Lady Evelyn Falls Study

A few weeks ago in October, Shannon and I were headed to Lady Evelyn falls in Kakisa, NT. I wanted to be there for the sunrise. I was planning on having some sunshine on the falls. Unfortunately I came a little too late in the year for the shot that I had wanted. It wasn’t a wasted trip though.  I had climbed down to the river’s edge to compose my images. I realized that the trees to the northwest of the falls would be illuminated first so I tried to incorporate these element into my composition.

1DS Mark III, 16-35mm F2.8

Looking back I realize with chiaroscuro of the trees I now had two subjects, both were competing for the viewers attention. I plan on going back next June and camping there (since sunrise will be a little after 4) to get the shot I want of the falls.

1DS Mark III, 16-35mm F2.8

1DS Mark III, 16-35mm F2.8

Since the light wasn’t exactly where I wanted it to be I was determined to work around it.  I had a lot of moving water and I wanted to use it. One great visual feature of Lady Evelyn falls is that the water flows smooth over the top of the falls. The water is not choppy and not white. This would lend itself to great blurred motion effects within the water. The trees to the northwest would also provide some great reflected warm tones to the water. This is something we usually find a bit odd, since we associate water with cool colours.  I was unlucky during this shoot. I had not properly cleaned my sensor prior and I spent a LOT of time removing dust from the photos.  Having such a large sensor makes dust extremely visible. Ah well, you live, you learn right?

1DS Mark III, 24-105mm L f4

I moved up river to a few smaller falls with some great lines straight across the river. I was dealing with high contrasting light and I had to make composite images of these images to capture all of the shadows and highlights.

1DS Mark III, 16-35mm F2.8

I haven’t had a great amount of opportunities to photograph the aurora yet this fall/winter. I’m really hoping for a spectacular winter season and the auroral activity is supposed to increase over the next two years so I’m really hoping for some great ideas and inspirations. I had one night with the aurora this fall that I was able to work with. The aurora were out early that night, 9pm or so and I made my way to a spot I had scouted out a while before. I really wanted to incorporate a reflection of the aurora in my composition with a great tree line as my horizon. I was lucky that night. The water was smooth, the aurora were showing and the clouds were holding off.

1DS Mark III, 16-35mm F2.8

The aurora weren’t having an active night but it was enough light to capture with the camera. The ring wasn’t moving too far so I decided to try a long exposure with star trails, reflections and aurora. I only took one photo and I was quite happy with the 4 minute exposure.

1DS Mark III, 16-35mm F2.8

Next I wanted to try something I had never seen before, an auroral panorama. These may have been done before (I’m betting on it), but I have never seen one to date. These panoramas are incredibly difficult to achieve on a high quality level. I didn’t want to see any gaps in my stitching and I didn’t want to see any incompatibilities within the aurora. As I said earlier, the aurora were quite present but not too active. This was the perfect night for this type of photograph. Using the 1DS Mark III I am able to record a photograph to disk while exposing another one. This allowed me to take 3 consecutive photos (1 minute long) with no gaps within the aurora. While I expose one image I’m immediately recording the previous image. I used the 16-35mm to take 3 photographs with about a 30% overlap. I reccommend more of an overlap, but I had to work with what I had.

1DS Mark III, 16-35mm F2.8 - Composite image of 3 images together

I had to say goodbye to many of our wildlife friends in Hay River. Winter has arrived and many of our animals have hunkered down for the season or they have moved on south. I had a really great day photographing with a couple buddies up here. We had come across a small flock of snow buntings.  I have always (for the past year) wanted to photograph the buntings when they burst off flying together. They have a great flash of white in the underwings and I would like to play with blurring their movement or trying to freeze their motion. I was lucky to come up upon them on a hill and they took off in front of the beginning of West Channel. I had my ISO around 600 to allow myself to freeze their movements I was surprised by the details and definitions I had achieved, especially using my slow 400mm.

1DS Mark III, 100-400mm L f4.5-5.6

I was walking along our nature trail and wasn’t getting much luck in terms of wildlife and was getting quite discouraged when I stumbled upon this ruffed grouse. He wasn’t too shy of me. I was able to approach slowly but never on a direct line to him. I used a zig zag approach to slowly close the distance between him and I. I photographed him for a while and continued to press a bit closer and closer until he flew away. I could’ve followed him, but I didn’t want to increase any stress on him that I may have caused.

1DS Mark III, 100-400mm L f4.5-5.6

1DS Mark III, 100-400mm L f4.5-5.6

And some of the last vestiges of a short fall.

1DS Mark III, 100-400mm L f4.5-5.6

1DS Mark III, 100-400mm L f4.5-5.6

1DS Mark III, 16-35mm L F2.8

1DS Mark III, 100-400mm L f4.5-5.6

1DS Mark III, 100-400mm L f4.5-5.6

1DS Mark III, 100-400mm L f4.5-5.6

My first fall in the North

Canon 1DS Mark III, 100-400 L f4.5-5.6

Well I guess my first fall in the NT is officially over. The colours are not as varied as they are from home (due to the lack of any maple species) but they are still worth while! My big surprise was seeing trembling aspens turning red!  I never knew this species was capable of this change and yet I've seen it a few times here in the north. The colours are predominantly yellow, with a litttttle bit of orange. One thing that was a bonus of photographing the fall in the north was the dry air. The dry air cut out any humidity in the sky and reduced any sort of haziness. The sky (when it was showing) was always a dark, clean, crisp blue. This blue provided some great colours in the background to contrast the fall colours against.

Canon 1DS Mark III, 24-105mm L F4, 1/100 sec, 24mm, F8

The same is true of the colours at home. They're more vibrant the closer they are to water.  Except that here, you won't find deer in the trees, you find buffalo! Just across the Mackenzie River you enter a buffalo preserve and you're bound to come across a few buffalo on your travels. I've yet to see the large herd of over 30 heads of buffalo, but I'm sure I'll come across them eventually. My goal for these shots were to contrast the size and colour of the animals against some bright colours of the aspens and pines behind them.

Canon 1DS Mark III, 100-400 L f4.5-5.6, 1/250 sec, 400mm, f5.6

Canon 1DS Mark III, 100-400 L f4.5-5.6, 1/125sec 400mm f5.6

Yellowknife's fall colours arrived about 3 weeks before they did in Hay River. I was in town for Labour Day weekend and Shannon and I managed to make our way to Cameron Falls on the Ingraham (sp?) Trail. The falls were very accessible (15 min walk in the bush), but it was so wonderful to tramp around the falls. You came to a wonderful view of the falls, then you're able to view them from down below and then, for the more adventurous, directly from the top of the falls. It's a great way to spend a few hours. I had the right light for doing blurred waterfall shots and it just turned out to be good timing to be there when I was there. The light was dark, flat and diffused. Nothing dramatic but you let the water make the drama. I set the 1DS mkIII on the tripod with my 24-105mm L F.4 on Av with my ISO on 50 and let the camera's light meter determine what the ideal exposure is. Then I adjust this from time to time, periodically bracketing a scene and then adjusting my angle.

Canon 1DS Mark III, 24-105mm L F4, 1/6 sec, F16, 65mm

Canon 1DS Mark III, 24-105mm L F4, 1/3 sec, 47mm, F11

I've been waiting to photograph a particular stand of aspens for about a year now and unfortunately the colours just did not come through here. The stand is between Alexandra and Louise Falls. Luckily enough the falls on both end of the trail made up for the lack of colours of the trees.
 

Canon 1DS Mark III, 16-35mm L F2.8, 24mm, F16, 1/2 sec

Canon 1DS Mark III,  24-105mm L F4

Canon 1DS Mark III, 16-35mm L F2.8

Canon 1DS Mark III, 16-35mm L F2.8

Canon 1DS Mark III,16-35mm L F2.8

I have a small nature trail outside my building next to the river and I've been watching it for the past few weeks to see when the right time. The last Sunday in September turned out to be the peak of the fall colours here and I was lucky to go for a walk. I did the typical 'fall walking trail' shots and to be honest, I'm extremely satisfied with them. On these shots I'm using my 24-105mm L f.4. It was a bright day so a 'slow' aperture of f.4 wouldn't come into play at all. I enjoy this lens due to it's versatility. The focal length range allows it to be a great 'walk around town' lens. It allows for great 24mm wide angle shots and it's 105mm extension allows for moderate telephoto use. I used my B+W polarizing filter to help darken the blues in the sky and help make the foliage colours really pop.

Canon 1DS Mark III, 24-105mm L F4

Canon 1DS Mark III, 24-105mm L F4

Canon 1DS Mark III, 24-105mm L F4

Canon 1DS Mark III, 24-105mm L F4

At the end of my walk the clouds began to blow over and I was disappointed but satisfied with what I had achieved. On my way back I spied one of our resident pileated woodpeckers. I was luckily able to switch to my 100-400mm L f4.5-5.6 quickly to snap some photos before the male flew away. I ran into a friend of mine and he was able to help me spot the pair of woodpeckers again. I chased the pair around the little stand of trees hoping to get crisp shots of them against the yellow colours in the background and I was successful.

Canon 1DS Mark III, 100-400 L f4.5-5.6

Canon 1DS Mark III, 100-400 L f4.5-5.6

Canon 1DS Mark III, 100-400 L f4.5-5.6

Canon 1DS Mark III, 100-400 L f4.5-5.6

We've been having some fantastic weather lately with varying clouds sweeping by and I've been lucky to capture a couple in panoramics down by the river. Once again, my camera is set on my tripod and I use my 16-35mm L f2.8 to photograph a sequence of photos from left to right keeping my mid line along the horizon to stitch into one panoramic. I have some advice on these photographs in an earlier installment of the blog.

Composite Panorama made with 1DS Mark III and 16-35mm L F2.8

Composite Panorama made with 1DS Mark III and 16-35mm L F2.8

1/500, F3.2, ISO 100, 1DS Mark III,  70-200 L F2.8

So this was my first fall. It's not the same as home, or as colourful but it still presents itself with some great photo ops.

Photographing Polletts Cove

My favourite image

Talk about a daunting trip. I've always wanted to hike this trail and take amazing photographs. I knew if I could get there in the right circumstances I could get the best photographs of the Cove and I hope I did it.  This hike is almost 'legendary' in terms of Cape Breton hiking. In terms of long distance or crazy difficult hikes it's not that long or hard, but it's still pretty hard to get to.

Me..finally at the Cove

The circumstances finally worked out right for me. I was hired to photograph stills of a production featuring outdoor activities in Cape Breton and Pollett's Cove was a featured episode. We had four in our party, the producer, host and an assistant to help carry gear. It worked out beautifully in terms of timing. I had just purchased my new camera kit, my 1DS Mark III and my 16-35mm L F2.8 and I knew with this, I could capture extremely high resolution photos. I just needed the skills to get them.

The Coast

This reminds me of Jack Dykinga's work in Arizona.. look him up

We started our hike off a little later than we had hoped so I didn't have the opportunity to photograph the trail in the morning light but it was okay. The light was soft and diffused since the sun was behind a high layer of cirrus clouds. These clouds had my hopes up. The hike in was hard, not too hard...but hard enough. It consists of two steep climbs and a lot of unstable trail.  After some climbing and descending (2x each) we had arrived at the cove and I was like a child in a candy store. I had just finished hiking 7kms, set up our camp site and then I set out to photograph my grail. I ran all over that cove, choosing not to eat (it'd waste time and light) and photographed as much as possible. The biggest treat of the cove were our camp guests, 4 'wild' horses. These horses were so curious about us they wouldn't leave us alone. Their group consisted of two females, a juvenile and a male. Both females were your 'typical' brown and so was the juvenile but the male was speckled black and white, very striking to photograph.

Our other campers

Needless to say, they were pretty comfortable with us

Drifting embers from our fire make a nice touch

I ran up and down the coast, inland and coastal, shooting panoramas and landscapes. Finally I forced myself to stop and eat something and then get back to work. The horses managed to place themselves in the perfect spots for grand vistas of the cove.

Just good timing.

My favourite of our group

Our hike back out was a bit wetter than I had hoped for. About half way back at Otter Cove the rain had started. I had been watching the weather from the south and had been anticipating a few hours of clear weather for our hike back...then this rain came straight from the east (odd for the east coast) and drenched us. It was a saturated hike back but I felt safe knowing my gear is weather proof!

My whole time in Pollet's Cove I believe I shot with my 16-35mm for ultra wide angle shots trying to capture the grandeur of the landscape. I keep my ISO as low as I can (50) and set my camera to Aperture Priority at f11.  Keeping the camera on my tripod forced me to slow down to look at my compositions, to study them. I had to make sure I knew what I was going to shoot.  Something else I wanted to do was capture huge panoramas. I have a lesson on how to shoot pano's in an earlier post and it applied here as well.

The first panorama of the Cove that I've seen

 

This panorama is 180 degrees. This shoreline does not bend and is only warped by the perspective of the photo.

These horses were my greatest asset to pulling off great shots