Tag Archives: river

The Canadian Pacific Railroad Holiday train 

Posted by enmanscamera on

 

Every year the CPR holiday train chugs its colourful way across Canada from east to      west. The train makes stops at cities along the route where there are crowds of people waiting.

Those of us in rural Canada might miss assembly with all the festivities in the city, but we get to watch and, in my case, photograph that brightly lighted Christmas train as it winds its way through the wooded Canadian countryside.

As I drove from my home down to the river valley to again photograph the Holiday train I passed people waiting in their cars parked in the area between the little Pritchard store and the train tracks just off the highway.

I have tried that location in the past, but it’s so close to the train that the only shots are on an angle. And to make it worse this time, a long freight train was waiting in the perfect position to block the view of the train after only a couple minutes.

My favourite place to photograph the train is from across the river. I drove past my neighbours, crossed the bridge and stopped along the river and walked out on the wide beach to set my tripod up.

I like the long wide view across the Thompson River that even using my 70-200mm lens lets me photograph the whole train at 70mm or just a few cars at 200mm.

That beach location allows me to capture that locomotive and it’s bright boxcars in a scenic view.

The train usually passes through Pritchard when there still is enough light to see the train. I saw a few pictures that were taken after it stopped in Kamloops 30 minutes later, and they only showed neon lights with an empty black background.

I chose an ISO of 800 when I first got there and took a few test shots. I walked around to choose a nice flat place where I didn’t have to stand in the mud. Gosh, mid December and no ice.

I will say that, although I had a better location than those on the other side of the river, I envied the fact that those waiting at the Pritchard store had hills that blocked the unpleasant, cold wind that blew at me across the flat wide river.

I joined by my friends and their children out on the beach. Jo had her stocking hat pulled down over her face and was crouching with her camera trying to get out of the wind.

I covered my ears and set up my tripod as I watched her 3 and 4 year olds running around on the muddy beach, oblivious to the cold, as they excitedly waiting for the train.

They had been to town earlier in the day to meet Santa and now running on the beach and seeing the brightly lite Holiday train was like the icing on the cake.

By the time the train came I had to push my ISO up to 1600. I was using my tripod, but with the all movement I decided the higher ISO would let me keep my shutter at a safer speed.

I think this will be the last photos of Christmas lights for this year. As always, it’s been fun. There isn’t any snow yet, but the snow will come soon I am sure, and I’ll be out again with my camera to make some pictures of that white playground.

I can hardly wait for the snow. But for now I’ll wish a very Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday to all of you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Water as a Photographer’s Subject.

Posted by enmanscamera on

Arrow lake crossing

Ocean ready

Gig Harbor waterfront

Valley stream

Under the falls

Framed in Green

Water sculpture

What it is about water that has such a magnetic effect on photographers who wander ocean shores, the watersides of lakes and ponds, and river and stream edges in spite of slippery footing, and the occasional splash of water as they search of the perfect mood?

Whether crashing waves or clear reflections, water always adds interest to one’s images, and including a view of a flowing stream in a mountain landscape adds a great feeling of movement and mood.

The other night was one of those times that sleep would not come. I was tired, but thoughts just kept poking into my head and no matter what I tried, sleep evaded me.

I got up, turned on the computer, and manipulated a few images beyond recognition. That’s my usual recipe for putting myself back to sleep. However, this time that wasn’t working and after the fourth of fifth image I was bored, but not sleepy. So I decided I would start going through the list of photographer-bloggers I am connected to on WordPress. There are very few things I enjoy more than looking at other photographers’ work and the diverse circle of bloggers I regularly interact with are, if anything, entertaining and inspiring.

Street scenes, landscapes, cityscapes, wildlife, archaeology, and so many other genres, I read and viewed so many excellent photographs.

As happens to many of us when wandering the seemingly endless galaxy of the internet, I started searching “photographing water”, not so much for information, but to find the Google page that I knew would be filled with creative images of water.

There were photographs of water dropping into water, droplets on plants, or glass, and all sorts of surfaces, and wonderful images of waterfalls, streams, seashores, lakes and much, much more. I viewed page after page of excellent images, read lots of how-to advice and pondered many experienced photographers’ personal thoughts on pretty much everything related to photographing water.

Fall is coming fast here in British Columbia and with that the colours of the landscape will change. This is probably my favorite time to mount my camera on a tripod and wander to the waterside and start creating pictures.

I am really looking forward to doing lots of scenic/landscape photography in the upcoming months, and water will be playing a major part in what we will be photographing, I will be visiting nearby waterfalls and streams. There is the South Thompson River that flows along the valley I live in, and my wife and I are hopeful of a driving trip on the Washington/Oregon coast in October.

Regarding water, I found this quote by American novelist , “All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”

 

As always I look forward to reader’s opinions. Thanks, John

My website is at www.enmanscamera.com

 

 

Looking into the Landscape

Posted by enmanscamera on

Landscape photographer Elliot Porter once said, “Sometimes you can tell a large story with a tiny subject”.

On the weekend I bundled up against the damp, windy cold and headed down to the frozen shore along the South Thompson River not far from my home. My intention was to photograph the Pritchard Bridge that spanned the river and I had hoped to see large chunks of ice jammed against the pillars.

I like photographing architecture, and any kind of structure, whether it is buildings, fences, and yes, bridges, is just plain fun for me. I look for how the light plays on stone, wood, metal, glass, and any other building material and how it creates shadows and features, like ice, that interact with the structure. However, to my disappointment, the large chunks of ice I had noticed a few days earlier were gone. The strong wind that constantly blew along the river valley must have cleared all the ice from around the bridge pillars.

I wandered along under the bridge looking for interesting angles. I had mounted my camera with a 16-85mm lens thinking that its wide view would give me an interesting perspective.  My intention was to photograph the bridge in a fashion that would look good when converted to black and white. I looked for shadows and highlights that would create enough contrast to give depth and dimensionality to black and white images. Much of the time I see black and white images that have been changed to monotone without regard to the tonality of the subject. All I see are flat tones of black and white with no relationship to the actual colour quality of the full colour original. There are several programs that convert image files to black and white while keeping that tonality, PhotoShop among them, but my preference because of the control and finality is Silver Efex Pro from www.niksoftware.com.

I walked along the shore and crossed under the bridge looking for creative opportunities and trying to find interesting perspectives of the bridge.  Eventually, however, what caught my eye were features protruding from the sand like posts and branches, and I began looking down and along the shore instead of up and that’s when I really started to take pictures that were working for me. There were shells, small bits of water worn wood, a half-buried rusty oil drum, fish skeletons and much more, like an overturned shoe in the sand. I changed lenses to an 18-200mm to have more focal length and a narrower view for ground level shots of posts and other revealed objects sticking up from the sand.

The light was perfect and its low angle created intriguing shadows that added definition to each of the subjects I selected as I walked along the sandy beach. Each small object, in Eliot Porter’s words, had its own “story” and I tried to show something in each that was more than just a snap shot of an object on the beach.

Often we forget that there is more in the landscape than majestic peaks and expanses of fields. I began by ignoring the “tiny subjects” thinking only the bridge would be worth photographing. If this was a garden, then I would immediately contemplate close-up photography and grab my macro lens, but it took me a while to realise how much more there was to photograph on that frozen river beach.  Soon, I will be walking through the sand with my camera again, this time keeping my eye on the ground, and I will be dressed even warmer.

www.enmanscamera.com