The trees in the Calgary area are at the peak of the fall colors right now and they are very beautiful. I’ve been spending lots of time at the park lately doing family and children’s portraits so I’ve had plenty of time to watch in awe as the colors have changed. The ponds at the park have been completely still every morning and I’ve wanted to capture it for awhile. I finally had a chance to create some beautiful landscape images this morning!
I was at Carburn Park for Paddlefest and had the opportunity to take my family for a trip around the pond in a canoe. The funny thing about being on the water is that swimming birds tend to think you’re one of them and they ignore you. Maybe not completely, but they certainly allow you to get much closer than if you were shore. I find this phenomenon all the time and I’ve made some of my best images of birds from a canoe.
Here are a couple of images of waterfowl that I made while toodling around the lake with my family in the Canoe with me. The first is a beautiful Red-necked Grebe. I’ve made lots of images of Grebes in the past, but I’ve rarely been as close as I got to this one. It’s so much easier to make great images when you get close! The second image below is a pair of American Wigeons launching out of the pond. They were pretty comfortable with us as we got closer and closer, but I guess we went a little bit too far and the they took off! I love the water droplets falling down off them as the fly.
I love Carburn Park and I’m always amazed by the things you can see there. Grebes are actually quite common there at certain times of year, but it’s surprisingly difficult to get one to pose for a picture while the light is good enough to make something decent out of it. I went back several times after I found this one as it was quite obliging!
I saw this Robin taking a bath in the river at Carburn Park way back in the spring. It was the first time I had ever seen a Robin in the water, never mind actually bathing. It was pretty neat to see!
I’ve been going through a bunch of old photos from the past year that I never got around to processingm so there will likely be quite a few out-of-season posts like this one coming up in the coming weeks.
The fall colors in the Calgary area are not typically very colorful, but very beautiful nonetheless! I was taking pictures of birds on the lake at Carburn Park when my camera chose to focus on this nearby leaf instead of the far away birds. I loved the golden hues and the creamy background in the scene, so I immediately made the image.