Pale Mornings, Clear Nights
This is a long one, brace yourself :)
After a brief temperature dip early in the month, November turned out pretty mild. Warmer weather usually means gloom, but on occasion the sun peeked through. Not much of a workout for my gear, but that's on the horizon.
I spent most of a day exploring a different part of Bird's Hill Park. Someone had clearly enjoyed Halloween here, but left their poor pumpkin behind:
Still hungover...
Further on the sun came out and gave a glorious backlight to these seed heads. I don't know what kind of plant it was, and if you google "manitoba weed seed head" you get a lot of "unrelated" entries...
A bank of clouds rolled in and played with the light right up to sunset. First, the ubiquitous "bare tree in a field" shot, but I was trying to get the sun flare through the clouds:
I do like rose hips on a green background, it must be getting close to Christmas. I'm not quite getting the right depth of field though, the closest is just outside the line:
Sunset was a fantastic display, lighting up the underbelly of the roiling clouds:
Two trees this time, for variety...
A couple days later I sprung out of bed very early with a great sense of purpose and fortitude to brave the elements in tribute to this great craft, and explore a new region of Manitoba.
Okay, that's not quite true. I went to bed way too late, and woke at 3:30am for no particular reason, then restlessly tossed and turned for a couple hours. By 5:45 I realized my quest for sleep was futile, so I dressed and then, yes, headed out with purpose to explore a new region of Manitoba.
The last time I was at Winnipeg Beach and the Gimli area was when I was a kid, over 45 years ago. The forecast suggested possible good weather for a sunrise, and I got to Winnipeg Beach with about 20 minutes to spare. The wind was stiff, the temperature a balmy -10C, the clouds low, and the lake a frozen, snow-swept wasteland.
I loved it! Even more so when the sun somehow granted the clouds a faint pink hue. I hope these pictures give a sense of the severity of the land here, bleak but beautiful:
Even though I liked the reflection in the ice here, I thought the pink display was over, so I moved down the shore to take other shots. But the colours only strengthened:
I should have stayed at those rocks!
And of course, only in Canada:
The clouds lost their morning appeal, but I could see to the north a band of blue sky. I checked the map and realized I was only an hour from Hecla Island, which is a provincial park/resort area. I was there once a couple of decades ago for some kind of company event, and we spent most of the time in conference rooms. I yawn to think of it.
So I headed north into the sunbelt. I took a lot of pictures, but unfortunately, I'm not that pleased with most of them. The transition from gloom to glare wreaked havoc on my sense of exposure and compensation. Still, it was a fantastic day. I followed side roads near Lake Winnipeg until it joined up with the 8 and turned east to Hecla. At Hecla I hiked a few of the Grassy Narrows trails, then made my way to the end of the road at Gull Harbour. The lake ice up here was an almost Caribbean blue:
Beautiful as it was, the most compelling thing was the sound: you could hear it faintly groaning, a constant low keening, punctuated with the occasional subsonic boom as all those "continental" plates shifted and ground against each other.
Finally, at the side of the road I caught a doe and her two grown fawns feeding on the twigs and dried grasses. Unfortunately, the fawns never emerged from the bush long enough to pose, but the doe ignored me entirely, probably because I stayed in the car:
The next week I returned to Bird's Hill for an evening shoot. I knew the full moon was set to come up shortly after sunset and I hoped to do some hiking in the dark with only the moon lighting the way.
While waiting for the moon, I became enamoured with the undisturbed tracks of wildlife in the region. I could identify coyote, fox, deer, and frequent tiny tracks of voles or mice:
Who came first?
There are beavers in the ponds, and they maintain a series of holes in the ice. Each one was investigated:
Then the sunset took over:
...and turned to fire:
Five trees this time...a bit excessive?
I hiked for about an hour before the moon emerged from an eastern cloud bank. I thought I'd try catching the moon through the trees and play around with the focus. I kind of like how these turned out, more like a painting:
Finally the moon cleared the cloud bank. For the constellation-savvy, the Pleiades are upper left. However, with a 30-second exposure, you can see the beginnings of star trails. Apparently you have to keep the exposure to 5-10 seconds to prevent this.
Lastly, more animal trails. I had better compositions, but unfortunately I really messed up the depth of field on all the rest. My feeble excuse is, it's hard to judge focus in the dark.
November was a fantastic month, I keep learning more, sometimes it's hard to keep it all in mind when I'm actually facing down a composition. All the gear performed admirably, so I'm set for anything down to -10C. I spoke too soon last time, but it really does look like colder weather is on it's way, and I'm looking forward to it.
