Steveston

This past weekend R and I went to Steveston for a walk. We were there near sunset (which is SO early these days!) and there were still a few flowers in bloom.

I enjoyed playing with the vivid feature on my camera (one of the colour settings - other options include monochrome, neutral, portrait, landscape..).

Vivid setting.

Without vivid.

In this case, the vivid setting doesn't make the flowers look completely unreal, especially without a comparison.

Normal...

Vivid!

Another photo with vivid - pretty unnatural looking pink (at least in my opinion!) The vivid setting will definitely be useful for some things.. but I don't really think it works for flowers.

 I love lupines. They remind me of my Nana, and being in the maritimes with her and my family. They're also part of the pea family (Fabaceae) which happens to be my favourite plant family. Too bad I don't always carry my plant book around to ID them!

 I found this poppy nestled between two large driftwood logs. It was such a beautiful contrast against the darkening sky that I had to spend a long time taking photos of it. The pop of pink is so fantastic!

.. and then I found another one. I wish that both the log and the horizon were horizontal so it looked a bit less weird, but again, the pop of pink against the subtle greys and blues makes me happy!

Green Lake

Another post from Green Lake.. !

For some reason, Labour day weekend was the best weather of the summer at the lake, although having only been there for two weekends, I guess that doesn't say much.

 I love how the sun rays look in this photo. So beautiful!

 Sun dogs - there was another one on the other side, but it was far less visible than this.

Another perfect, calm evening. I hope I get up there more next summer than I did this!!

Butterflies

Okay, so this isn't entirely butterflies. While doing some call-playback surveys for raptors in the Peace this July, I had a chance to play with my newly acquired 55-200mm lens (Thanks, M!). Call-playback surveys, for those who have never done them, are just that: playing the call of a bird and waiting to see if a real bird will call back or fly over. We had hardly any success with this, and with fifteen minutes (at least) per station, we had tons of time to do other things.. like take pictures of anything and everything around us.

 

 

I really wish I knew more about butterflies and dragonflies, but I don't, so they shall all be unnamed. I'm not even sure if the last one is a butterfly or a moth...

This, I can name. This is Northern grass of Parnassus (Parnassia palustris). It's pretty and elegant.

Finally, because I can't resist sunsets... here's one from a drive a coworker and I took one night. It was beautiful, and I wish that the mosquitoes hadn't been as bad and that I knew how to use my camera a bit better (or at least faster). I think I'd be fine now, but at that point. I wasn't.

Aspen

I've been working in the Peace River area of Northern BC quite a bit this summer. Although it's far from my favourite place, it does have a beautiful valley with tons of aspen trees. To some, aspen aren't very interesting - they certainly aren't as economically important as the Douglas-fir, nor do they grow to be giants, and they definitely don't live as long as some trees. Nevertheless, having lived in the Caribou region for seven years and spending many summers at our cabin, aspen have come to be something that reminds me of home. The trees themselves are elegant, tall with few branches (at least older ones). A whole stand of aspen can be quite beautiful, especially in the fall, but also year round.

Northeast of Chetwynd in early July

 I spent a long time in July trying to figure out how exactly to take photos of stands of aspen. It's hard to capture just how beautiful they are..

Near the Moberly River, mid September

 I wish I had more time while I was taking these.. turning the shutter speed up a bit would have been better.

Awesome reds, greens and yellows.

 The aspen in Hudson's Hope were more red than anywhere else I saw. So pretty!

Across from our campsite near the Moberly River.

 Using the "vivid" setting on my camera really brought out the colour of the sky and the trees. The whole valley looks like this, and once the weather cooled down just a bit more, the yellows became even more vibrant.

Beautiful aspen stand near the Moberly River

Bad but kinda cool lighting.

 I love the faded look of this photo, even if it's a bit too white near the top.

The valley looking towards the Rockies.

I wish I had taken a few more photos of the valley after our camping trip. We were on the river for three days and the change in temperature (from ~30 degrees before to ~15 degrees during) caused the aspen to turn even more yellow.

Through the wine glass

While we were eating dinner on Sunday night at the lake, I noticed that the reflection in the wine in the bottom of Mom's wine glass was really cool looking. Thankfully, we were at the end of dinner, so me rushing off to grab my camera wasn't too awkward.

The perfect end to a dinner

  

The view from the picnic table wasn't quite as nice, but it was clearer. I'm glad I took the time (and Mom's wine glass) to take these photos.. I think they're pretty cool!

Circular Polarizing Filter at Green Lake

After reading about what a circular polarizing filter does on our wedding photographer's website, and hearing about it from a friend, I decided to buy one.

I tried it out at the lake to see what it does and was pretty amazed with the results.

 

It's pretty amazing how it goes from the first photo, which is just boring and blue, with almost no clouds at all, to the third photo, where the lake almost looks tropical (but not as warm) with fairly defined clouds.

This filter is pretty fun, and I've already used it lots.