My Recent Travels

Over the past three months, I’ve done a little traveling with camera in hand. Today, I’m sharing a selection from those travels, including a few photos that I’ve re-worked since publishing them earlier.

Today’s first picture is a re-work of a picture I took in the course of a trip to Utah’s Zion National Park, in late April. It was taken early in the morning at Kolob Canyon. The lighting in this scene proved to be very challenging and I was never really happy with the outcome. I had an original raw file remaining so I developed it again, this time with a better result.

In mid-June, I traveled with Bob Bear to an area east of Calgary to do some prairies scenes. I shared some of the pictures from that trip in an earlier blog, but wasn’t ready to include this one at the time. After some further thought and a little more work on it, I’m happier with this version. It’s a very simple picture of some grain silos on the prairie, near Drumheller. The weather was unsettled. You can see the ominous looking clouds threatening a summer thunderstorm. Behind us, the sun was still shining through, lighting up the silos.

My next trip came in late June. I joined some fellow members of the Canmore Camera Club for an excursion to Waterton Lakes in southern Alberta. We spent three days photographing many of the excellent views this park has to offer. My favourite scene features Cameron Falls, located right in the Waterton townsite. This too is a re-make of an earlier version I developed. I like it much better.

This scene, also at Waterton Lakes NP is a view across an area scarred by wildfire in 2017. Much of the park was burned, including the forested area on the flanks of Mount Blakiston in the background. Despite one’s expectations, the park doesn’t look all that bad. It’s a different look, but there is a stark beauty to the burnt trees surrounded with emergent shrubs and grasses. Not to mention the wildflowers!

On our return trip home from Waterton Lakes NP, we took a side trip along Highway 40, parallel to the main highway, AB22, taking us much closer to the Rocky Mountains. I’ve re-developed this scene, emphasizing the clouds and their shadows. I like the depth of this scene with the forested foreground, the immense cloud settled over the valley and the wall of rock in the background.

We took a family trip to Ontario in July, to visit our daughter and her family. We spent a week at a rented cottage in the Kawartha Lakes region, northeast of Peterborough. This picture was taken from the shore of Lake Finnegan where the cottage is located. I couldn’t resist the reflections on the smooth surface of the water.

I can’t resist old barns either. This one is located just outside the nearby Hamlet of Coe Hill.

From the hamlet in lake country to the city on Lake Ontario. This picture features the Scarborough Bluffs, an escarpment in the Scarborough district of Toronto. There are nine parks along the bluffs, with Bluffers Park being the only one with a beach.This picture was taken at Bluffers Park.

My last shot was taken in the course of a brief foray east of Toronto. I know this rural area from my youth, and yes I can still remember that! I always liked this “tunnel” through the trees on Young’s Hill Road and was happy to get this photograph.

From Utah, to Alberta and to Ontario, I covered a lot of ground and enjoyed some very nice scenery. Today’s featured image is Oxford Ragwort, photographed at Waterton Lakes National Park.