Aspen and Tuck

Tucked away in the backwoods of Golden, BC is a special little place where you can interact with wolves. If you're adventurous, you can take a hike up into the mountains with the mythic animals, who run free - no leashes or tethers, and watch as they go about their wolf activities. 

It's set up as a photo session so the handlers Casey and Shelley (photographers themselves!) are able to a certain extent pose the wolves for you.  Much smarter than your average wild animal, these wolves just on their own, without coaching do remarkable things. 

I got some great shots of them going underwater in a mountain streat to retrieve chicken bits (treats for their patience at being camera fodder).  I was privileged take a walk with 2 wolves, Aspen, an adventurous 10 year old female, and Tuck, an 8 year old, very shy black wolf - rare. I'll post more pics of these guys soon.

  What magnificent beings they are!

 

If you're even remotely interested in photographing real wolves, here's the link to their website.

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Wait for my "Dances with Wolves!"  NEXT.

Keywords: rockies,wildlife_photography

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Moraine Lake

It was a dark day, with those low hanging clouds that menace and threaten.  A brooding and sullen day.

I contemplated the most beautiful lake in the world under these bleak skies, and imagined how it would look.  Could I still make something dramatic, without the sun?  I had a number of contingency plans for shooting and getting the scene captured.  And with the magic of post production I had no worries that I could maniplate the shot into some kind of vision...

But within steps of the shore of the lake, with my gear ready, a patch of clear blue sky fought away the clouds, and slowly began to erase the darkness.  For the entire hour I spent on the shores of the lake, the sun shone and the intense and unworldly turquise waters illuminated from above, radiated with un-unknowable energy.  I was mezmerized.

This is what I saw:

READ MORE...

Keywords: landscapes

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A Kicking A** Bridge

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High Altitude Animals

Travel(b)log - geocoded and mapped. Where I was today in (almost) realtime.

This was a great day, 2 elk, and 4 big horn sheep.

 

 

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A Howling Good Time

My wolf walk is just around the corner, literally!  My gear? 2 Nikon D300s, a Nikon 70-200 2.8 tele zoom, polarizers, and a 12-24 mm wide angle, just in case it really is possible to get that close. And for supreme weirdness, my Nikon D70 converted infrared camera.  I can't imagine what a wolf looks like in IR!

Heck, I can't imagine what a real wolf actually looks like. But I'll find out and show you  in case you've never seen one before either. Plenty of cougars, no doubt, but wolves? ha ha.

I've set up an iPhone PHOTO blog here.  Be sure to check out the Map View!

We will talk again very soon

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What is it about Tuesdays?

Neither here nor there (that was my entry in the Winnipeg slogan contest BTW - much more true than Spirited Energy) "Winnipeg - Neither Here Nor There" sounds catchy, no?

Anyway, back to Tuesdays... they are neither here nor there too. Not exacly the begining of the week, and not quite the middle and too far away for the end. No wonder it's my least productive day.  But I can confirm I have a definite date with the wolves, and will be blogging from the iPhone pics from the road again soon.  I'll post the POD blog link here too.

So the itinerary is like this: Moraine Lake, Lake Louise, Johnson Canyon, wolves, wine, abandoned mine, Myra Canyon, so far. I've been searching for the best sunrnise and sunset times for Lake Louise and Moraine Lake, so if you have any locations, GPS coordinates, Google Earth KML files to share, I'll be forever grateful

ttfn!

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Glorious Spring - Loaded

Wasn't it a gorgeous weekend! Finally. In honour of these fabulous few days I want to tell you about the spring in Photoshop CS4.

Yes, CS4 comes spring loaded, and if you're a Photoshop artist, or you do a lot of Photoshopping, you'll love this little known addition in CS4.  Simply, all your keyboard shortcuts are now spring loaded.  Probably the best known example of this concept is the activation of the Hand tool by pressing the space bar.  In previous versions of Photoshop, this would allow you to pan your image as long as the space bar was depressed.  As soon as you release the space bar, you'd pop back to the tool you were using.  It was - and IS - a super effective workflow enhancement.

So now you can do the same thing with the rest of the tools.  Try it.  Oven a new canvas. Use your brush tool to brush on a few large strokes.  Now you'll erase some of them.  Just hold down the "e" key (e is the keyboard shortcut for erase, remember?).  While you have it held down, your paintbrush tool becomes the eraser.  Erase your strokes. And release the "e" key.  Now it instantly springs back and you're instantly using your brush once more. I love this. This can be used for just about any tool in your tools palette.

Now you can speedily move from tool to tool without all that mousing around.  I suspect it will minimize all the repetitive strain injuries we're sucseptible to from using computers so much!

But forget about computers for now. It's infrared shooting season. Be sure to check out my new infrared tutorials guide book  - it's a complete program of creativity and learning for post-processing your IR images.

ok, gotta go now! Have a great SPRING loaded day.

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About light

We all know that a great photograph displays great lighting.  A great photo captures something ethereal, and becasue we are visual beings, it's what we first see that gives us clues to the moment.  Dramatic lighting transmits these clues.

So why would we want to limit the light, or shut it out of our image? There are a few great reasons, but none more obscure than that of what i call "stationary movement."

Watch for the complete tutorial here.  

I'm going to enjoy the sun today - headshots in the exchange.  Have a great weekend  and rememember your ABCs. (Always Bring Camera!)

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Back to "normal"

Some things are getting back to normal, but it's not our weather!  Still freezing, and stoking that old wood stove - in JUNE!!!

I've had enough.  Normally bad weather is good for photography - it's moody, brooding. It's got "ambiance."  But I do need a change of scenery.

There's a little set of islands in the middle of the South Pacific, the Pitcairn Islands, 4100 miles from Panama, and the farthest place from anywhere else in the world.  Only 50 people live there. It's a seven-day trip via freighter from New Zealand.  The lowest temperatures ever recorded are around 10 °C, the highest 34 °C. On average, August is the coldest month (19 °C) while February is the warmest (24 °C).  Sounds like paradise to me!

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An Upcoming Book "Lunch"

I'ts been a whirl-wind of a week.  Thank you to everyone who wrote to offer congrats, and I have to say it was great to hear from some old friends I hadn't heard of for eons - great of you to call and reconnect! I will be going for lots of lunches in the next few weeks!!!! We'll have a blast (from the past). 

The finishing touches are going on my new Infrared Photography Manual (working title) - the cover art is finsihed, the digital sample files are all ready to go. One of the image studies in the book was Accepted in this years Competition, so you'll be seeing the best professional art photography here; and  I'm hoping to have it ready, at least for pre-order, before my BC trip.  This book is not going to be for everyone - but there is nothing out there like it.  For those special photographers among us, it will be the most creative book you have ever got your hands on!  I have some early reviews to get up here shortly too. 

And that's the scoop for now!

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