Posts Tagged ‘british columbia’
Tulip Flower
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Last week I headed into Vancouver to photograph some of the spring flowers at Queen Elizabeth Park. The flowering Cherry Trees were out in full force, but they are so popular each of them had a crowd of tourists, locals, and photographers around them. I chose instead to concentrate on some of the other flowers in the park.
Sometimes direct sunlight can be a tough condition to photograph wider landscape scenes. These tulip flowers, however, were nicely lit in the bright sunshine. I like how the cup like flowers appear to be lit from the inside when the sun shines on them from this angle.
Tags: british columbia, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 L IS USM, queen elizabeth park, spring, tulips, vancouver
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Panorama of Mount Cheam in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia
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This is a panorama of Mount Cheam, a familiar sight to anyone living or often traveling through the Fraser Valley of British Columbia. I made this photo by the banks of the Fraser River in Agassiz just after sunset in January. The time right after sunset is often referred to as “Blue hour” and you can see why. I often like to photograph city buildings in Vancouver at this time as you can still see the outlines of the buildings against the sky (unlike when the sky is darker). I find this is also a great time to photograph mountains – so it is worth hanging around after any potential sunset light or alpenglow has faded. Always wait until the light is gone!
Tags: agassiz, blue hour, british columbia, canada, evening, fraser valley, mount cheam, mountains, mt. cheam, panorama, panoramic, peaks, snow, sunset, winter
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Fall Maple foliage and the Bloedel Conservatory at Queen Elizabeth Park
in Vancouver, British Columiba, Canada
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Another one of the photographs I made in October at Queen Elizabeth Park in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I liked the look of this waterfall (enough water, but not too much) along with the fallen leaves and some Fall foliage in the Japanese Maples hanging over the pathway.
More of my photography from Vancouver’s Queen Elizabeth Park can be found in my Garden Photos Gallery.
Tags: acer japonica, british columbia, fall, fall color, fall foliage, japanese maple, maples, parks, path, pathway, queen elizabeth park, trail, vancouver, water, waterfalls
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Fall Maple foliage and the Bloedel Conservatory at Queen Elizabeth Park
in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
(-click to enlarge-)
In October I made another trip into Vancouver to photograph Queen Elizabeth Park displaying some Fall foliage. Most of the colour was provided by various Japanese Maples (Acer Japonica) in the gardens there. I will probably return this Spring to photograph the Magnolia trees in bloom, as well as the tulips and other Spring bulbs.
Tags: acer japonica, british columbia, fall, fall color, fall foliage, japanese maple, maples, parks, queen elizabeth park, vancouver
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Ripe Highbush Blueberries (
Vaccinium corymbosum) in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia, Canada.
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These are some Highbush Blueberries (Vaccinium corymbosum) I photographed back in August of 2011. I didn’t get the final editing done until now – but I wish I had processed these when I could actually eat some. Viewing these gave me a craving for some fresh Blueberries! Unfortunate that I will have to wait until around August before I can have some fresh ones again!
A few more photos of these can be found in my image archive: Blueberries.
Tags: berries, blueberries, blueberry, british columbia, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 macro, foliage, food, fraser valley, fresh, fruits, gardens, highbush blueberry, leafy, leaves, macro, orchard, organic, summer, vaccinium, vaccinium corymbosum
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Sunset at the Pitt River
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I am always learning new techniques in Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop, and often a consequence of this is the desire to revisit older photographs and reprocess them. A lot of my older photos were processed using methods that were time consuming and sometimes not that effective. Finally learning to use masks was a gamechanger, for example. There are a lot of these photos where I am happy with the processing, but others that I have started to revisit in order to process them with my current vision of how they should appear. Thankfully my new methods are a lot faster, and the occasional revisit to an older photograph doesn’t take me nearly the time it used to.
This photograph is a good example of one where I wasn’t happy with the initial processing. I like this photo – but the initial version has a foreground that was too dark, the colours were slightly reddish, and there were a few other brightness issues I wanted to fix. I think this processing balances the colours much more faithfully to the original scene as I remember it, and deals with the darker foreground. You can read a bit more about the things I learned while actually photographing this scene in the original post.
Tags: british columbia, Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM, graduated neutral density filter, mosquitoes, mountains, pit meadows, pitt marsh, pitt polder, pitt-addington wildlife management area, rivers, sunset, wetlands
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I always find it difficult to narrow down a years worth of photographs into one list of the “best”. It is a good exercise, however, to really sit down and go through your work and determine what images best fit your current vision for your photography. I did this back in 2010 and 2011 as a part of Jim Goldstein’s project and I am please to enter my images again for this years version.
All of these photographs are available as Fine Art Prints.
So in no particular order these are the “top” (probably better termed as favourite) photos I have made in 2012.
Kalamalka Lake Provincial Park Spring Panorama
(Coldstream, British Columbia)
(more…)
Tags: bald eagle, balsamroot, bellingham, birds, birds of prey, bridges, british columbia, broadleaf arnica, broadleaf lupine, bubo scandiacus, Canon EF 1.4x Extender II, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 L IS USM, common paintbrush, cosens bay, delta, district of kent, fall color, fall colours, first narrows bridge, flowers, fraser valley, fraser valley bald eagle festival, haliaeetus leucocephalus, harrison, huntoon point, japanese maple, kalamalka lake, kulshan ridge, lakes, larrabee state park, lions gate bridge, lupines, magnolia, mount baker wilderness, mount baker-snoqualmie national forest, mount rainier national park, mount shuksan, mountains, night photography, okanagan, owls, queen elizabeth park, reflections, silver lake, silver lake provincial park, snowy owls, spring, stanley park, sunset, suspension bridge, thompson okanagan, tipsoo lake, top 10, trees, usa, vancouver, vernon, washington state, wells peak, western anenome, wildflowers, wildlife
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Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus)
and Mount Woodside
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Last weekend I headed out to the Harrison and Chehalis River area to photograph Bald Eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) with Seattle area photographer Steve Cole. This was the last weekend of the Fraser Valley Bald Eagle Festival. There were not that many tourists or photographers around, though I tend to avoid photographing areas that might contain crowds of onlookers. I was pleased to be able to view some very nice looking adult Bald Eagles from a vantage point closer than I usually find them. Views of large trees full of Eagles are easy to come by in the Fraser Valley this time of year, ones that are in good range of my 70-200mm lens (even with the 1.4x extender attached) are few and far between. So I am happier with my results this year compared to previous attempts.
Bald Eagle
(Haliaeetus leucocephalus)
-click to enlarge-
The first photo above of an Eagle sitting in a snag works quite well for me because of the snowy backdrop. A Bald Eagle photograph with a snowy mountain behind it just seems more authentic than the backgrounds I am usually able to find. The mountain here is Mount Woodside which sits between Harrison Mills, Aggasiz and Harrison Hot Springs. The Eagle was photographed along Morris Valley Road in Harrison Mills.
The second Bald Eagle photo here was made along side the Harrison River near Highway 7. A stop at Kilby Provincial Park had not yielded any eagles that were close, so we backtracked to this spot as Steve’s girlfriend had noticed some Eagles feeding near the Harrison River Bridge. It is always good to bring a spotter! Luckily this one adult was still sitting on the pilings and hung out long enough for us to make some photographs before flying away.
Bald Eagle
(Haliaeetus leucocephalus)
-click to enlarge-
The third and last Bald Eagle featured here is perhaps not quite as photogenic as the first two, but I always appreciate it when wildlife is perfectly happy being near me when I have my camera ready. This eagle sat up on these rocks above the road for quite some time, then flew away, circled back and selected a new spot – and repeated this a few times. Maybe he/she was just too full of salmon and was looking for a better vantage point over the valley while digesting the last meal.
Steve has also posted an account of this trip on his blog including a bit of uncomfortableness with another photographer who thought he was just too special to be friendly to others.
Tags: bald eagle, bald eagle festival, birds, birds of prey, british columbia, Canon EF 1.4x Extender II, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 L IS USM, chehalis, district of kent, fraser valley, fraser valley bald eagle festival, haliaeetus leucocephalus, harrison, harrison bay, harrison river, kilby historic site, morris valley, morris valley road
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Great Blue Heron
(
Ardea herodias)
-click to enlarge-
Happy to announce that today my photo of a Great Blue Heron is featured on the photobotos.com blog! Click the link below to check out a larger version and a bit more about how I made this photograph. Thanks to Charlie and Tom from the photobotos.com website!
http://www.photobotos.com/capilano-river-great-blue-heron/
Tags: ardea herodias, birds, british columbia, capilano river, great blue heron, north vancouver, photobotos, rivers, wildlife
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About Michael Russell Photography
Cell: (778) 878-9074
