Magic Paint Brush

Canon EOS 20D with 70-200L @ 200mm ISO 100


Saturday morning found me out of the house before 7AM with plans for a quick tour of the west country before returning to Calgary to attend to some business. Of course that was after a stop at a Tim Horton's drive thru for a coffee to go. I made my way over to Crowchild Trail and headed to Cochrane, Alberta on Highway 1A. The fresh snow on the ground gave everthing a nice glow as the sun made its appearance over the horizon in my rear-view mirror. The Rockies were breath-taking off in the distance with a beautiful pink glow as the light used it's magic paint brush on them. As I kept an eye on the scene unfolding before me I was looking for the missing link for the capture that I had in mind. Bingo-that would turn out to be the trees in the foreground of this lead capture with a fresh dusting of snow from the night before. I turned off on-to a side-road and after several hundred meters, I had the capture framed in my mind that I display here. I have to tell you that my eyes teared up as I stood in the morning stillness and this incredible view washed over me. Did I ever tell you how much I love mornings like this?

After I had the leading capture, my interest turned to the pasture just off of the roadway that I was parked on. I found the fence line quite interesting, so I put on my snow-boots and with tripod in hand made my way across the ditch to the pasture where I shot a fair amount of megapixels-all the time getting wetter and wetter being as I was kneeling in the snow to look through the viewfinder of my camera.

Canon EOS 20D with 10-22 @ 10mm ISO 100

Canon EOS 20D with 10-22 @ 10mm ISO 100


This final capture I shot just down a ways and over on the other side of my truck looking south and east with the sun entering my lens. I liked the no-trespassing-sign on the fence and wanted to have it in this capture as well as the sun. I had fired off a couple of frames when I noticed while checking the histogram on the camera display that a road-sign was in the capture. Thinking to myself that I did not want the road-sign in the frame, I would shoot the capture over. The problem was that I could not get the capture to frame correctly when I had the road-sign cropped out as I was having trouble keeping the sun in the capture. Then it dawned on me to leave the road-sign in the capture and frame the sign with the sun just looking over the sign. I was pleased with the final lay-up and went with this final capture. This capture would be my last for this day, as the time on my watch told me that I had to pack it up for the day as much as I hated to. Do expand these captures

Next-I go looking for that elusive Snowy Owl