Canada Holiday

[sheeny]

Hey guys! I'm back from Canada and the whirlwind trip to Grafton for my mum's 90th birthday. I have heaps of photos to process, of course, but I thought I might post a few of the better or more interesting ones here as I do them... just in case you're interested in having a look.

I'll start off with some images from Skookumchuck Tidal Rapids. There are so few places in the globe like this. Skookumchuck struck me as a special place. Of course, it was overcast there at the time. I haven't done any colour adjustments on these, as I haven't seen the place in sunshine, and so I'm a bit unsure about what's realistic/true colour - so I've left them as captured for the time being.

The last image is of Shannon Falls which is near Squamish about half way between Vancouver and Whistler. Apparently the fall are over 300m tall... it had me fooled! I'm pretty used to estimating the height of cliffs and waterfalls, but I had it pegged a lot less than that. The Shannon Falls image is a panorama of 3 with some shadows and highlights and colour adjustment as it was very contrasty at the time.

All images captured with the Oly E-510.

Al.

[iceman]

Hey Al, welcome back!

They're great shots. I really love the waterfall!
Those tidal rapids look like fun!

[sheeny]

The first is an image of one of the "supersized sea gulls" they have in Vancouver done as a colour splash. I have no idea what these birds are called, they look like a sea gull here except they are about 2 to 4 times as big! I thought I'd look them up in my bird guide book, but now I realise it only covers Australian birds...:rolleyes:

The rest are from Grouse Mountain, which is a popular spot on the outskirts of Vancouver. In order of appearance they are:

The view to the Lion's Heads;
Mount Baker (in the US - Vancouver is under the foreground cloud);
and "Grinder" and "Cooler" (sp?) the two Grizzly Bear orphans being trial rehabilitated on Grouse Mountain. They will never be released to the wild as they have had too much exposure to humans, but they hope to learn how to rehabilitate orphaned bears in the wild with these two. They aren't fully grown but they are huge! BTW the mesh fence is to make the people feel more secure about them being there - they are contained by a 3 rung electric fence.Al.

[sheeny]

and a couple more that I've played with...

The first is a reject from this month's Motion competition, taken at the Ice Hockey (of course). I'm not much of a person for crowds, but the ice hockey was great fun! Fantastic atmosphere, lots of action. An ice hockey game is recommended if you make it to Canada - even if you only get tickets to the nose-bleed section.

The second is just a bench over looking the Pacific Ocean at Uclulet on Vancouver Island that caught my eye. Of course, it's always a big challenge to photograph into the sun, but I'm happy with the result after a little shadows and highlights adjustment.

Al.

[leon]

Great Pic's Al, very nice indeed, ;) I would love to visit that place one day, I wonder where i have seen the third image before, could it be The Nov Comp. :lol: :lol: great stuff

Leon :thumbsup:

[Orion]

Did you do any fishing over there Al?

[h0ughy]

love those photos Alan

[citivolus]

Hey Al, they are gulls. I'll see if I can track down my old Peterson Field Guide...

Eric

[citivolus]

Ok, my money is on 2 year old Glaucous-winged Gull, Larus glaucescens.

[citivolus]

Did you get a chance to get out at night at Uclulet? One of the darkest skies I can remember was while camping out between there and Tofino.

Eric

[sheeny]

It is a great place to visit, Leon. I was warned that it is a bit on the expensive side, and I also found it to be so.

...and of course you are right No 3 was in the November comp.:)

Al.

[sheeny]

No, Ed. I'm not into fishing, or sea food for that matter. No doubt the fishing can be pretty good there though.

The salmon were climbing the rivers to spawn while I was there. That was pretty cool to see! They get heaps of rain so the rivers and streams are all clear (not muddy or tainted with tannin) so you could see all these salmon swimming upstream in nearly every stream we looked at - even tiny little ones, where you can stand with a leg on each side and watch them swim underneath you in about 6" of water.

Al.

[sheeny]

Thanks Eric! Who'd have thought a bird that looks like an over sized gull would be a gull!:lol::whistle:


This time of year is apparently bad for clear skies there. It was pretty clear during the day while we were there, but clouded over in the evening. We were in Tofino that night. After we kept the bar maid of the Tofino pub up till about 10:30 - 11:00pm playing pool and :drink:ing I noticed a few stars so we detoured down to the shore to get away from the lights and have a look. There were way too many lights in town even down near the shore and wharves. I struggled to find anything I knew in what little of the sky I could see... then I remembered we had gone through a little map reading exercise that day. The tourist info map near the wharves had north about 60 degrees to the right of where I thought it was (my sense of direction was worthless for the first 2 weeks in Canada!) so when I remembered that, I was able to identify Polaris at least.:thumbsup::P That turned out to be the astronomical highlight of my visit to Canada...:lol:... too many clouds.

Al.

[sheeny]

Panorama looking north from Sulphur Mountain near Banff (just a bit higher than Kosciusko;)).
The main street of Banff being reworked in the off season...
The Bow River and Lake Minniwanka from Sulphur Mountain.
The historic Sulphur Mountain Cosmic Ray Station. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulphur_Mountain_Cosmic_Ray_Station
The Banff Hotel from Sulphur Mountain.
This face of one of the mountains caught my eye as an unforgiving place...
...so was the rest of it...
The view from the hostel car park the morning we were leaving.Al.

[sheeny]

These three were taken from the car as we drove from Banff to Kelowna. The picnic tables under snow was particularly fluky - taken at about 100kph or so out the side window:whistle:.

Al.

[citivolus]

When I was young and stupid(er), I was exploring a small side valley that I knew fairly well, off of one of the mountains about 30Km past those pictured in (3). It was spring time, and we were visiting friends who worked for the park service maintaining the roads in Kananaskis Provincial Park. Their son and I were out for the afternoon, riding our bikes & hiking around the park in areas not yet opened for the season.

During our walk back in through the valley, we passed a few places where side valleys emptied out onto the stream bed we were following. Several of them had had small avalanches recently, as could be seen by the snow run-out at the base. We kept going, being young and invincible... Eventually about 2Km in, we reached a spot where a recent avalanche had taken out a foot bridge across the creek. At this point, we started to realize that maybe, just maybe, we were being stupid.

We turned around and started to work our way back out of the valley, and when we were about 500m from where it ended, we heard the thunder sound of an avalanche in the distance, back up the valley. We made it out OK, but I think I needed a change of underpants that day.

Through the course of that day, we heard 4 or 5 avalanches, some from far away and barely heard, but a few that couldn't have been farther than about 10Km from us.

I agree that #6 is a very, very unforgiving place.

Eric

[sheeny]

When it comes to unforgiving places my expertise is in rock falls and flash floods... but there is something similar about the types of footprint that gravity leaves behind in these places!

Al.

[sheeny]

There's a heap of these huge wood carvings scattered around the Grouse Mountain site. Brilliant craftsmanship but I suppose the impressive thing to me is the size of the logs they carved them from - between 1 and 1.5m diameter. You just don't see timber that size in Australia too often these days.

And another photo of Grinder the grizzly. This one was taken when he was further away from the fence so the depth of field almost eliminates the wire (a quick mask and levels adjustment all but got rid of the foreground image of the wire).

Al.

[sheeny]

Sunrise from Malahat Lookout. A panorama of 3 images.
Sea Lions in front of the ferry on the cruise across to the island.
Salmon swimming upstream to spawn at Taylor's Arm.
Uclulet lighthouse.
A bay north of Tofino at sunset from the float plane.
A panorama of the inlet at Tofino.
A view into the sun towards the USA from Victoria.
Al.

[venus]

Hi Al, great images, Canada looks amazing. My daughter may be going there next year to study in Victoria, I'm afraid of the bears though:help:

[sheeny]

Well, you're not the only one there! Fear is a healthy survival mechanism. It helps us deal with dangers especially those that we don't really understand... Look at me - I was afraid of heights, then one day decided to face my fear and go abseiling. I learned a lot about it, got into vertical rescue, became a rescue instructor and ended up going overseas to judge high angle rescue competitions. My fear has turned to a very healthy respect...

While in Revelstoke, there was a very interesting one page notice about what to do if you encounter a bear - written by someone from the local Bear Care organisation. It was a great read. I found it fascinating. No doubt the person who wrote it knew their bears! It increased my knowledge of bears many fold just reading that!:lol: They seem to have their act together over there with bear warnings, etc as well.:thumbsup:

Al.

[citivolus]

Bear will generally leave you alone. It is the cougars you should be afraid of :rofl:

[sheeny]

Nah! I'm too old...


:rofl:
Al.

[sheeny]

Back from a few days processing wedding photos...

Here are a few from around the Powell River area.

1. An old time portable sawmill skid. Panorama of 4 images from the forestry museum which is a nice flat walk through the bush on the shore with exhibits scattered along the way - and free!:thumbsup: There's some real timber in this!

2. A panorama of 3 images of the Powell River Mill Hulks. These are old world war I ships (concrete hulls) that are moored in a large boom to protect the area where they haul the logs from the ocean (or at least used to. We didn't see them doing this but all the gear is there to do it. We did see them bringing in barges of wood chip).

3. A tug (used to pull the barges of wood chips) with the mountains of Vancouver Island in the background.

4. Another of the hulks by itself.

Al.

[sheeny]

Still processing...

Some more from the Banff area.

Al.

[sheeny]

More from Banff.:)

Al.

[iceman]

Fantastic images, Al! Beautiful sceneries and panoramas!

[sheeny]

Thanks Mike. I find I'm having to do a fair bit of processing though. Even though a lot of the time was overcast, the combination of snow and sucker holes means I'm struggling with dynamic range, hence I'm playing with shadows and highlights a bit... I guess I'm not used to big views in the snow!:lol:

Oh well its all good lessons to learn.;)

Al.

[gary]

Hi Al,

Some really nice shots that I very much enjoyed. Looks like a wonderful trip.
Thanks for posting.

Best Regards

Gary

[sheeny]

No surprizes... it's cloudy here:rolleyes:... so I'm still processing Canada shots:P.

These are some crops from the shots I got of the bears on Grouse Mountain. Basically just cropped to get rid of the wire (fence) in the foreground...

Al.

[sheeny]

1. A pano from the Sulphur Mountain gondola car park.
2. A wide panorama over Banff from the Sulphur Mountain Cosmic Ray Survey Station.
3. A frozen waterfall on Cascade Mountain.
4. Lake Minniwanka from Sulphur Mountain.
5. Lake Minniwanka (from Lake Minniwanka;):whistle:).
6. Reflections in Cascade Ponds.
7. One of the footbridges at Cascade Ponds.

Al.