September Sunshine — Jon's Photoblog

This month has been a bit of a trial. One the one hand I feel like a sponge, binge-watching videos and reading articles on composition and editing techniques, yet when I get out and am in the field, all that information disappears as I struggle to make something of a shot. I love what I see with my eyes, but getting it on the sensor and then editing it later into something like what I envisioned is another thing entirely.

Sounds like I'm whining :) I'm not, really. I've been lucky to get out most weekends and explore my province in a way I haven't before, and that alone is rewarding. After almost a month of no rain things were getting a little crispy. When that happens around here, fall tends to be short and colourless. But luckily, just as the first leaves started to turn, so did the weather, and it's breathed some longevity into the autumn season.

I will admit, one of the challenges of landscape photography on the prairies is just how flat it is. It's hard to create leading lines out of a sea of grass. Often there isn't a trail or a rock or a contour of any kind, and even the bushes tend to be obscured by tall grasses. It's harder to get low when the foliage is up to your shoulders. The sky becomes a big part of many photos, and as enjoyable as a featureless wide blue sky might be for anything else, it often doesn't add much interest to a photograph. Often the most interesting relief are trees, but they aren't exactly tall around here.

Ironically I started the month with a trip to Riding Mountain National Park, one of the highest points in the province, and about 500m above Winnipeg. After rolling across the flat prairies for a couple hours, eventually a large ridge-line appears on the horizon, which is a strange relief to the eyes.. I hiked up and down the Gorge Creek trail (about 12km round trip). It's an interesting and varied trail, with great views.

The view from the top is incredible, the flat just goes on for what seems like forever:

Somewhere over the horizon is my home...

Late afternoon, on the way down, not sure if it would rain

I found the topography in the above photo interesting. The view is facing east. The southern slope is mostly pine and spruce, more sheltered from the blazing sun. The northern slope is mostly scrub oak and dry grass, like you might find in the Sierra foothills in California...without the rattlesnakes of course.

Emerging from the park on the eastern side, it's almost ridiculous how far you can see:

The next day I travelled in the other direction, to explore the Sandilands National Forest, east of Winnipeg. In the midst of peering through the viewfinder and pushing at my tripod, I heard a strange croaking from the sky that was definitely not geese. I was treated to a view of cranes high up. Too high for identification, even the 300mm lens couldn't resolve detail:

An area recovering for a forest fire gave some great contrast, with the bleached white skeletons of trees with grasses and young growth spreading around their knees:

I'm discovering also I like taking closeups. I love the textures of bark and stone and, in this case, the silvery sun-baked wood. However, I'm having trouble calculating the correct depth of field. A macro lens would be helpful, some day:

In the undergrowth, the ferns and grasses are starting to dry out, giving a nice contrast to the last flowers of the season:

With the end of summer, harvest season is in full swing. There's so much gold in the golden hour, it's almost too much when combined with the gold of the hay bales and freshly harvested crop fields:

Finally I took a quick trip up to Bird's Hill Park, trying to capture the day's last rays of light. This is not the best composition, one example of a moment where all the advice rattled around my head and flew out my ears. There is no foreground anchor...I thought it was the yellowish weeds bottom left, but I could not make them stand out in post-processing the way they did in the field.