The First Canola for 2014

On Sunday I made a trip up north of Ballarat where there are some nice canola crops underway, and came across this nice view at Lawrence, which is about 6kms west of Smeaton. I got here just in time, only managed to get 7 images as the sun was fading really fast. In fact this is the first of those seven as  the others had already lost that nice bright sun on them. That's Mt Moorookyle in the background...this is a spot that's worth a re-visit, and soon!

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Reeds

On Saturday I had plans of heading north out of Ballarat to do a bit more canola scouting, however I quickly realised the lack of clouds that way would leave me with little sky to work with, so instead I headed west out to Lake Learmonth. Grabbed a few images there as the clouds continued to fade away, so a last minute dash a bit further south to Lake Burrumbeet at least gave me some colour and clouds and reeds to play around with.

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Flying High Over Alaska

When we arrived at the small town of McCarthy in Wrangell - St.Elias National Park, after a 60 mile drive on dirt roads, we had an afternoon to fill in and so we decided to the the Old Mine Tour. However, the driver of the shuttle bus mentioned to us about taking a flight over the park...conditions were perfect that day, and when we got up to the Mine Tour office we learnt that a 70 minute flight was leaving right away and that there were 2 extra seats available. So a quick change of plan had us flying high above the park in a small plane that afforded us some amazing views. They say you really need to get above the parks in Alaska for early appreciate them as it gives you some sense of the massive scale. Wrangell - St. Elias is the largest USA National Park and this flight gave a small glimpse of its massive size - 25 percent of the park is glaciers, the largest active glacial area in North America.
Its hard to show scale in the 2nd image here...those blocks are the size of apartment buildings! This was my first flight in a small plane and was a great introduction to shooting out the window, of which I got to do plenty of later on in the trip.

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Friday Finale

A nice end to Friday and the week at Lake Wendouree when some nice sift colours managed to escape the murky gloom right on sunset. The trees around the lake are starting to bud with new spring growth, before long they'll be full of leaves as another cycle begins.

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Zion Keeps Getting Better

We have been to Zion National Park in Utah 4 times now. On my previous visit there in March 2013 I came home with an image that I was really happy with and was going to use it as the main highlight image for Zion in my National Park book. However, I will have to change that way of thinking, as the images I just captured little more than a week ago are, I believe, better....this is one of the Watchman from down low on the Virgin River when all the conditions lined up for something very special. This night we were sitting in the car up on the road above the river eating spinach lasagne,  with an ever watchful eye on the light....as soon as it started to get interesting I was off down the embankment and came across this location. Most people shoot the Watchman from the bridge further upstream, so I was happy to come away with something quite different for this iconic view.
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Clarkes Hill Collection

On Thursday I headed out on a wet, grey late afternoon to the Clarkes Hill area, east of Ballarat. As you can see from the first one here it was grey and misty, this view to Kangaroo Hills looking north. Then a couple of flocks of egrets flew past heading east, perhaps looking for some finer weather as it did look a bit clearer that way. I moved the car to another spot where I could see the sky opening up above Wombat Hill, hoping for some fireworks to end the day. I waited a while without much luck, then headed for home, and just over the hill I was greeted with this fine finale. Quite a nice set from what initially looked likely to fade away into the grey.

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Alaskan Waterfall Wonders

As most of you know I'm a huge fan of waterfalls in all shapes and sizes, so you can imagine how excited I was when I came across this sight. This was on day 3 of the recent trip when we did a full days guided hike across and over and around the Root Glacier in Wrangell - St. Elias National Park. The day started with quite a lot of sunshine, though I was quite pleased when it clouded up as this really brings out the blues in the ice, and the dramatic skies matched the ice of the glacier perfectly. We didn't cover as much of the glacier as most groups do - we did the hike with a couple from Holland and one of them was very keen to stop as often as I was to capture the many amazing views on the glacier. And we got to celebrate Debbie's birthday as well, having lunch right out in the middle of the icy field. Certainly a great start to the trip!

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