Prairies Archives - Page 2 of 4 - Sean Phillips Photography

Grain Bin Panorama

I went out for a sunrise photoshoot with my Dad the other day while he was visiting for the holidays. It was really nice to be able to head out at a very civilized time (8:00 AM) and still be there in plenty of time to fully enjoy the Magic Hour. This is very different from the other seasons where the sunrise is much earlier in the day, and is one of the few advantages that winter photography has over the summer.

I’ve shot these grain bins before but because of their position relative to the sunrise I knew they would be a good photogenic subject to share with my Dad.

Snowy Owl East of Calgary

I love these birds! They are so incredibly beautiful and I really get excited every time I find one. I’ve been lucky enough to find two this year, and also lucky enough that they both allowed me to make a few portraits!

Snowy Owl’s are considered to be very common on the Prairies east of Calgary, and there are reports of them almost daily during the winter months. But that certainly doesn’t mean that they are easy to find. I’ve actually seen very few in the wild yet I look for them every time I’m out and about on the country roads.

The Running of the Deer

I saw this big Buck standing in a farm field watching me as I drove past, and I really wanted to make a great portrait of him. Unfortunately the whole herd of Deer took off running shortly after I stopped. It was already past sunset and really quite dark, so my shutter speeds were very slow. Instead of trying to make really sharp images I worked on making some pan-blurs (where the background is blurred by panning along while the main subject moves, keeping the subject relatively sharper) as they ran past me instead. I really like the granularity of the final image and to me it has a great vintage look and feel.

My First Snowy Owl of the Season

I stopped to make a few images of a really great sunset tonight, with a couple of grain bins in a massive Prairie field. It was very beautiful and I managed to catch the indigo sky rising up out of the horizon while the pink glow remained above it. It was one of those magical skies that you really have to visit the Prairies to see.

While I walked back to my truck when I realized that I had parked underneath a beautiful Snowy Owl perching on a power pole. I’ve spent many hours searching for these elusive birds over the last couple of winters and have only rarely seen them. This one wasn’t very happy to have me there, but it must not have minded too much or it would have flown away when I first arrived. I can’t believe I didn’t see it when I first pulled up, and it’s even more amazing that it just stayed there and ignored me. I got to watch it and make images for several minutes before it got too dark. I’m still excited about it several hours later!

Harvest Moon

I was out on a mission to capture the setting Full Moon at Sunrise when I saw these three Combine Harvesters lined up in a farm field. They really made the scene alongside the Moon.

I was actually on my to the decrepit old prairie farm in the next couple of images. This vintage farm is extremely picturesque and I’ve tried very hard to make it look good over the last few years. That’s a lot easier to do when the Full Moon drops down on top of it in the middle of an amazing sunrise!

I’m always surprised by how quickly the full moon drops. It will almost always completely disappear as soon as the sun breaks over the opposite horizon. Other times it will drop into a cloud bank on the its own side of the horizon and only partially disappear. In this case it did both. You can see the bottom edge of it flattening out in the final image, and I’m a witness to the fact that it was totally gone within a few seconds of that image being made!