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.
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...
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.
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.
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. great stuff
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. great stuff
Leon
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.
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.
Ok, my money is on 2 year old Glaucous-winged Gull, Larus glaucescens.
Thanks Eric! Who'd have thought a bird that looks like an over sized gull would be a gull!
Quote:
Originally Posted by 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
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 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. That turned out to be the astronomical highlight of my visit to Canada...... too many clouds.
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.
3. The Bow River and Lake Minniwanka from Sulphur Mountain.
...
6. This face of one of the mountains caught my eye as an unforgiving place...
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.
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!
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).
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. 
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.
That turned out to be the astronomical highlight of my visit to Canada...
