Alberta Winter Day

In late December, I went to Upper Kananaskis Lake, accompanied by Stewart Hamilton to photograph some winter scenes. It was a blustery day but not too cold and the skies were mostly cloudy with sunny breaks casting good light on the surrounding peaks.

I chose to take advantage of the windy conditions to shoot some long exposures. The intention is capture the effect of movement of blowing snow and clouds. I had mixed success, the cloud motion was not as pronounced as I would have liked. Following is a shot of Mount Indefatigable, taken from the south side of Upper Kananaskis Lake. The exposure was 30 seconds. You can see the blurring of the clouds and the blowing snow on the far side the lake. To achieve the long exposure I used a 10-stop neutral density filter, which is so dark you can’t auto-focus the camera through it. (I manually set the exposure before  attaching the filter.) Camera settings were f/20 and ISO 50 to further reduce shutter speed.

This next picture was taken with a more normal shutter speed, in this case 1/25 sec. It too features Mount Indefatigable, taken from a different angle. The sunlight was obscured by clouds at this time, so the mountain face is not illuminated as well as it was in the previous shot. Nonetheless, I like the image and particularly the leading line (foot tracks) in the foreground, courtesy of Stewart who preceded me around the  corner. If I had it to do again, I’d ask him to go right at the corner, bearing north toward the mountain.

Turning my attention eastward, I took this next shot of Elpoca Mountain, about 10 km distant. I used a telephoto lens, 70-200 mm, with a focal length of 200 mm. I’ve photographed this mountain before, but in summer and from a very different perspective. I like this peak’s very unique surface texture, highlighted by the snow captured in the many pocks and crevices.

My final picture for today in another black and white, again featuring Mount Indefatigable. I caught some great light on this one, highlighting the snow on the mountain’s flanks and accentuating the cloud texture.

It just goes to show, there is rarely a bad day for photography. This day had its challenges. The blowing, bright white snow made it difficult at times to focus the lens. Bare fingers got cold. And the rapidly changing light tested our readiness with the right lens to capture the scenes as they materialized. We went home content with our day, with no complaints.