Another weekend’s passed and another adventure under my belt. This time, I decided to make a spontaneous trip out to Moraine Lake. Located in the Banff National Park just 11km from Lake Louise.  The area is also know as “Valley of the ten peaks” and was featured on the $20 bill from 1969-1979.

Dorothy, Alberta… What can I say?! I’ve been here a few times in the past and it’s always been a great time. How was this trip different? Well there’s no better time to visit an abandoned ghost town then in the middle of the night, so that’s what we did! Making sure we made this trip different we didn’t arrive until 11:00pm, trying to sneak in and catch those “ghost’s” by surprise (more on that later). Instead of heading directly toward the abandoned church’s, we decided to work our way over. Starting at the old decrepit grain elevator I started my timelapse. What we thought was going to be a clear sky turned for the worse. I was lucky enough to capture some great storm clouds rolling in over the area.

Experimenting was the sole purpose of this timelapse taken from Rotary Park in Calgary Alberta. Looking at downtown from the hillside was a great opportunity for me to practice my manual exposure ramping techniques over the sunset and the lights coming on in the downtown core. The results came out great and I managed to avoid the dreaded timelapse flicker (for the most part). I love all the lights dancing throughout the buildings. I can foresee a night-time excursion back to this location just to capture the dancing lights!

Once again I ventured out into Kananaskis Country, camera in-hand. My purpose? A great weekend of hiking, camping, and of course star gazing! After spending an awesome day hiking the Moose Mountain Summit. We wound down by cooking a great feast of fire pies around the campfire! Keeping a close eye on the sky, it was looking to be a nice cloudless and moonless night ahead.

Moose Mountain is located just about 14.5km west of Bragg Creek, Alberta. At it’s summit is Alberta’s highest fire lookout station that’s still manned all summer long. Don’t let the start of Moose Mountain hiking trail fool you, almost immediately you’ll start by descending into the valley for a kilometer, immediately followed by the start of the ascending slopes.

It’s the night of the Blue Moon and the sky’s clear overhead. Time to aim the camera upward, set the intervalometer and capture some great Astro Time-Lapse Photography in Kananaskis Country, Alberta. Here I was able to frame the shot nicely using a bank of tree’s formed in a horseshoe with the milky-way visible in-between. The blue moon provided a beautiful source of light on the surrounding tree’s.

While out on adventure trying to photograph the 2012 Meteor shower on the outskirts of Calgary, Alberta. I instead stumbled upon some wicked storm clouds forming on the horizon. In this case, the horizon was directly over the S.W. / N.W. quadrants of Calgary. The result? Some pretty awesome photo opportunities and time-lapse photography work!

Eager to try out my new on-camera filter kit, I headed out towards the S.E. corner of Calgary. After taking a few gravel roads I stumbled upon this spot. I loved the majestic look of the scene. After trying a few different filters and compositions, I came out with the following keepers! I’m pretty happy with the results and look forward to using on-camera filters in the future. They give a nice punch to those sunset landscape pictures!

Grassi Lakes is located just outside of Canmore, Alberta. This is a very easy and scenic hike that offers great views of Canmore and the Bow Valley. I’d recommend taking the difficult trail instead of the easy way up. Views are very limited when you hike the easy trail. Views greatly increase while trekking the more difficult route. It’s not very difficult anyways, just a little steeper but the views offered are much more rewarding!

It’s the second photography workshop put on by the Calgary chapter of noobs photography and of course, it was another huge success! We had one of the founding members fly in from LA to partake in our shenanigans. From scaling the slick slopes of the Alberta badlands to crossing the old decayed train bridge of Atlas, Hell, let’s go roll in the grass of an old abandoned ghost town.