Abraham Lake Sunrise

I have to admit, I am attracted to take photos of sunrises and sunsets.  It offers me a better chance of catching that 5 to 10 minutes of amazing light. I guess the cost for that is waking up early and getting going to bed late. Abraham Lake is an amazing place to take pictures.  The mountain range backdrop gives so many composition ideas and the ice patterns and cracks provide great foreground elements.

© Matt Graham 2010 - Abraham Lake Sunrise

Adobe Photoshop CS5 magic - Content Aware Fill

I was lucky enough to be a Beta tester for Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended since February.  I am so amazed at how cool some of the new features are.  One of them is Content Aware Fill.  I found it great for filling up empty space created by the Panorama merge. 

Here are the two pictures I took of Maligne Canyon and the deadly icy water hole.  In fact, when I was here with Darwin Wiggett, two teenagers who were drunk out of their minds decided to test their fate and climb past the hole with out crampons.  The boys were eventually rescued with a rope that our other guide, Alan Ernst had.  Funny thing was that when we were coming back to the parking lot, the boys were going back to try conquering the canyon again!!

Anyway, here is what Photoshop CS5 came up with.  As you can see there is white space that the merge algorithm created to take into account the change in perspective as I tilted the lens.

After playing with Content Aware Fill, the white space was magically filled! This feature will be fun to try out when I do more panoramas.  Later this week I will show how the new HDR Pro module works.

Abraham Lake Shore Stumps

The pinnacle of our tour was returning to Abraham Lake.  In the winter this massive reservoir for the Bighorn Dam on the North Saskatchewan freezes up.  Throughout the winter, the lower runoff from the mountains and the requirement to operate the dam makes the lake level retreat. I just love this area.  It has some amazing scenery and great photo opportunities.  Best of all is that it is off the beaten tourist track, so crowds are few and far between.  This picture was taken just before the warm sunrise light peaked over the eastern horizon.  I had to take a 8 second exposure to get it right, while the howling wind blew in my face.

©Matt Graham 2010 - Abraham Lake Tree Stumps

Rocking the Beds

Since I graduated from engineering at the U of A in 2004, I have been very interested in geology.  I prior to that I never really knew that oil and gas come from rocks, not the huge basins they showed us in cartoons. Now that I work everyday on designs to extract natural gas from rocks, seeing outcrops like this always amaze me.

©Matt Graham 2010 - Rocking the Beds

The Galleria

The Galleria is an amazing venue for ice climbing.  During our time there, preparations were being made for Tri-Ice-a-Thon, a yearly ice climbing event in the Nordegg area. I'd love to go back in the summer as well as the winter as this place is well tucked into the Cline RIver valley and hardly visited, compare to some other areas of the Rockies.

© Matt Graham 2010 - The Galleria

The Duo Dynamic

On the Saturday of our tour we went to the "Galleria" which is an amazing ice climbing venue.  The Cline River flows by in the valley and with the frozen ice and flowing water, I find this an great duo.  I used a 5 Stop Solid Neutral Density filter by Singh-Ray to blur the motion of the water, while keeping the 3.2 second exposure decent. And OK, I realize that the "Dynamic Duo" is Batman and Robin, but I felt naming this the Duo Dynamic is well suited.

©Matt Graham 2010 - The Duo Dynamic

The 7-UP Bubble Monster

On our way back from the amazing sunrise, we stopped at Talbot Lake alongside Highway 16.  This is a wonderful lake that could quite possibly be great for ice skating.  The thing to watch out for is crazy looking bubble designs in the ice.  I took this one with my Canon Powershot G9 which is a great point-n-shoot prior to it dying on me when I got home. Anyway, I wanted to get a cool design and found what appeared to be a goofy face in the ice. Also with all the tiny bubbles in the green hued ice, it reminded me of the bubbles in a 7-UP glass bottle.

Glory Hole Sunrise

On our second morning of the photo tour, Darwin knew the best place to go for a surefire sunrise scene.  Leaving Jasper and heading towards the east park gates, there is a natural spring system that is open year round.  Its named the "Glory Hole" by landscape photographer Daryl Benson.  Rumor has it thathe came to this spot countless times and never had a bad shoot.  We really rushed to catch the great light as we might have taken too much time stuffing ourselves with some awesome Raspberry White Chocolate scones from the Bears Paw Bakery prior to leaving Jasper.

I tried a lot of filter combinations to create this scene.  In the end, a 1 second exposure blurred the water and painted some light in the clouds.  It was simply an amazing sunrise that I will never forget!

© Matt Graham 2010 - Glory Hole Sunrise