Lets ignore the fact I had a bit of snow a week ago, yesterday it was +16°C/61°F and felt like Spring. These Crocus flowers (Crocus vernus I believe) in the backyard are helping to convince me that Spring might actually be here. At least it feels closer although today is raining and a bit chilly.
Silverhope Creek (near Hope, British Columbia) is one of my favourite spots to photograph fast water and foliage in the Fraser Valley. I have not spent enough time exploring upper parts of the Chillwack River though, and that area also looks pretty promising too. This creek runs along the road to Silver Lake Provincial Park. The creek itself offers many photography opportunities though the area around the lake itself is also quite nice. I really like this scene with the fresh leaves of Vine Maples (Acer circinatum) and the Western Red Cedars (Thuja plicata) growing just above the fast flowing water. I plan to head out to Silverhope Creek again this Spring. I have a few ideas on better compositions than I managed last year. I also hope to be there when the wind isn’t blowing the leaves around so much! I tried many exposures before this one had the leaves at least somewhat well behaved. Next time I will try a few exposures where I leave the shutter open for a long period of time to show the trees moving as well.
Late last year I redesigned my overall website and started using Photoshelter for my gallery, replacing the older gallery I had programmed myself. However, there were a few problems:
a) visitors clicking on my blog link were transferred to my photoblog but it looked very different than my overall site
b) visitors landing directly on the photoblog didn’t really have an obvious way to discover my overall website
So I setup a test blog to try and fix this and asked my Twitter and Google+ followers what they thought. Thank you for your responses btw! I always use a testing blog because I never want to have a catastrophic code botch on a live site! Not that this would ever happen of course…
So what I am hoping here is that:
Let me know what you think!
Back in mid February I went to the Boundary Bay Wildlife Management Area to photograph the Snowy Owls (Bubo scandiacus). The Snowy Owls are not normally in this location during Winter. This is an “irruption” year, where the Snowy Owls venture further south than they normally would. There are various opinions as to why this occurs, though most often I see it being related to food supply in the Arctic. As this happens only about once every 5-6 years I made sure I went down to take a look. I figured even if I could not photograph the Snowy Owls as they were too far out in the marsh I would be able to at least see them from afar. I was not disappointed.
The first photo here shows an Owl that was like many of the others sitting on the driftwood – it had to occasionally keep a wary eye on a passing hawk or Northern Harrier (Circus cyaneus). The Harriers especially seemed to like to dive bomb some of the Snowy Owls – though I don’t know if they ever make contact. One flew over the head of this owl and it kept an eye on it as it passed. The second photo shows one of the first signs of the Snowy Owls “waking up” from their earlier positions of just sitting on the logs with their eyes closed. There was lots of yawning, though I didn’t see it go through the group in any sort of contagious manner like it does in humans.
The last two images here show the Snowy Owls stretching and fluffing up their feathers in preparation for flight. I had seen a few other groups of Snowy Owls further down the trail do this, before they ultimately took off towards the marsh. I presume this was to go look for food, as they were not being harassed by photographers at the time. The group I was following did not take off during the day, so I will have to wait until the next irruption to get some flight photos. Of all the photos I made of this group of Snowy Owls, I do not think I ever had one where they were preening and fluffing up their feathers where all three were facing the same direction. This is part of the fun and challenge though. Two out of three ain’t bad!
I wrote in my last Snowy Owl post that I was easily able to photograph these Snowy Owls from the trail at Boundary Bay. The individual Owls pictured here were all within about 40-50 feet of the trail. I was going to make this post a bit more about the ethics of wildlife and landscape photography as I see it – but I think that is a topic that I need to mull over just a bit more and probably deserves its own post anyway. As I’ve said before though, I do not see trampling the marsh habitat or approaching the Snowy Owls and spooking them to be something anyone should be doing just to “get the shot”. On this day there were maybe a dozen plus “Big Lenses” wandering around in the marsh no doubt causing much damage – especially as a cumulative effect.
And now for something completely different…
I have never posted a B&W photo before as this is the first one I’ve ever created. I decided to do a little something different with my processing of this image of Mount Matier. Mt. Matier is just inside the border of Joffre Lakes Provincial Park East of Pemberton, British Columbia. I was on an epic 13 hour daytrip drive from Langley to Pemberton, through to Lilooet (complete with a wrong turn that also took me to Birkenhead Lake), then down through the Fraser Canyon to Hope, then back to Langley. There was no stopping to wait for good light, so this image suffered greatly in harsh sunlight – at least for the colour version. I quite like how it turned out with this B&W treatment though. I have been looking at a lot of the great work by Olivier Du Tré and this inspired me to try processing this way. I used his guide to some of the techniques he uses to create his photographs to process this image. This is the first BW I have ever put online – constructive feedback is welcome!
Here is a photo I made a few weeks ago while looking for Snowy Owls at Boundary Bay in Delta, British Columbia. The Owls were the exciting part of my trip there, but I also viewed a lot of other bird species that will have me going back soon to photograph them specifically. There are other owls, various hawks, Northern Harriers, Great Blue Herons etc. I didn’t expect to see a Northern Flicker here, but this one jumped up onto this stump just as I walked past on the trail. I was lucky enough that he sat there for a few minutes while I managed to make a decent photo before he spied something on the ground and jumped down again. I suspect he was popping up for a better vantage point because he heard me coming and wanted to make sure I wasn’t looking for a snack.
I used to ID bird species in my backyard when I was growing up – and at that time there was the Yellow Shafted Flicker, and the Red Shafted Flicker. Science has since determined these to be the same species, just different colour morphs, so they both fall under the category of Northern Flicker now. Confirming this gave me an excuse to read a paper in the Canadian Journal of Zoology related to this, something I don’t do as often as I used to. I kind of miss them. Much more fun reading them casually than having to write a paper on it all after!
I have put together some of my favourite images made in the last year into this 11"x17" (28cm x 43cm) calendar. Included are 12 photographs of landscape and nature scenes from British Columbia and Washington State. There are two versions of this calendar - one with Canadian holidays and one with US holidays.
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About Michael Russell Photography
I am a landscape and nature photographer based in Langley, British Columbia, Canada. Most of my subjects are in Southwestern British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest of Washington State. My photography is available for licensing as stock, fine art prints, and giclée canvas wraps.
The best way to contact me is through the Contact Form. I will respond as soon as possible.
Email: michael@mrussellphotography.com
Cell: (778) 878-9074
