1607_3708 Light On the Buttes
The immensity of the sky in this place... it can bowl you over, leave you speechless, force you to stop talking and just stare, if you've eyes to see. This is the view up Butte Road, toward the buttes in Grasslands National Park. The high point is 70 MIle Butte, in the middle of the frame, mostly in shadow but with a patch of light on the very top. I've hiked it many times. Often, I prefer to hike to one of the surrounding heights of land, the better to photograph 70 Mile itself.
On this day, however, the story was in the sky. Even an ultra wide angle view can't convey the scale. Surprisingly, this is not one of those - a mid-range lens, zoomed to 48mm, therefore a more or less "normal" view. The show was all around me. A dancing, wondrous interplay of light and shadow; call it a gift, a blessing, a meteorological phenomenon, a random piece of photographer's luck. I kept stopping the car; it was just too good. Fortunately, traffic was light...
I've spent the past week extolling the virtues and challenges of this under-appreciated middle prairie province of western Canada. I had to balance yesterday's image of a forlorn, abandoned house in winter with this expansive, dramatic bit of summer sweetness. If the contrast is jarring, well, that's what this place is all about. Weather rules everything here. You learn to accommodate its whims. In harsh conditions, you find a hole and hunker down; when it turns benign, the sensation is palpable. Raw beauty, no artifice. There's no place like it.
Photographed near Val Marie, Saskatchewan (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 2016 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
1607_3708 Light On the Buttes
The immensity of the sky in this place... it can bowl you over, leave you speechless, force you to stop talking and just stare, if you've eyes to see. This is the view up Butte Road, toward the buttes in Grasslands National Park. The high point is 70 MIle Butte, in the middle of the frame, mostly in shadow but with a patch of light on the very top. I've hiked it many times. Often, I prefer to hike to one of the surrounding heights of land, the better to photograph 70 Mile itself.
On this day, however, the story was in the sky. Even an ultra wide angle view can't convey the scale. Surprisingly, this is not one of those - a mid-range lens, zoomed to 48mm, therefore a more or less "normal" view. The show was all around me. A dancing, wondrous interplay of light and shadow; call it a gift, a blessing, a meteorological phenomenon, a random piece of photographer's luck. I kept stopping the car; it was just too good. Fortunately, traffic was light...
I've spent the past week extolling the virtues and challenges of this under-appreciated middle prairie province of western Canada. I had to balance yesterday's image of a forlorn, abandoned house in winter with this expansive, dramatic bit of summer sweetness. If the contrast is jarring, well, that's what this place is all about. Weather rules everything here. You learn to accommodate its whims. In harsh conditions, you find a hole and hunker down; when it turns benign, the sensation is palpable. Raw beauty, no artifice. There's no place like it.
Photographed near Val Marie, Saskatchewan (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 2016 James R. Page - all rights reserved.