All My Blogs

Notice the tree in the center?  It's hard to miss.  It's also annoying. Compositional guidelines exist because they work.  They work because of how our nervous system responds to visual stimuli.  Pleasure is experienced with the release of dopamine in our brains, and when we see something we like, we are actually experiencing the release of this neurotransmitter. This is one of the reasons why composition is important.  The way an image is presented actually affects the pleasure center of your brain.  Now, there is a lot more to it than that, as our minds are complex networks of neurons that take and process information from all parts of it.  Visual memory, associations, learned responses, and many more.  But the central theme stands; the way a photo is taken impacts our nervous system. The rule of thirds is a good example.  In the photo above, the central tree is the first thing your eye goes to, and it tends to stay there.  Yes, you lo...

Me on our Alaska cruise.  The inset is the above original image, cropped and modified. Rarely do I take a photo and use it as is; there are always some adjustments.  The changes are done in two steps.  The first step is to work with the original image and alter it in a raw-conversion program to provide the preferred degree of colour, contrast, sharpness, and quality.  The second component involves using a pixel editing program and involves cropping and any necessary modifications. The large base image above shows the original photo after it was tweaked in the raw-conversion software.  There was numerous issues that I wanted corrected.  They included the following: my image was too far to the right and a bit low for my liking. the glacier and runoff stream took up the center portion of the image and not in a more attractive thirds position. the left side of the photo had little detail and had little value for the photo. a portion of the ship was visible behi...

Cherry-faced meadowhawk ( Sympetrum internum ) at Munson Pond, Kelowna. Inset:  White-faced meadowhawk ( Sympetrum obtrusum )- a similar species The young meadowhawk adult is dark brown in colour; the red tail and face come as it matures into adulthood.  The adult looks similar to other meadowhawk dragonflies.  You can see the inset above where the white-faced species looks similar to the cherry-faced meadowhawk, except for the colour of the face.  The former is true for only males, while the latter is true for both sexes. In Canada, there are approximately 154 species of dragonfly.  They belong to several different different groups, including clubtails, darners, and skimmers.  In the family  Libellulidae (skimmers), there is the genus Sympetrum (meadowhawks) .   Many red dragonflies belong to this subgroup.  So, if you happen to see a red dragonfly on your travels, you can announce with pride, "That's a meadowhawk!" Meadowhawks are co...

27 mm, 52 mm, and 120 mm focal lengths used from left to right. Pay attention to the relationship between foreground subjects and backgrounds.  The relationship can be altered by changing your position relative to the foreground and the focal length of the lens. The simplest way to think about it is to zoom in and move away or to zoom out and move in.  If you keep the subject the same size in your viewfinder, you will find that the size of the background changes relative to the foreground. This is an important concept when composing a scene.  Even small adjustments in position and focal length allow the visual relationship between foreground and background to change.  The change in perspective often has a significant impact on the resulting image. The image below conveys the concept of zooming in or out while changing position.  The key is to keep the subject the same size.  With practice, you will discover a whole new way to look at the world. Changing pos...

The walkway bridge at Meadow Gardens Golf Club.  Golden Ears Mountain in the background. My daughter loves to paint.  She got hooked on that under the gentle tutelage of Lori Allan while we lived in Maple Ridge, BC.  Now, as an adult, she continues to ply her hand at the craft, and she uses my photos as the archetype.  Yesterday, she asked me to send her a vertical image of Golden Ears Mountain.  I have dozens of them, but many of them are in a horizontal format.  I found 5 good vertical ones, but took another 4 horizontal photos and reoriented them, with a twist. The twist was to move the foreground relative to the background.  You can see in the above image (left) that the bridge and the mountains do not line up, and a straight vertical crop wouldn't render well.  My solution was to move the two main components of the scene so they would be vertically opposed (right).  I like the effect, and it was relatively easy to do. The greenway, just ...

Receding glaciers leave exposed rock with no soil or organics of any kind. Volcanoes and glaciers have one thing in common - they both utterly destroy the land they consume.  Their mechanisms of destruction are polar opposites.  The landscapes they leave in their wake are equally dissimilar.  But the fact remains that, once their influence has passed, there is no soil for life to begin.  The soil has to be made. Making soil is a time-consuming process.  In cold climates where low temperatures and harsh conditions abound, it takes even longer.  Also, there is no soft substrate for roots to find purchase.  While vulcanism often has layers of volcanic ash that is fertile and suitable for plants to grow, glacier-eroded rock is hard and barren.  Fine sediments may not be present at all. Lichens are the first sign of life to persevere.  Certain species can make their living on bare rock.  Lichens are a form of symbiotic life, a relationship be...

Kathryn and Eric on our rafting trip near the Mendenhall Glacier, Juneau, Alaska I've canoed down rivers, kayaked down them, but never have I done a raft trip down one until our trip to Juneau, Alaska.  We launched from the shoreline of Mendenhall Lake.  Our guide stoically paddled us across the lake until we met the outlet river where the effluent suddenly took control.  The river was graded as a class 2 with occasional class 3 rapids.  I have never experienced rapids of either class and was in for an experience. Rapids are graded from class 1 to class 5.  The intensity of the rapids increases corresponding to the number, with class 1 rapids being mildly exciting and class 5 suggesting a barrel as a means of transport over Niagara Falls.  Many class 5 rapids are impassable with risk to life and limb if attempted.  The class 3 part of the trip flooded our raft to an extent.  I think our guide headed towards the wildest of the bunch intentionally i...

Notice the difference in colours.  Exact same settings, except the right image used a polarizer. Those who have used a polarizer generally know about deepening blue skies and taking the haze off of reflective surfaces.  However, many are not aware of their effect on improving the colours of the scene. As you can see in the above photos, the colours of the tree are much more vivid when a polarizer filter is used.  The grass also seems more alive and healthy instead of hosting a pallid blue hue.  That's because the polarizer strips the polarized light coming from the open sky, which is mostly blue in colour. Although both photos have a certain appeal, the right one pops more - the fall colours are move vivid and intense.  As I mentioned above, both images were taken with the same camera and camera settings and were treated in post in the same way; the only difference is that one had a polarizer and the other did not. Yesterday's blog also mentioned polarizers; the...

Blair Pond, going north on Clifton Road.  October 21, 2025.  Polarizer filter used. Fall colours, sunshine, and a quiet reflective pond was exactly what I was looking for.  Blair Pond turned out to be the perfect spot for my mission - to photograph the beauty of the season while getting an attractive reflection.  The water body is small enough that you can walk around it in 15 minutes and large enough to be a significant part of a photo.   To enhance the images further, I was using a polarizer filter.  I have talked about polarizers in other blogs and will do so again tomorrow with some other great photos I recently captured.  But today's images were about my discovery. I have never visited Blair Pond Park before, although I have been by it a few times.  It was on this particular journey that I decided to stop - what beautiful colours there were!  Vibrant reds, yellows, and oranges, and a water body without diminishing wave action as wel...

Left:  A cabin in Skagway.  Right:  My friend Dell and his dog Klaus. It was a poignant moment.  I was in Skagway, Alaska, the start of the Chilkoot Trail.  The very same one that Dell, Charles, and a group of friends did some 20 years ago.  I wasn't there, but I have seen the photos and heard the stories.  I was reflecting on them and felt a loneliness in my heart at the thought that Dell has been gone from us now for about 15 years.  And then I saw the cabin. It was during the summer of 1982, now 43 years ago, that Dell, Charles, and I built a not-so-different cabin at our camp out in the bush near Nordegg.  That place remains dear in my heart as it was the source of many stories, games, and silliness. I have written blogs on this before, and on Dell too, which you can see at my group site here .   The place and view before me brought it all back.  The strong associations caused a constriction in my throat, and I felt, o...

Photographed near the Klondike highway just northeast of the US border. The German word krummhol z means "twisted wood" in reference to the stunted, contorted branches and trunks of trees found in subalpine and subarctic landscapes.  The trees I found near Skagway, Alaska, had both aspects in common.  The scraggy trees were located high up on the Whitehall pass, some 600 miles south of the Arctic Circle.  The long, cold winters combined with the punishing winds prevent much in the way of vertical or balanced growth. There were hundreds of examples of the bent forms all around me; I could have spent hours photographing the varied contortions I witnessed.  As it was, I only had a few minutes to explore the bent figures.  I was on an excursion.  The thick fog prevented us from seeing much as we drove along the Klondike highway.  It wasn't until we reached the end of our trip that the fog began to lift.  I was the first one off the bus and the last on...

First train in Skagway, 1898. Locomotives were not invented until the early 1800s.  They were initially small and primarily used in France and England.  Their service eventually made its way over to North America around 1830.  By 1850, steam engines were running across the continent.  The "Last Spike" in Canada occurred in 1885 when the east and west coasts were eventually joined together.   The Klondike gold rush began in 1896.  The incredible number of people making their way to Skagway and beyond created an opportunity for the development of a railroad.  Financed by British businessmen, American engineers and Canadian workmen built the White Pass and Yukon Railway.  The first locomotive to come to Alaska was the one you can see in the photo above.  It arrived in 1898.  The railway was completed in 1900.   The track rises from sea level to almost 3000 feet over a distance of 20 miles.  The track continues another 90...

Local Tlinglit native and stampeeder Text on the plaque in front of the statue. "Skagway was originally spelled S-K-A-G-U-A, a Tlingit Indian word for ''windy place.'' The first people in this area were Tlingits from the Chilkoot and Chilkat villages in the Haines-Klukwan area. From a fish camp in nearby Dyea, they used the Chilkoot Trail for trading with the First Nations people of the Yukon Territory. The windy Skagway valley was favored for hunting mountain goats and bear, but no one settled here until 1887. That June, Skookum Jim, a Tlingit from the Carcross-Tagish area, encountered members of the William Ogilvie expedition, a Canadian survey party that came north to map the country. Captain William Moore, a member of the party, was persuaded by Skookum Jim to follow him up a lower pass through the mountains, while the others took the Chilkoot route. Leaving this beach, the two journeyed up the Skagway valley to Lake Bennett, meeting the other party seven days ...

If you go on a cruise to Alaska, you are going to see glaciers.  The truth is more like that you get to see what's left of them.  The truth is simple - they are melting, fast.  And the weird thing is that they are melting faster the further north you go. Artic amplification is the term used to describe this phenomenon.  Ice reflects much of the sun's energy back into space.  As there is less ice to moderate temperatures, the heat from the sun has a greater impact on local climates than previously.  And this relationship is exponential.   We did a rafting trip down the Mendenhall River from Mendenhall Lake to a takeout point just before the confluence of the Mendenhall and Taku Rivers.  We didn't get too close to the glacier itself, mostly because it is much smaller than it used to be.  You can see that the glacier occupied much of the lake in 1958, whereas today the glacier's foot barely touches the lake's edge.  Yes, in 67 years it...

Image from Dare to Bird website. I wrote a letter to a number of bird advocacy groups (Audubon, etc) about the deaths of birds on cruise ships.  If you want to see more, do a search on YouTube using "birds dead on cruise ship" or something similar.  My letter is below. I have recently become aware of the fact that countless birds are killed every year in the cruise ship industry.  This stems from my recent cruise aboard the  Noordam , a ship belonging to Holland America.  While on a cruise to Alaska (September 14-28, 2025) there was the horrendous spectacle of thousands of birds flying about the ship very early in the morning.  There were many dead ones on various surfaces and a few live ones that were hopping about. I researched the phenomenon and discovered this was far from an isolated incident.  It seems that, particularly during migration season, thousands of birds are killed every year on cruise ships.  This isn’t isolated to...

Both images taken aboard the cruise ship.  50 mm prime lens used.  No flash was used. Left: 50 mm f/1.4 ISO 400 indoors.  Right:  50 mm f/14 ISO100 outdoors. My goal for these photos was to use my APS-C body and 50 mm f/1.4 prime lens to do some portraits of Kathryn.  Both images were taken with the same equipment, but the camera settings were somewhat different.  I shoot most of my stuff in manual exposure mode and so had full control over all the main tenants of exposure. The shutter speeds were nearly identical (1/80 vs 1/100).  Outside, the wind was playing havoc with her hair while there was no such issue indoors.  Outdoors also had less even light than indoors.  You can see the shadows on the right are harsher than the shadows on the left.  Clearly shooting in a more controlled location has an impact. The low f/1.4 aperture allowed the background to be blurred for the photo on the left while the much smaller f/14 aperture allowed t...

Golden crowned sparrow aboard the Noordam on our trip to Alaska. This was one lucky bird, unlike many of his feathered friends.  The passengers aboard the cruise ship who woke early saw the most stunning sight; the sky was crowded with passerine birds of many species silhouetted against the early morning sky.  The birds, in the midst of migrating, had been attracted to the vessel's lights during the evening and early morning hours. I awoke a little later than those who first took in this spectacle, but I was still amazed at the thousands of birds that circled the ship.  My awe was cut short when I entered the Lido deck where the large glass canopy was dotted with bodies, not of people, of course, but of birds.  They had flown down to the ship's surface at night, attracted by the lights, and plunged directly into the glass structure.  Dead on impact. These weren't the only casualties; there were more.  And then there were the birds that struck the sides of t...

Red-necked grebes are very common.  I see them from early spring well into fall.  I have photographed them in Alberta, BC, and Alaska..  They are common in Western Canada but are also found back east.  They spend their winters on the ocean in northern latitudes; you won't find them flying south for the winter. I have dozens of photos of red-necked grebes I have taken over the years.  In the early spring, you can find them building a nest out of reeds and rotting debris.  They care for their young into summer.  The chicks have a comical striped appearance that gradually fades into fall.  In winter, they moult into a drab gray appearance and bide their time until the return of spring.  They exhibit something called philopatry. Philopatry is when an organism either stays where it was born or returns to it year after year.  Red-necked grebes exhibit this behaviour, as well as being monogamous for their entire lives.  The pair may separa...

Although not uncommon in southern British Columbia where I live, I have never actually photographed one before.  The females look somewhat akin to female mallards and the males have a rather drab appearance.  It is entirely possible that I have seen them but never took notice. Gadwall eat aquatic vegetation and any invertebrates that happen to be in the mix.  Females will target invertebrates when laying a clutch of eggs for the protein they harbour.  What's interesting about their egg-laying habits is that they lay one egg a day, in sequence, for up to a rather large clutch of up to a dozen eggs.  Likewise, the young hatch in the same order, which makes parenting duties a little easier.  The heavily vegetated ponds and water bodies they nest around give ample cover and food for the developing offspring.  The young leave the nest within a couple of days.  What's interesting about a bonded pair (male& female) is that they are "seasonally monoga...

Alaskan harbour seal after ripping a tentacle from an octopus.  Inset - before the encounter. We hiked up a small peninsula while visiting Kodiak Island in Alaska.  There was a seal that was just offshore; we saw it popping its cute-looking head up for air from time to time.  There was nothing surprising about that as seal sightings were a common occurrence during our cruise.  What came next was spectacular. A lot of commotion suddenly took place as the seal reappeared, this time with something long and pink in its mouth.  Then it began to shake its head violently, in the same manner that a dog does with a toy.  The seal was facing away from me for most of the encounter, but it did come around momentarily during its thrashing motions.  Somehow, it managed to tear the limb off of an octopus. The entire scene lasted only a few moments, and I was lucky to get a few frames of the event.  From what I can tell, the arm was removed underwater, as none of...

Amanita mushroom (bottom right) growing on Kodiak Island.  There were hundreds of them. I used a technique called hyperfocal focusing to get everything in focus in the above photo.  The key to a successful hyperfocal technique is threefold.  A wide angle lens (28-35 mm relative) is a good choice, although you can achieve similar results with higher focal lengths with a small enough aperture.  I often use ultrawide angle lenses (less than 28 mm relative).   The second factor is aperture, where smaller apertures will guarantee greater depths of field.  In the above shot, I used a focal length of 21 mm (32 mm relative) with an aperture of f/10.  If the subject was closer, a wider angle lens and/or a smaller aperture would be needed.  As it was, I could get everything in focus with the two parameters I used.  An APS-C lens has more depth of field relatively than its full-frame counterpart. Thirdly, it's the point of focus that is important....

Anax junius.  Photographed at Munson Pond, Kelowna.  500 mm prime on APS-C sensor camera. I photographed this female (or juvenile) green darner two days ago while I was visiting Munson Pond in Kelowna.  Munson Pond is under attack because the powers that be have decided that a road needs to go through the protected area it resides in.  The water body is a haven for many insect, animal, and bird species.   The male of the green darner (I've never photographed one, but you can see one here ) has a bright green head and thorax; the eyes may even be a bright green.  The one I photographed above is a female, or possibly a juvenile, according to my research.  You can tell it is a darner dragonfly because of the merging compound eyes situated on top of the head.  These are large dragonflies, often with wingspans up to 4 inches. I spotted this dragonfly land on a twig in a vertical format.  Apparently, they land this way so as to rest while als...

Left: polarizer used and hot air balloon added.  Right: no polarizer, no hot air balloon. The difference between the two above images is stark, yet they were taken only seconds apart.  I took these this morning, and the thing was, there were no hot air balloons in sight.  I photographed one yesterday and decided to incorporate it into the photo because that section of the image was weak and could use a little help. The image on the right was taken without a polarizer and so it appears as it did to the naked eye.  A polarizer can make a massive impact on an image, not only darkening skies but also removing the cool shades that polarized light brings.  The image on the left was taken with a polarizer. The question that comes to mind is, "Is it cheating to change what the eye sees when doing photos?" I think the answer depends on what your claim is.  We "cheat" all the time, using flash, altering contrast, cropping, and even playing with foregrounds and backgr...

Juvenile snow goose at Munson Pond in Kelowna, Oct 5, 2025. There were well over 100 Canada geese floating on the surface of Munson Pond yesterday.  I didn't notice the two gray birds floating amongst them until a fellow avian enthusiast pointed them out.  I immediately changed position so I could photograph the nearest one with the sun at my back.  That way, I would capture the bird in the best light.  If you look up snow geese in a bird book, you will find that they have a yellow bill, but juveniles have a gray one.  Apparently, these birds overwinter in southern BC along the coast.  I do not expect this pair to stay for long, which again speaks to the importance of Munson Pond as an ecologically valuable body of water. I happened to bring along my DSLR with a kit lens and attached polarizer filter and took some photos of the congregation of birds.  It was a grand day and, with the exception of the overhead bald eagle causing some excitement, the bir...

  View from the Noordam as we left Vancouver on Sept 14, 2025 I took a series of photos as we passed under the Lions Gate Bridge in Vancouver.  This one caught my eye for various reasons.  Composition-wise, it has thirds, lines, and interesting foreground and background aspects to it.  But there is something special going on that I didn't notice until today.  Do you see it? The flag at Prospect Point - the top of the cliff face in the shot - is at half mast.  I wasn't aware of anyone who had recently passed that would cause flags to fly that way.  What was going on? National Firefighters Memorial Day is celebrated on the 2nd Sunday in September, which happened to be the day we left on our cruise.  Flags in the city, in fact across the country, are flown at half mast on this day to honour those fallen in the line of duty to protect others.  It was set as a continuing show of respect back in 2017.  I had never heard of it until today; it ...

One of two Sandhill cranes I saw while visiting Anchorage, Alaska. It was September 18, 2025, and I was hiking along the Coastal Trail in Anchorage when I saw a pair of sandhill cranes foraging along the beach at low tide.  Their range map shows that Anchorage is in their breeding area, but I would have thought they would have headed south at this point in the year.  They winter in Texas, parts of California, and Florida, where it would have been much warmer.  As it was, the temperature never got above 10° C.   Research on the subject that Cranes in Alaska migrate from mid-September to early October and fly to California.  I guess it is not unusual to see them at this time of year.  They can fly about 350 miles per day.  The trip is about 2100 miles in one direction.  It would take about a week of flying to cover that distance, but probably two weeks given the need to rest and wait for good weather.  This is the fourth time I have seen S...