Lacombe County

Spring seeding in Lacombe County is now complete and the rain has started in earnest. Soon the small seedlings will spout in the always beautiful spring green! Can't you just smell the freshly turned soil? That is an all time favourite smell of mine. I recall living at Verdant Valley and just loved when each spring a local farmer would come to the country school yard and work the soil all along the windbreak. Then my brother Brad and I would get down to business building roads and bridges with our Tonka trucks and graders. What a blast! I think I could still play among the trees there so long as no one was watching a 43 year old playing with toy trucks.
[Canon 5D, Sigma 80-400mm OS)


"He will also send you rain for the seed you sow in the ground, and the food that comes from the land will be rich and plentiful."
Isaiah 30:23 (TNIV)

Lethbridge

I had the opportunity to spend almost the whole of last week working in Lethbridge. In the evenings I went for walks along the Oldman River along nature trails with my sister Marlene and brother-in-law Dave. They were likely just entertaining me each night, but the walks were great. Actually I think they enjoyed the walks just as much as me! Of course I dragged a bit of gear with me just in case - you know - maybe there would be something of interest for me to photograph, possibly even some trees! The Helen Schuler Coulee Centre is at the start of some wonderful trails though the floodplain of the Oldman River. This is a superb example of a riparian zone with some rather large cottonwood trees along the trails along with many birds and mammals like the porcupine and deer. We even saw a raccoon a few years ago along the trails here. The first image was made within a stone's throw from the nature centre where there is some very tall grass and some shrubs for the deer to almost disappear into. The next two images are very representative of what you will see along the trails in the park, the last one made well after the sun had set over the coulee rim to the west.
[Canon 5D, 70-200mm f/2.8L]

"Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them;
let all the trees of the forest sing for joy"
Psalms 96:12 (TNIV)

Badlands and sysconfig

My apologies for the delay updating my blog!! Our computer crashed last week beyond the "Blue screen of death". this one was black and said something about sysconfig and corrupt etc. etc. Not exactly my language of preference! Anyway, I think I've managed to retrieve all but my e-mail archives, but we have a good friend in Ken Higgins who is looking after us and is confident in a full recovery. Yeah!!

The images above may look completely crazy for colour and contrast as I worked on them with our laptop. It's what I have, so it's what I'll use. If these are really bad, I'll rework them and post them again as an example of proper colour calibration on ones computer.

All that said - these images were made last July in Dinosaur Provincial Park near Brooks, Alberta. The park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site which puts it on par with sites like the Taj Mahal, Petra or Kakadu National Park in Australia! It is a fabulous place for a visit! Getting up a 5am was necessary to capture the sunrise and was worth every second of sleep that was lost. Being 36C during the day, all that we did during the heat of the day was relax anyway. I am looking forward to one or two visits again this year again.
[Olympus E410, 14-42mm)

HDV Stills - Piper Creek Evening

Took out the little HD video camera again the other night close to home along Piper Creek. This is definitely not the camera for me as it is just too hard to navigate the menus to get what I need for the image. I think the Canon XH-A1 will be much better in this regard as it has a great many more buttons on the camera and so requires far less menu cruising and more time shooting. More time shooting is definitely the direction that appeals to me.
[Canon HG10]