I will do a more thorough writeup of my trip yesterday to Boundary Bay, but for now I wanted to quickly share this image of a Snowy Owl (Bubo scandiacus). Of the over 600 photographs I made yesterday, this one stood out as one that showed the best action of the day. The Owls hunt at night, so they just tend to sit on the drifwood and relax all day, sometimes barely opening their eyes. This one started to warm up for the hunt and hopped around a little before taking off towards the water.

   I should point out that I made this photograph from the path at Boundary Bay. Many photographers have behaved badly in this location in the last few months, a fact I will document and speak to in a later post. I was able to hang out for hours within 30-40 feet of a dozen Snowy Owls right next to the path, I have no idea why trampling the marsh and chasing the Owls is necessary for a good photograph. More about that later (and more Snowy Owl photos too!).

   This is Part III in my series of posts on my search for Bald Eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) to photograph in the Fraser Valley this Winter. My first two trips were to the Lower Stave River and surrounding area. Having seen what that area had to offer, I next headed out to the Harrison River/Chehalis area near Harrison Hot Springs. This area is rich with salmon spent after their spawning period, and consequently the Eagles congregate here in large numbers to eat.

Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus
leucocephalus) in flight
-click to enlarge-

   The first photo shows an Eagle that has found a salmon carcass to dine on, in the shallows along Morris Valley Road. I managed to spot it from the car, and laying on the side of the road made this photo of it. A large truck went by and it then flew away – and I made the photo on the right while attempting to pan as it flew by. I have never been that successful at this, and this photo is not really any different. I find this sort of photo more frustrating than a complete failure, because it does come close to sharpness. I failed to get enough shutter speed going here, apparently 1/250 was not quite enough. However, when I screw up something I am trying early on – it is a learning experience – and that is why I posted the photographic result.

Canada Geese
(Branta canadensis)
-click to enlarge-

   After visiting the area around the Chehalis River I visited the beach near the Kilby Historic Site. A ton of Eagles around but often quite distant though I did meet another photographer on the beach. As we were slowly approaching a juvenile Bald Eagle to photograph, we found ourselves in the flight path of multiple flocks of Canada Geese leaving the nearby fields. I managed to make this photograph of a flock flying overhead. You can still see clumps of mud and grasses on the beak of the goose second from the left, though this is more evident at larger sizes. I also managed to avoid being pooped on, though my car was not as lucky! For this photo I increased the shutter speed to make sure I could get the Geese a bit sharper than the Eagle photo. This worked as the photo is nice and sharp – though I did have the benefit of having time to prepare unlike the Eagle photo.

   This is a photo I made back in 2010 of Canadian Border Peak and American Border Peak (with Yellow Aster Butte in the foreground) from Kulshan Ridge in the Mount Baker Wilderness. On Sunday I was going through some of my older photo files and decided this composition deserved some reprocessing so I could post it on for “Mountain Monday”.

   Google+ launched back in June 2011 (in September to the general public) and has been a big success. The photography community has been especially taken with it – and it is now my main social network for photography related pursuits. I am still active on Twitter and my Facebook Page but Google+ is where most of the action takes place. Every Monday I curate a theme called “Mountain Monday” where many photographers post their mountain photos and “tag” their post with a #mountainmonday tag. At the end of the day I post a selection of these images. Every week there is a substantial amount of fantastic photography.

   If you have mountain photos you would like to share – Mondays on G+ are a great time and place to do so. If you are not yet on Google+ you can read my earlier blog post about Google+ and photography back in September 2010.

   I made this photo in a favourite local park – Campbell Valley Regional Park in Langley, British Columbia. There is not much in the way of wide open scenery here, but it is a great place to focus on smaller things such as mushrooms, wildflowers and occasionally birds. If you have read my previous mushroom posts over on Google+ it will come to you as no surprise that I have not identified this species of mushroom.

   I would normally shoot something like this with my macro lens, but in this case I was not going to be able to get close to this log at all without destroying a lot of underbrush, so I setup my tripod on the trail and used my 70-200mm lens to “get closer”. I am not against placing items in a scene, but for this particular photo I did not place the Maple leaf – it was already laying there. I do have another version of this photo without the leaf, but I believe the above composition is stronger with the leaf in place.

   This is Part II in my series of posts on searching for Bald Eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) to photograph in the Fraser Valley this Winter – Part I was also at the Lower Stave River.

   The Bald Eagles are not the only species here for the Salmon. A lot of gulls were around, and a few Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias) too. Herons always seem to make good subjects. They are wary but quite easy to photograph compared to some other species. This Heron was one of the first subjects I photographed with my new Canon 1.4x EF Extender II on my 70-200mm f/4 IS lens. The combo works very nicely!

Bald Eagle
(Haliaeetus leucocephalus)
-click to enlarge-

   At the Lower Stave River I camped out a few locations that looked as though they might be likely Bald Eagle feeding spots (lots of salmon carcasses). Unfortunately I was not able to photograph any Eagles at these locations – perhaps my presence stuck out. I did manage to wait long enough to have one land in front of me but when I raised my camera (slowly) to make a photograph – they flew away into a nearby tree (the image on the right).

Stay tuned for Part III – this time at the Harrison River…

    This is a photo I made in late September of Table Mountain in the Mount Baker Wilderness. This was along the Bagley Lakes Trail – and was one of the first short hikes I’d done in the area other than walking along the ridge near Artist Point. Being late September I was expecting that there would be few (if any) wildflowers and the Fall colours would be well on their way to starting in the various Vaccinium bushes etc. Everything was still green and the wildflowers were either just past, or still going strong (as was the case for the Lupines). I went hiking there 2 weeks later – and there STILL were hardly any leaves turning. I am curious to see what this year brings for Summer and Fall weather.

   While failing to find good Fall colours this year I did manage to find a lot of great mushrooms. The trouble is, I have a hard time identifying them. I am great with native plants (Washington State and British Columbia), but just awful with Fungi. I do think this group can be narrowed down to the Genus Mycena (which contains over 500 species). Experts tell me for real identification I’d need detailed photos of the underside and perhaps even spores to look at under the microscope! Drives me nuts not to have a species pinned down, but I think I’m going to have to let it go this time!

   For this photo I tried a few angles but concluded the only way to get a nice shot would be to lay down on the ground – and it worked!

   Every Fall there are a considerable amount of Salmon that spawn in the various tributaries of the Fraser River. After spawning, the dead Salmon become great food for Bald Eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) and other species. There are many locations I visit every year in order to see the Salmon spawn including the Harrison River, Weaver Creek and the Lower Stave River in Mission, British Columbia. There aren’t usually many Eagles near Weaver Creek, but the Harrison and Stave Rivers are usually pretty good places to look for Eagles indulging in the Salmon feast.

   The photo above illustrates the one situation where adult Bald Eagles don’t seem all that afraid of someone approaching. I guess they know that people can’t climb trees quickly. I have seen a number of Eagles nearby feeding on Salmon on the ground – but as soon as they see you they take off. Those in the trees do not do this, but a bird up in a tree is not always a very interesting photo. This was the best Eagle photo I made on my first trip to the Lower Stave – but not exactly what I was after.

Harbour Seal
(Phoca vitulina)
-click to enlarge-

   The first time I visited the Lower Stave River this year was in early December. Standing near a swiftly flowing channel below the Dam, there was suddenly a surge of water moving upstream – this confused me initially. I couldn’t think what would be large enough to create it. Suddenly a lot of Salmon started leaping out of the water, a few flopped up onto the bank and this big Harbour Seal (Phoca vitulina) surged out of the water, caught one of the Salmon, and continued up stream with the fish hanging from its mouth. I was so shocked that I failed to do anything but stand there… a video or a few photographs would have been awesome. When I finally came to my senses I did make a photograph of the back of the seals head, but this is all I gathered from the encounter. VERY cool to see though – I never expected a Harbour Seal that far upstream, this far inland. I presume it ventured up the Fraser River and the Salmon were a meal well worth the trip.

Stay tuned for Part II!

   My 2012 calendar is still available and is now an additional 25% off through January 6th. Just use the code ONEMORETHING at checkout through January 6th!!

   My 2012 wall calendar is now on sale! I have put together some of my favourite images made this year into this 11″x17″ (28cm x 43cm) calendar. Included are 13 photographs (1 for each month and the cover) 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.

You can view a full preview and purchase this calendar through the links below (be sure to choose the correct version!)

US Version: http://www.lulu.com/product/calendar/2012-nature-calendar—us-holidays/18699671
Canadian Version: http://www.lulu.com/product/calendar/2012-nature-calendar—cdn-holidays/18699957

   It is always tough to narrow down a years worth of images into a list of the “best”. I did this last year and I think it is a valuable exercise. Jim Goldstein of JMG Galleries creates a list of everyone’s top 10 images each year. I made my first top 10 last year. This years list has fewer landscape and more wildlife photos. This is partly due to my not getting out to shoot as many landscapes as last year, and partly due to my backlog in image editing.

   You can click on each of the following images to go to the blog post that may tell a bit more about the location and how I made the photograph.

In no particular order my “Best of 2011″…

The Chilliwack River in Chilliwack, British Columbia

Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapillus)

Mount Shuksan reflected in Picture Lake in the Mount Baker Wilderness, Washington State

A Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) near the Capilano River in North Vancouver, British Columbia

Pitt River and the Pitt-Addington Marsh, Pitt Meadows, British Columbia

Eureka Falls in Hope, British Columbia

A Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) in Stanley Park, Vancouver, British Columbia

A Honeybee (Apis mellifera) collecting nectar on a Buddleja flower

Spawning Sockeye Salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) in Weaver Creek, British Columbia

A Northern-pygmy Owl (Glaucidium gnoma)

Spawning Sockeye
(Oncorhynchus nerka)

-click to enlarge-

   Last year I attempted to photograph spawning salmon in Weaver Creek in very late October. Most of the run had already finished, so there were a few salmon around but not many. This year I managed to get the timing a bit better, the run was late, and while I was there in late October again, there were plenty of salmon to photograph. This photograph is of two male Sockeye Salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) “treading water” on their way upstream in Weaver Creek.

   One of the things I quickly realized when photographing salmon like this is that its just not that easy to make a good photo. Last year I tried photographing salmon in this location and was somewhat disappointed with the results. It was immediately obvious to me when processing those images that my expectations of what would be possible were way too high. The water distorts so much of the salmon shapes that some of my original ideas were not possible. This year returning I had thought about it a bit more and came up with this composition that I had planned. Salmon in the water like this are relatively easy to come by so I was left looking for a nice color reflection to give the scene something interesting. I think it works nicely.

   One of the downsides of having a lot of backlog in my photo editing is that I tend to forget what I have. I purposefully wait a while in order to process my images, just so that I am somewhat subjective in terms of images that deserve scrutiny and those that don’t. I often have initial expectations that were not met when I review the images too soon, and sometimes that clouds what is really there. At least for me. I do occasionally go back over images that did not leap out at me during a first pass – sometimes I find something I really like. Sometimes this is due to my perception of the image changing and sometimes I have learned some new post processing skills that open the photo to new potential.

   This photo is another example of this phenomenon. I initially passed over it but this weekend viewed it again, and knew how I wanted to process it. I have many photos of Mount Shuksan, but this one is a bit different. This was not taken from Picture Lake, Artist Point or any of my usual places. This is along the North Fork of the Nooksack River (which later flows over Nooksack Falls) at the bottom of the hill near the Shuksan Campground.

   On Friday I drove out to the Lower Stave River area searching for Bald Eagles to photograph. The Lower Stave River still has a lot of Salmon carcasses (and still some live Salmon) for the Eagles to feed on. There are also a ton of Seagulls, Great Blue Herons, and Ducks of all sorts. I still have not managed to get a “good” Eagle photo – but I am still working on it. There are a ton of Bald Eagles out in the Fraser Valley right now, so I will keep going out there for a while trying to get some of the shots that I have in my head (or totally different ones).

Northern Pygmy-Owl
(Glaucidium gnoma)
-click to enlarge-

   Neither photo here is a Bald Eagle of course. So often I head out seeking a particular subject or photo, only to come home with completely different subjects. This is great, because even if I am not able to photograph the subject I am looking for – coming home with good photos of something else is nice. I think one of the many things I like about photography is you are just never quite sure what you are going to get.

   I had never seen a Northern Pygmy-Owl (Glaucidium gnoma) before but immediately recognized it. A very small Owl species, this guy was probably only 17cm (7 inches) high. Much much smaller in size than the other Owl I photographed recently, a Barred Owl. I really enjoy the glare it is giving, though I have no idea what it was looking at. I made several photos of this owl and I think the first one here is my favourite just because of the facial expression – it looks like it is about to kill something. More apparently in a larger version is the small smear of blood on its chest feathers, indicating this is not necessarily an idle threat.

   This was also one of my first set of photos using my new Canon 1.4x EF Extender II on my EF 70-200mm f/4L IS. This was handheld and I am quite happy with the early results from the combination of these two.

   I made this photograph back in October at the Capilano River in North Vancouver, British Columbia. I like how the water flows slowly around these rocks while the river rushes by in the foreground. You may remember one of the earlier photos of a Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) that I posted from this location a few weeks ago. The Heron photo showed how a small tweak in shutter speed can make a huge difference in the photographic result. In this case, a shutter speed of 1/3 of a second gave me just the amount of water blur that I was looking for. Enough to show the water “in motion” but not so much as to blur it to the point of abstraction.

   With my 70-200mm f/4 L IS USM lens I was able to isolate this part of the river for the photograph. Another example of why I often use long lenses for landscape photography!

   My 2012 calendar is still available and is now an additional 25% off through January 6th. Just use the code ONEMORETHING at checkout!

   My 2012 wall calendar is now on sale! I have put together some of my favourite images made this year into this 11″x17″ (28cm x 43cm) calendar. Included are 13 photographs (1 for each month and the cover) 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.

You can view a full preview and purchase this calendar through the links below (be sure to choose the correct version!)

2012 Nature Calendar
(Canadian Holidays)

2012 Nature Calendar
(US Holidays)