It is always such a hassle to bring my camera gear anywhere. My bag is deeper than the average duffle bag and heavier than the emotional suitcase that Lindsay Lohan packs every time she goes to court. Between my over-sized hunch-backpack and my tripod, it is a major workout whenever I go gallivanting in search of a fascinating frame. I NEVER shoot without either. This makes for awkward car rides (especially if I’m the passenger) and exhausting trips because I never let them out of my site… or possession.

On this particular night I had an uncharacteristic random urge to bring my camera gear with me while I made a quick trip to the south side to visit my girlfriend. The sky was clear and I wasn’t really expecting to see anything exciting on the way home…

Anyone who knows me well enough knows that I won’t miss a lightning storm for anything. Meteors could be crashing into the earth from all directions and a giant fire could be frivolously engulfing the entire city and I’d be driving as fast as I could, oblivious to everything going on around me while trying to find the best vantage point to consume a bolt of lightning on my thirsty sensor.

I was heading North on Scenic Drive about to make my way to the off-ramp going West, when in the distance I caught a glare of satisfaction in the small dark clouds just above the horizon. I was pretty sick that day and was just on my way home to bed, but I had just seen lightning! What else could I possibly do than sniff my way to the nearest viewing location on a quest for a decent photo?

My nose led me to the edge of the coulee, far West of the Galt Museum. I parked my car at the Galt and wandered carelessly through the tall grass towards the coulee without even looking down at the ground below me. When I finally reached my destination, I had the perfect view.  If I looked down and to my left, I could see Fort Whoop-Up. The West-side hill lingered closely behind. To my immediate right, if I had scaled my way down the coulee face my life probably would have ended abruptly in a plummeting death and I would have ended at the bottom of the road to Indian Battle Park (Okay, so I may have exaggerated a tiny bit). Either way, I was as far out to the coulees as I could get, and had veered well beyond my intended path and even further from my vehicle. It didn’t even occur to me that I might not be in the most opportune location for a retreat if any unforeseen circumstance (such as a torrential downpour) were to take place.

The wind had picked up drastically, and while I didn’t even notice the goose bumps on my arms, nor my body temperature dropping degrees at a time (Fahrenheit that is, Celsius just sounds too ridiculous), I was aware of my tripod struggling to maintain it’s grip on the angry earth below. Like any good mother would do, I immediately thought of the children and jumped in front of my tripod to shield it from the Lethbridge Hurricane (no pun intended).

By this time the sky was raging with thunder that could put a Rolling Stones concert to shame and the lightning was getting more and more insistent on making it’s mighty presence known. The sky was dark by now, but the lightning was so close that I literally couldn’t look over my shoulder without seeing the ground below me light up. It was so intense that the bigger strikes washed out my entire frame, rendering those photos unusable. Instead of getting scared like any person with a little common sense would do when the hairs on the back of their neck stood up from the static electricity, I blocked it out of my mind and continued to expose myself (pun intended).

Without warning, a few raindrops turned into a falling river left me with yet another concern, this one being unavoidable. The safety and well being of my beloved camera was now in jeopardy! Rather than taking the time to remove the giant weighty body bag containing my camera gear off my back to help reduce the risk of water damage, I bolted to the nearest sanctuary with my camera in one hand and my tripod (still extended) in the other. Unfortunately, the closest sanctuary happened to be my vehicle and it was a couple of kilometers away. I ran like hell, wearing only shorts and a T-shirt while trying to keep my camera dry underneath my already drenched T-shirt. My knees were shaking and I could barely breath, and I felt like I was going to collapse onto the cold wet ground. Intermittent bursts of light lit up the ground before me, shining rays of hope to a seemingly endless journey. I almost admitted defeat to the elements, but then I kept running. I could see the extended parking lot of the Lethbridge Lodge in the distance now. Many vehicles had gathered to presumably watch the amazing lightning display through their windshield wipers. My body trudged up and down with the weight of the world on my back, and I could see what looked like a blockade of headlights flooding the edge of the parking lot.

I was in desperation mode, concerned mostly about how my life would continue without a camera to guide me through the dark nights in West Lethbridge. My camera and I were so soaked that I completely wrote off any chance that my camera would ever turn on again. As I neared the parking lot, my stomach became queasy and I started to panic. I had no idea what to do since my vehicle was still quite far away. I approached the hill to the parking lot gasping for air, and suddenly the answer became clear. I ran up to the first car I could see and pounded on the window, my fully extended tripod in one-hand and my camera in the other. The girl in the passenger seat jumped back aghast as if I was wielded a bloody hook for a hand. I have no idea why.

A fine citizen in a PT cruiser nearby noticed that I was in trouble (they probably saw a random man with what looked like a weapon in his hand burst into the parking lot while frantically waving his hands in the air, trying to break into the nearest vehicle). A young man jumped out and quickly approached me. Before he could say anything, I broke down shaking and shivering while I pleaded my case as fast I could. I somehow convinced him and his friends to drive me to my vehicle in the nearby parking lot. How bittersweet it was as I jumped into the sanctity of this dry vehicle along with four other people I’ve never met. I was in between two people in the back seat, my backpack sprawled over top of one, and my tripod still fully extended across the back seat. I was soaked, my clothes were soaked, and even my hands which had my camera clutched in a death grip were dripping with water. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so obviously I did both.

I didn’t get the names of those amazing people in the PT Cruiser who saved my baby’s life, but if you are out there, I thank thee full-heartedly! I am in your debt. My camera still turns on to this very day.

My friend Kyler and made this setup. We draped a black blanket over a chair and shone a green laser pointer into a glass prism. We used a spray bottle full of water to allow the beam to be seen better.

In this one, we didn’t spray the water bottle so the beam of light did not appear.

This shot I dug up on an old hard drive. I was with a group of people looking for photo-ops in South East Calgary and we came across this moody old abandoned apartment building.

This reflection was taken at Nicholas Sheran Lake in West Lethbridge. The vast cloud cover and calm day made for an almost perfect reflection. The only problem was trying to compose a frame without any houses, people or garbage bins in it.

I wanted to see what the previous image looked like flipped 180 degrees. I think I actually like it better!

A friend and I spontaneously decided to go “storm chasing” and we ended up about 30 minutes West of Coaldale on an old back road that I probably wouldn’t be able to navigate my way to again. The light from the sun behind me made a nice dramatic mood in contrast to the dark clouds ahead.

I saw a big cloud in the sky with lightning striking. I rushed to the best vantage point I could think of, but by the time I got there the storm had almost sailed over the horizon. I managed to snap a couple of shots before it disappeared. The orange street lights behind me gave the water fountain a nice pink hue, fortunately to my advantage as it made the fountain stand out even more.

Stanley Park,  Vancouver

Sunshine Coast – Langsdale, BC

Sunshine Coast – Langsdale, BC

Sunshine Coast – Langsdale, BC

Sunshine Coast – Langsdale, BC

Deep Cove, Vancouver

Gibson, BC

Here are some of my latest photos, taken within the last two months.

I was sifting through some old photos and I came across an image of the river I had taken. It is a fairly plain and uninteresting shot, but I decided to play around with it anyways. I boosted the contrast a bit and did a couple other minor adjustments to give it a bit more “pop”. I like it much better with the exaggerated highlights and shadows.

This next one is a macro shot taken through a bottle of green aloe vera gel. I set the bottle on a coffee table in my living room and positioned a very bright LED flash light on the other side to create some intense and dramatic lighting.

I wanted to see what it would look like as a high-contrast, black and white image. It almost looks like a cartoon drawing.

Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish the new shots from the old ones, so I am going to continue to post new and recently updated shots on my blog page.

Here is some of my most recent work:

This one I actually took last summer while I was out watching the Perseid Meteor Shower. I was going through old, lost and long forgotten photos on my external hard drives, when I joyously stumbled upon this picture. The reason I was so excited is because I don’t even remember taking it.

Many times after a long photo shoot, I will quickly glance over all of the photos, pick one or two I like and sweep the rest under the carpet of my abandoned back-up devices. Here they will remain for months until one curious day when I browse through the treasures and old remains of times I can barely recall.

This photo was taken at Nicholas Sheran Lake at around midnight on a brisk night in November. I liked how the still water gave a crystal clear reflection and how the surrounding ice, projecting a gentle glow from the street lights, contrasted it nicely.

2009 marked the Centennial of the High Level Bridge in Lethbridge, Alberta. The Bridge itself is an awe-inspiring structure, with it’s vast height and a towering overtone. When the city allowed a local electric company to light up the bridge with giant flood lights, it added an electrifying presence that gave photographers and curious bystanders a new vantage point to see their familiar landmark in a new way.

This shot was taken on November 11, 2009. I was standing knee deep in the freezing river just to make sure I got the shot I wanted…

Never again! Although, I’m pretty sure I would do it again

This shot was also taken while the bridge was lit up. It was done multiple times between September and January, giving a wide variety of people a chance to see it. This one was taken on Dec 11, 2009. The combination of entirely overcast skies, along with freezing sub-zero temperatures, made the bright white halogens look like green sheets of light across the sky. From a distance, they almost resembled the Northern Lights. The thick cloud cover mixed with the light pollution from the city streetlights, gave the rest of the sky a noticeably orange hue.

Taken at sunrise on Jan 1, 2010 in Canmore, Alberta, this was not only the earliest I’ve ever been up on New Years Day, but also my quickest photographic start to a new year.  The way the ice was weathered around the trees looked like someone had planted the tree in a giant curling rock. The rings were so smooth and symmetrical it was unreal.

Murphy’s Law states that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. This is exactly why I gave up on sunrises for quite a long time. A typical sunrise photo-shoot for me used to involve waking up before dawn on a 30 below day, spending an hour or two with my tripod frozen to hands, just to see a sunrise that may as well have been monochromatic.

I was ecstatic when I actually observed real color! At first I thought that maybe I needed glasses…

This was taken just after sunrise on New Years Day. The sun was just above the frame on this shot, but it’s fiery ambiance still made it presence known in the reflection of the quiet stream. I really liked this little piece of jagged iced protruding from the frozen ground. The exposure itself was 4 seconds long.

This picture was taken at the same location as the last two, but a day earlier. Instead of early morning, it was about 3pm and the cloud cover gave this scenic landscape a mildly dry, yet pleasing atmosphere.

This spillway is also located in Canmore. It is right below a power plant, very close to the location of the previous three photos. At first glance, it wasn’t much to look at, but setting the Law of Conservation of Energy aside, I was determined to make something out of nothing. This is an 8 second exposure taken in broad daylight. I stacked up an ND8 filter combined with a circular polarizer to give the fast moving water a glassy, almost ice-like texture.

Here is a little collection of some of the shots I’ve done since July, 2009. There will be more on the way

Anyways, this picture was taken on May 2 (2009 ofcourse, I’m not that far behind). It was around midnight and a couple of friends and I were out and about messing around with our cameras and flashes. We stumbled (drove by is probably more appropriate) across this crazy looking tree, so we stopped and set up our gear and snapped a few shots. The light pollution from the CP Rail gave the horizon a hazy purple-ish glow and the flash that I held above my head gave the foreground a nice colorful daytime look.

As soon as I saw this particular tree, it reminded me of a fantasy world; something out of a J.R.R Tolkien book, a dramatic/surreal atmosphere you would only find in a fantasy movie, computer game or painting. Needless to say, I thought i’d make it even more interesting by spicing up the color and various other aspects of the photo. Normally, I am a minimalist when it comes to post-processing, but I thought it would be fun to see what it would look like as a “Fantasy Tree”.  :)

I am behind and have quite a few more photos to work on, so expect to see some “Noobs” in the very near future.

P.S. Thanks Jaime for letting me use your wizard and flash!

Jaime Vedres is a friend of mine and an amazing Lethbridge photographer, so if you haven’t checked out his work yet, I highly recommend it!

http://www.jaimevedres.com/

Or

http://www.jaimevedres.blogspot.com/