Over the years this little wetland in Waterton Park has been a magnet for all sorts of animals. I photographed beavers at work here in 1994. Moose show up. Warblers occupy the surrounding trees, as do waxwings, robins, blackbirds, and more. Woodpeckers hammer from the nearby woods. So I always slow down as I drive by, along the Red Rock Parkway, and often get out to poke around. On the first evening of my recent visit, a White-tailed buck with antlers in velvet watched me from the edge of the forest.
Tech note: Auto colour balance doesn't always work. In this case, the predominant green caused an over-correction toward magenta. Magenta tree trunks don't look good, so I made a preliminary adjustment to the RAW image, then fine-tuned it in CS6 with a correction to the dark end, ie. tree trunks, pumping in some extra green and a touch of yellow. I didn't go too far, as the forest does get a spooky blue-black hue at dusk. But I did get rid of most of that dark magenta cast. Decades ago, printing colour in a pro lab in Vancouver, I learned to colour-correct using CMY filters, but in those days you had to do a blanket correction to the entire image. Digital processing allows much more selective control, and ultimately can get us closer to the scene as we remember it.
Photographed in Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta. Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 2017 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
Tags: White-tailed Deer Odocoileus virginianus wildlife animal mammal critter deer buck male antlers velvet wetland forest green wild nature beautiful Canadian Rockies Rocky Mountains Waterton Lakes National Park Alberta Canada copyrighted James R. Page
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Indomitable life, pushing through a bank of melting, spring snow in a forest clearing. I don't know what this plant is; it was only three inches tall when I noticed it. It is probably something common that I would recognize in its more developed stages. It doesn't matter; this is about emerging life and it appeals to me for the process it reveals and the positive emotion it triggers.
Old style photography here: tripod, cable release, locking up the mirror before exposure to reduce vibration, small f-stop for maximum depth of field. I hand hold far more often than I used to, but for most macro work this is the only way to have full control over all elements in the frame. To hand hold this shot would have meant a higher ISO and a larger aperture, and accepting a lower quality result.
Photographed in the Canadian Rockies at Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission ©2017 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
Tags: emergence plant snow snowbank spring germination new greet the world macro vertical green close up forest conifer needles lichen detritus future soil wild nature Rocky Mountains Canadian Rockies Waterton Lakes National Park Alberta Canada copyrighted James R. Page
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I like photographing the last snow patches in the forests. They tend to be strewn with tree debris: conifer needles, cones, bits of fallen lichen, dead insects, and more. Always a fascinating tour when viewed through a macro lens.
For this minimalist view I used my standard macro setup for a flat subject (a subject with no depth): tripod, parallel plane focus, small aperture, mirror lockup, remote shutter release. I didn't place these pine needles there; they are found objects, photographed exactly as I found them.
Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta. Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 2017 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
Tags: pine needles macro vertical minimalism simple snow white parallel plane focus small f-stop delicate forest debris close up woods wild nature wilderness Rocky Mountains Canadian Rockies Waterton Lakes National Park Alberta Canada copyrighted James R. Page
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High in the mountains, snow lingers until June. Shaded by trees, granular, melting, specked with windblown grit and fallen needles, cones, seeds, bits of bark, dead insects, strands of tree lichen - and more - the surfaces of the shrinking snow pack are one of my favourite subjects to photograph. Macro lens and tripod are mandatory. Photo potential? Unlimited!
Photographed in Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 2017 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
Tags: macro square snow white melting old snow snow pack snowbank snow patch forest close up pine needles lichen fragments grit windblown fallen tree parts still life Canadian Rockies Rocky Mountains Waterton Lakes National Park Alberta Canada copyrighted James R. Page
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There are many access points to this creek, which goes from broad and shallow to roaring whitewater as it drops through a canyon of its own creation. Here, I felt the best photo would be about the details; above the canyon, as Gordon Lightfoot wrote in one of his songs from the 1960s, "the deep dark forest was too silent to be real."
Photographed in Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 2017 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
Tags: landscape square creek rocks canyon whitewater roaring wild nature wilderness flow flowing Rocky Mountains Canadian Rockies Cameron Creek Waterton Lakes National Park Alberta Canada copyrighted James R. Page breathtaking landscapes
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