I just returned from a few days of shooting down in the Cypress Hills area of south eastern Alberta with good friends and fellow photographers Peter Carroll, Darwin Wiggett, and Samantha Chrysanthou. We had a genuine mixed bag of weather and conditions on the trip which kept things both interesting and down right challenging at times. I arrived a day earlier than the rest of the gang and was rewarded for my promptness with heavy cloud cover, rain, blowing snow, and my personal favourite, sideways slush. I was also lucky enough to discover that all of the gates to the roads leading into the Cypress Hills park were closed to all traffic due to the extreme forest fire hazard. After a windy and stormy night in the tent, I woke up to a thick coat of wet slush blanketing the world and felt like I’d been thoroughly skunked. I did my best to stay optimistic and productive with my time and after a warm breakfast (thank you Tim Horton’s in Medicine Hat!), spent the better part of the first day and a half scouting and getting to know the area from the comfort of the heated seats in my truck. As Darwin, Sam, and Peter pulled in late on Wednesday, it was as though the light followed right behind them and things improved significantly. For those of you who don’t know Darwin or is work, he is just that good. He doesn’t have to look for great light anymore, it chases him!

This week’s photo of the week was made early on in the day Thursday while Peter and I were out shooting together. The gates to the park had since been opened and we were able to get in to explore and shoot some of the awesome fall colour of Cypress Hills. This shot is a pretty good representation of the conditions we had with the fresh snow blanketing the forest and the colours of fall still hanging on. This was just the beginning of what turned out to be a very interesting and rewarding day of shooting for us. I’ll have more to share on this in the next few days as I make my way through processing the images so stay tuned for more!