Every summer we spend up to 2 glorious weeks hiking in Willmore Wilderness Area.  It is a beautiful setting.  It's hard work getting my butt up onto a ridge (particularly given the fact that I'm lugging my camera gear up as well!), but the stunning views always make it worthwhile.  This year I took a panorama up on one of those ridgelines and I'm so happy I did.  The photo below is actually eight separate images that I then "stitched" together.  You can see my husband, Peter, on the far right hiking up to the top! 

So my last post was about my newly invigorated love of macro photography, and already that love has been pushed aside for another!  I sound like I have a problem with photography-infidelity :)  Ah well... variety is the spice of life.  My new love?  Soft and creamy and dreamy waterfalls!  It has been great learning how to take these photos - particularly on bright sunny days (when it's much more difficult to get the result I like).  The trick is a long shutter speed, but you have to balance that with what the natural light level is.  If not, you'll have a nice soft water effect, but everything will be much too bright and over-exposed.  So, what's the trick?  A variable neutral density filter, that's what!  This way I can trick the camera into thinking it's much darker outside than it really is and hence a long exposure won't blow everything out.  Cool eh?  These "waterfalls" I was photographing are really only creeks, so I'm looking forward to hunting down and shooting some of the big ones!  Ahhh... so much photography to play with and so little time...

I am just back from two weeks of hiking in the beautiful, yet rugged, Willmore Wilderness Area in Alberta, Canada.  It was an adventurous couple of weeks, but of course I found time to pull out my camera and tripod.  One of the great outcomes from this trip is a new found (or maybe newly invigorated is a better choice of words) love of macro photography!  I had a great time hunting down suitable subjects and then working to try to get some interesting shots.  I love the photograph of this mushroom for exactly that reason... I find it interesting!  I'm used to looking at mushrooms from a height of 5'3" (yes, I'm a shorty).  With my macro lens I was inspired to change that up.  This shot was taken when I was laying flat on the ground.  In fact I had to scrunch myself down as much as possible to get the angle of looking up into the mushroom cap.  I love the ripples and waves ~ it almost looks fluid!  Seeing the world from a different angle is inspiring to me.  I hope to share more macro photography with you in the future!  In the meantime, I'm also going to share this macro shot with my friends at www.rocktheshotforum.com.  They have a great contest going on right now for macro photography; check it out!