blog is way down, so the fans of my wall'o-text blogs are likely pining a little. Yearning for the days of a rip snorting rant. And what are they getting? Flower shots. They probably think I've gone soft and they've defected to some red meat blog.

As I said, a perfectly lovely morning.

Sometimes, you HAVE to get the camera.

Some mornings, no matter how loud the call of the pool is, you have to go get the camera.

No matter how much the cat is glaring, or how quick the BBQ is warming up, you have to get the camera.

No matter how much the peony is calling, there are other flowers that deserve attention too, and you have to get the camera aimed at them.

No matter how good the cup of coffee, or how comfortable the cat is in your lap, you look outside and see lovely morning light sparkling off the dew, and you have to go get the camera. Where are these ones, you ask? Stay tuned, that was this morning.

It's been a while

Winter sunrises have been blah for a while. I was heading out last Sunday for BRBE to pick me up, when I saw the sunrise. I dropped the bag and headed back in for the camera. It was good timing, the perceptive of you will know those are are her headlights coming along. It was a good swim for all involved.

A while ago I'd promised a photo of Linda at the retiree thing, but that didn't work out quite as well as I'd hoped. The iPhone photo I was sent is brutal. This one is a photo of a photo, which is often fraught. The guy is the president of the union. When you're handing out a little retirement present, I guess you get to be in the photos.

It's been a long while since I've seen this part of the garden. This was still covered in snow yesterday. We've got some nice weather in the forecast, and it could well be one of our few weeks of summer. Break out the sunscreen!

A sunrise to lure you in.

It's still winter in Calgary. Really winter. Cold, snow, the whole works. At least we get nice sunrises. This is from a few days ago. I'm told that today's was nice too, but I was still in the pool.

Now that you're here, lured in, (Linda is laughing!) here's winter at night. We've been getting lots of snow. I was all set to shovel, when I was struck by the pattern of tracks in the snow, and a bit of house light reflecting off the snow.

This is the tail end of lots more snow. I shovelled first, as it was tapering, then still liked the snow against the streetlights. Yes, I'm standing in the middle of the road for this shot. I was thinking of trying to get the brake lights as the cars go around the curve, but the first several drivers didn't cooperate, and I wasn't inclined to stand there all night. The snow is light and fine, and swirls like dust.

Maybe it's the green lighting around the tennis courts and ice rink, but this shot makes me think of Christmas.

This shot amazes me. I stood there a moment in real life, liking the darkness of the shadows and the light from the streetlight, and the nice colour of the sky. I took the shot figuring lets see if the camera captures the magic of the sidewalk. Call me surprised. Maybe you had to be there, but this totally draws me in. You?

One of the roses, struggling to keep branches above the snow. I think it's completely buried now.

More colour!

You never know with sunrises. Another example where the show was off to the west. I was swooning over the purples and mauves.

That second looks a little odd compared to the first. I was trying to build a panorama, and I think the perspective is slightly off. Still, I wanted to capture some of the purple clouds against the slowly brightening sky.

This is the more conventional view off to the east, but I was a little bit meh about the whole thing. Maybe if there had been a bit more cloud.

Normally I'm all about the golds, oranges, and yellows, as you'll see in tomorrow's Macro Monday. But something about the purple and mauve really touched how I was feeling. Lately I've been thinking of photos that aren't of anything in particular, but are colour. I tried doing that a bit with my abstracts, but I pushed too hard. I'm looking for something a little more subtle now.

Not quite a rainbow bridge

Looks sort of like a bridge, though. You might want to embiggen this one and take a closer look. It's 10,490 px wide, and thus would print out 3 feet wide by about 1 tall in exquisite detail, and probably bigger if desired.

This was Sunday morning, thinking the sunrise might be nice. If you know where I live you'll realize this photo is facing west. That was a much better view, as sometimes happens.

Here's a parable for you. Most people look around and can more or less see their current situation for what it is. Some can't, but that's a different story. Over there, way over there they see a different situation for themselves. One that's better. Some people see a situation where they are the next Wayne Gretzky of whatever field they want to occupy, plus being an astronaut in their spare time, and the worlds best lover by night. We won't talk about those delusions today either.

I'm talking about the people that see here and now, and a reasonable there and later. The space between those places is what defeats them. They don't see the bridge. For some people the bridge is an 8 lane freeway and they still screw up. Booze or cocaine will do that for you. For some people the bridge is like the famous line from Jack T. Colton, :That ain't a bridge. That's goddamned pre-Columbian art!" (Romancing the Stone, for you kids that didn't get it.) Those people might be expecting a rainbow bridge (did you see what I did there? Look it up. My car license number is your clue.) and if they wait for that to show up they'd better get comfortable where they are.

And yet, what choice do you have? Sit where you are and let your dreams rot? Or step out on it and at least try. The first step is the hardest. Just like couch to 5K is the hardest race, stepping out onto that bridge is hard. Look at the bright side. Some people have to build the bridge first. Some have to scramble down into the chasm and look for the way up the other side. All of these people are going to have interesting things happen to them. Things that probably wouldn't happen if they sat and waited. Even people crossing their bridge might have interesting things happen to them. A roc might swoop down and carry them away to a place where diamonds are littered on the ground like cow poop at a ranch. They might fall through the slats and be saved by their soul mate and live happily ever after in their blue castle. (hint) After they cross they might get a job building bridges for other people since they proved they could do it. Who knows? The only way to find out is by doing it.

I was out for a photo ramble south of Calgary on both Sunday and Monday. Sort of west of Mossleigh, north of High River, a little west of Hartell and lots west of Turner Valley, and yet south of Bragg Creek. For a long time that was buffalo grazing land and not much else. Then Europeans came along and nearly extincted the buffalo essentially for fun. Farmers took over much of that area. Then came oil and gas people that were paid more than they knew what to do with, so they bought parcels of land from the farmers and put up big houses with nice views.

And holy doodle are there ever some nice views to be had!

And that's just from the public roads they have to let you drive on, between all the No Trespassing, No Hunting, Trespassers will be Shot and Eaten, No Public Access and such-like signs. The view from some of those private places must be pants-wetting stunning.

I've got a couple skylines from unexpected places, and some more nice views. I'll parcel them out so you don't overdose on them.

The light wasn't as nice as I had hoped, but that's life. I've made a note of several places, and hope to get back to them when the light is nice. Probably a sunrise, for much of it.

Revisiting a Fish Creek tree

You may remember a little while ago me and a buddy met up for a photo ramble through Fish Creek. Along the way we discovered this great twisted tree. None of the shots I took then turned out to my satisfaction, so I made a mental note to return.

But first a sunrise! I had hopes for it getting really spectacular overhead, but the wind blew the clouds to the east, and this is about as good as it got. The photo is about a quarter of the sky.

Looking south there was this.

Back to the tree. Today was the day, even though the light wasn't that nice. Sort of flat. But even now, one of the shots I wanted still didn't come out quite the way I want. Yet another visit in the wings.

Still, it was nice to get out for some fresh air and stroll the park. I was surprised how nice the creek is, and took some photos of that (duh), some which seemed to suit the flat light. It's a dangerous time to be walking on the creek though, there could be all sorts of soft spots from the warm weather. The surface is ever so slightly melted so it's extremely slippery.

It's almost like spring. The air is warm and windy, but it's still cool in the park, and all the shade means the ice is slow to melt. Even if it does melt it has nowhere to go since the ground is still frozen, so the smaller paths slowly ice up.

If I go again tomorrow afternoon, I think I'd wear the traction aids once I got off the paved paths. I had to pick my way very carefully without them today.

Here's some more tree stuff. I liked the almost knot work pattern in this bit of tree wreckage.

Grass and trees. For some reason in that part of the park the trees have really thick and corrugated bark.

A windy cold semi-serene remote sunrise

Linda got dropped off at the airport yesterday morning for oh dark thirty, as the saying goes. Since I was so far north and east, I thought I'd explore the sunrise in the gently rolling landscapes there. My thought was to get a nice landscape with layers of farmland, and some trees between fields, maybe a river or small ponds, even a canal. My second thought was to get a nice unobstructed view of the sunrise. Well, that specific part of the world is flatter than I remember.

The problem with sunrise hunting is that you don't know what you're going to get till you've got it there in front of you. Then it's too late to move. You have to shoot what you've got the best you can.

As the sky started to lighten I realized I wasn't going to get either of those shots, but I'd have a chance to try another shot I've had in mind. Often, winter sunrises are completely cloudless, and you start with complete darkness. Gradually an orangy pink glow starts in the east. It gradually gets brighter and brighter along the horizon, but straight up it's still dark. The colour transitions from light to dark are subtle and lovely. My old camera didn't really capture it well, so I thought I'd have a go with the new one.

This is better, but I'm still playing with settings. I fumbled around on the focus with live view, magnification doesn't work quite the same and my fingers are still learning the buttons. I might add I had the tripod set up on the lee side of the car, on the shortest setting, and it was still really windy.

On the road, looking west.

These next two were shot at the same place. I saw the trees ahead of me bathed in this red light, and I'm glad there was nobody behind me. Then I turned around and walked a few feet to get the one tree and the sunrise.

Another stop looking east again. I could wish the clouds were lighted up better, but oh well, the trees look nice.

This is one of the most iconic travel Alberta shots I've ever done. Yes, lots of roads go on straight, apparently forever, with no fences, and precious few buildings in sight. There was not much tweaking on this shot, it really was this colour.

In the end, I had a lovely drive taking the scenic route from the airport to home, via Delacour and Langdon, (not forgetting to wave at some buddies that live there.

Now I'm off to Fish Creek for a photo ramble with a buddy!