After hours at the Valley Zoo

Went on an after hours trip to the Edmonton Valley Zoo on July 8, 2008. For $15, they take you a bit more behind the scenes, down the staff access areas and even open up some of the cages for even closer looks at the animals (as was the instance for the Red Pandas).

I’d love to go again, maybe next time I’ll rent a 70-200mm f/2.8L zoom lens, had some good shots but a lot of noise due to shooting at 1600 ISO.

Be sure to check out the set as I add more over the next couple days!

Tags: after hours, alberta, Animals, edmonton, leopard, mammal, panda, red panda, snow leopard, valley zoo, zoo

1000 Views in under 24 hours…

I know there are those of us on Flickr who complain about the Magic Donkey, also known as Explore… I mean really, how can a computer algorithm really tell us humans what is interesting?

Thing is, when you get in - and high enough, I might add - it really does work… the photo above I uploaded to Flickr Sunday afternoon around 4:30pm local time… by 1:00pm Monday it had over 1000 views. The highest Explore position was #8… in my opinion it’s not even the best photo from the set I took that day (in fact, this sat in my upload folder because I was hedging for the past couple weeks if I should even upload it), but who’s complaining? Not me! Thanks for all the views, comments and faves - and whatever else it took to reach that high on Explore.

Tags: alberta, church, comments, cultural, explore, faves, flickr, hdr, heritage, rural, ukrainian, views, village

Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village

Headed out to the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village east of Edmonton on Father’s Day. It was a mostly pleasant trip with the family, my parents, brother, his wife and her parents. Mostly pleasant because we got dumped on for about the last half hour or so - but hey, a little rain never hurt anyone.

I did manage to get a couple of nice shots.

Both the shots above are 7 exposure, 1 exposure value HDR images generated from a single RAW file. Be sure to check out the rest of the set, I’ll be adding more as the week goes by.

Tags: alberta, hdr, historical, history, landscape, ukrainian cultural heritage village

Alberta Railway Museum

Headed out to the Alberta Railway Museum in town, didn’t even know it existed! Went with a few flickr friends on Saturday (Bill, Adam, and Amanda), that place was a gold mine - I’ll definitely have to go back.

Be sure to visit the rest of the set, I’ll be uploading from amongst the 375 odd keepers that I took.

Tags: alberta, alberta railway museum, chairs, hdr, museum, railway, seats

Shooting the sun…

We have such beautiful sunsets up here, I decided to head out last night and try and get a shot or two… I was using the AEB mode set to +/-2 so I had triple the shots I normally take, but some of them turned out fantastic!

Tags: alberta, landscape, Sky, sun, sunset

flickr Fave of the Day : Lake Beauvert by elementalPaul

Lake Beauvert Originally uploaded by elementalPaul

I had the pleasure of hooking up with Paul while he was in town. I’ve always loved his HDR stuff and it’s really cool to see his treatment of locations I’m familiar with.

I absolutely love this treatment he has given this shot that he took in Jasper.

Tags: alberta, elementalPaul, flickr, flickr Fave of the day, hdr, jasper, lake, landscape

flickr Fave of the Day : Riding the Storm by calakmul

I’ve been following calakmul’s stream for awhile, partly because he’s a local photographer, and partly because his photographs of the abandoned and forgotten are very well composed and processed. I think I’ll have to pay him to let me tag along sometime!

Be sure to stop by and check out the rest of his stream!

Tags: abandoned, alberta, calakmul, flickr Fave of the day, grain elevator