First off, I need to apologize for the lack of activity here on the blog lately. Life has been racing by at an alarming pace lately and time for shooting photos and sharing them has been tough to come by. After an extremely busy couple of months, I was able to get away last week for a much needed break and joined my good friends Samantha Chrysanthou and Darwin Wiggett for a backpacking trip in beautiful Waterton Lakes National Park. We had a great time together exploring some new areas of the park that none of us had visited before and were blessed with unbelievably great weather for the week. I really enjoyed the fact that, despite being photographers, this wasn’t a photo specific trip and we were able to just enjoy our time appreciating nature and each other’s company. Of course, we did do a little bit of shooting (like I said, we are photographers after all) but it was at a much more relaxed pace, and without any kind of hard core agenda. Personally, I find that this kind of pace feeds the creative process in a very natural way and encourages me to slow down and really observe things before racing to click the shutter.

All in all, it was a fantastic trip with just the right balance of hard work, exploration, relaxation, photography, and especially good company. Thanks Sam and Darwin, I’d take to the backcountry again with you any time!

Stay tuned, I’ll be sharing more images and stories from the trip soon!

Over the course of the 5 days of our trip, Darwin and I were up early each morning (well, Darwin was at least… I slept in once) to shoot sunrise, and we noticed some interesting patterns in the weather… namely the mysterious fog that seemed to consistently roll in each morning during the peak light. Only 1 of the locations we photographed (shown below) appeared to be exempt from this phenomenon.

We were particularly baffled while shooting at Twin Lakes the two mornings we spent there. On both days, we awoke to crystal clear skies, only to see the fog start to drift in right as the light was kissing the tops of the nearby peaks. Within minutes, as the light made it’s way down the mountains, the fog would follow and before long, completely fill in the entire valley. The first time this happened, we at least got a little bit of light and made a few images before things closed in, but on the second morning it rolled in even quicker, and before any sunlight had made an appearance, so we just shrugged it off and went back to bed. After just an hour or so, the fog had moved out and the sky was completely clear again. As I mentioned in my earlier post, this wasn’t a hard core photo trip for us, so we just kept things pretty relaxed and if the light happened, we went for it and if not we just took it easy. Here are a couple of frames from that spot:

The first morning of the trip was a similarly foggy experience. The image I shared in my previous post was made that morning and just shortly after that was taken, the fog made it’s way in. Often, when I’m faced with less than interesting skies or obstructed backgrounds, I’ll just simply look down and see what I can find to make an image that doesn’t require the grand view. That’s exactly what I did for this next image as the fog obscured the mountains beyond the lake. There was still plenty of colour in the sky so I composed this little scene and made use of the reflections in the surface of the water. I think this one just might be one of my favourites from the trip.

I’ll leave you with one more from this spot on the shore of Maskinonge Lake. This one was taken just as the fog was on it’s way out, and before Darwin and I headed back for a much needed cup of coffee!

Thanks so much for stopping in and having a look. I hope you’ve enjoyed these, and will make a trip to Waterton and experience this beautiful gem of a park for yourself!

I was also fortunate enough to run into the unofficial master of the Kootenay Plains, my good friend Darwin Wiggett of oopoomoo who was leading his annual Glory of Autumn in the Canadian Rockies workshop. I joined up and shot together with him and his group for a couple hours and had a great time. They were a fun group of folks and very talented photographers too. Check out this post to see some of the work they produced while on the workshop.

Here are a few more images. The conditions were mostly overcast while I was there which was great for working these type of detail scenes in the trees.

There was also plenty of wind, (something this area is known for) which made for some interesting images using long exposures. In this next image, the wind was just steady and strong enough to create some nicely blurred colours in the leaves while keeping the tree trunks still and sharply focused.

I couldn’t resist making some panning and zooming motion blur images as well. The conditions were just perfect and these are always a lot of fun.

Thanks for stopping in and having a look!