Heat Wave
Good grief, it's been a month since my last post. Lots going on, starting with a massive change in the weather and landscape, and I started a course to try and improve my landscape photography. So I've been plenty busy taking pictures, but strangely, the minute I started the course I found myself being hyper-critical of everything I took, displeased with most of what I produced. To top it off, the weather has been hot and dry, mostly days with hot hazy featureless skies and crispy yellow terrain. Still, I think I managed to get a few nice shots here and there.
Also enjoyable is my new telephoto lens, a 300mm f4 prime. I added a 1.4 teleconverter, and even wide open I get better shots than the best f-stop of my zoom. At f5.6 (f8 with the teleconverter) it's flawless. This combo gives me a 420mm lens, and when paired with my K-70 APS-C sensor, is equivalent to a 630mm full-frame lens. Back in the film days this would have been a nightmare to carry around. Obviously the quality isn't quite like a full-frame, but I'm not sure that this point I could tell the difference.
It's still heavy though, and given the reach, every little movement is magnified, so a tripod or mono-pod is advised. It's going to take some practice to learn to use. As I've mentioned before, Pentax is not noted for its auto-focusing quickness or reliability, and the K-70 model is at the bottom end in this regard. The K-70 is also fairly slow in terms of frames per second. So I'm finding I occasionally have to go old-school, focus manually, and choose shots judiciously. I actually don't mind much...that's how I used to do it back in the "old days". But it does mean you can't rely on "spray and pray", and a lot of opportunities are missed. On the upside, I have far fewer files to look at and eventually delete when I get home.
But enough tech talk. When last I posted there was still snow on the ground, and ice on the lake. That still took a couple weeks to disappear, and the remnants were still impressive. This is the remains of a massive snow drift between Lake Winnipeg (at Grand Beach) and the lagoon behind:
I converted to B&W because of the contrast in the scene, and, if I'm honest, to kind of hide the fact that all that "ice" on the water surface is a mixture of slush and pond scum. The whole thing smelled like a goose latrine.
Further down the beach and into the swampy forest behind, the massive snow drift was melting in real time. I'll admit (after some feedback) that this shot is too busy, but what I thought was interesting was how there must be under-drift currents of melting snow creating a gentle swirl in the water. None of the melting process was visible, there was just a long glacier disappearing into the trees, with only this weird whirlpool suggesting a sub-surface current. I used an exposure time of about 10-15 seconds to capture it:
The end of the day shows how much ice was still on the lake. We had an unusually cold, but unusually dry, winter, and without a layer of snow to insulate against the cold, the ice ran deep. Here there are only shallow ponds of water over the ice, which seemed to be at least a metre thick in places. The colours here are helped along a bit by some smoke in the air:
By the next week, most of the ice was gone. I hiked at Pinawa Dam for a day, and was treated to quite a bit of wildlife: the usual ducks and geese of course, but trumpeter swans, hawks of various kinds, and pelicans flying north. I include this one for the humour: the second-in-front pelican has his mouth wide open, it must create quite the drag while flying:
Are we there yet?
A different flock later in the day felt more lonely:
Overall the landscape was still recovering from the long winter, with only the conifers showing green as yet:
And nestled in an open spot between those dry reeds was a giant snapping turtle, as big around as my torso. I don't know how they survive the winter. I wish I had a better shot, but it was shy of my every movement. I tried to move slow, taking several minutes to inch closer and bring the camera to my eye, but it wasn't slow enough. I shot what I could and left it alone:
This next shot kind of encapsulates the day. A bit of sun, a bit of cloud, a change in the season, but a threat to revert at any moment:
On the way home I was treated to a spectacular sunset. This is the bridge over the Winnipeg River just below the Seven Sisters hydro dam:
Looking the other way, the dam itself was bathed in pink and blue:
I mentioned above I finally got my new 300mm prime lens. Like a kid I couldn't wait to play, and I wasn't disappointed. I really like some of these. They aren't award winners, but it's a pleasure to be able to document my outings with something more recognizable than a soft grey blur.
The red-wing blackbirds are on full show these days, and I tried to make the most of it:
I really appreciate the depth of field isolation this lens can bring to bear. The rectangular feature above is a park bench several hundred metres away. Closer by, there were swarms of delicate mosquito-like insects around. They were in my face a lot, but weren't biting. Shooting towards the sun at very close range gave an interesting effect:
Amusingly, though the swarm runs on both sides of the focus point of the lens, none of them are exactly in focus. I still liked the backlighting effect, and combining that idea with the red-wing blackbirds fussing over territory led to this trio of shots:
Another week gone, and it was back to Grand Beach. I had this crazy hope that the ice would break up, and then the typical westerly winds would push the icebergs up on the beach. In past years it's been an interesting phenomenon. The sight is beautiful, but the sounds are also impressive, what with the ice melting into crystals which clink and tink in a constant cacophony.
Alas, the ice was gone, but the terns were out fishing. This one appears to be yelling:
Can you hear me NOW?
Their feathers have such a glorious lustre at certain angles to the sun:
And this 300mm lens seems to be able to resolve even the little sparrows, I believe this is a female white-throated sparrow, and there is even a lady-bug in the sand under her belly:
It was a hot day, with a lot of haze in the air, which made the separation between lake and sky a bit nebulous. And given the season, nobody is out on the lake yet, so it's rather austere:
Finally, a single stone in the sand was too perfectly placed to ignore:
Since then the weather has remained hot. But the trees are leafing out, and the chokecherries are in blossom:
And the owls have returned. I found this one by the ruckus the crows were making, as it sat serenely waiting for them to go away. I'm finding the old "scratch as if disinterested, and wander aimlessly" technique works pretty well for just about any creature, and I managed to "wander" pretty close for a few shots. This was taken with my 50-135 zoom, but I was wishing I'd brought my 300:
Now that I know they're back I'll make sure to bring the longer lens on my forest outings.
That's it for now. I hope for rain and cooler weather. Cheers!
