Photographing a Lonely Winter Day in December

By Dr. Robert Berdan
December 22, 2013

It's three days before Christmas, I roll out of bed at 7:00 am, it's still dark outside, I shower, dress and wait for my friend, Kamal Varma to drop by at 7:30 am. We grab a quick breakfast at MacDonalds and head east out of Calgary. It's -20°C, cold but not too cold. As we drive east toward Airdrie there is ice fog. Our plan was to look for snowy owls in the Irricana area. I drive down many of the back roads and we see some mule deer, white tailed deer, magpies, gray Partridges, ravens, snow buntings and several coyotes. The coyotes take off as soon as we stop the car. We encountered one deer that appeared to have been shot and only its head removed by a poacher and we just shake our heads. (Nikon D300s with 70-200mm lens).

The sky is completely white and appears to merge with the foreground. Barns, fences, trees and various irrigation equipment protrudes from the snow fields and we stop to photograph the interesting patterns. Everything appears in black and white except for some grass that pokes through the snow in places.

 

Irrigation pipe and wheels against the snow

Irrigation equipment in snow covered field fades off into the distance

Old storage sheds in a field

Two trees against a curtain of white sky

A few blades of wheat poke through the snow that forms a white canvas.

A pattern of cattail stalks grabs my attention as they recede into the distance.

We found several large flocks of snow buntings (Plectrophenax nivalis) feeding on and next to the road.
They feed on seeds, flies and other insects and buds on migration.

We often saw ravens feeding on dead wildlife such as deer next to the road.

White-tailed deer leaps through the snow and displays its bright white tail.

Mule deer looks back at me while I photograph her from the road.

Large group of Mule deer congregate north east of Calgary.

Mule deer aggregate in groups of 10 or more and feed together on the side a hill north east of Calgary.

Gray Partridge (Perdix perdix) are found primarily in the west in agricultural fields with crops such as corn, wheat and oats. Most of these birds are non-migratory. Hunters often call these birds hungarian partridges. The adults have a cinnamon coloured face, with a gray neck and black banding. The eat mostly seeds and row crops, green leaves in spring and insects when breeding. Photographed with a Nikon D300S, 300 mm f/2.8 lens.

Next to the road this field seems to merge with the white sky in the distance.

Some of the fences had a thin layer of rime and hoar frost

Fence and old cabin in the field

Thin layer of frost covers this fence.

I always find the repetition of fence poles in a snowy field interesting. This fence had two size of posts short and long ones.

In places trees form a fence line

In this photograph the snow covered field appeared to merge with the white sky. This image reminds me of the "stupid" artI have seen in several art galleries like the Smithsonian where the curator hung up a blank white canvas and nothing else. Without a building, fence, tree or road it's very difficult to make out where the horizon ends and the sky begins.

 

An old barn in the snow. I scanned the windows checking for a Great horned owl and hoping to see one perched there.

 

We stopped in Bieseker for lunch and asked some of the patrons if they might have seen any snowy owls, some had seen one a little further up the road. Folks seemed excited about Christmas and were generally chatty. After lunch we headed east toward Drumheller and then south again down more back roads. I had brought my Samsung Galaxy III phone in order to test its camera features and use the GPS with Google's mapping feature. The maps were great and showed me exactly where we were. I took some panoramas with the camera phone and a few pictures (see top banner image), but focusing was difficult with the phone camera in bright light. I felt so much more comfortable photographing with my DSLR cameras and although we complained about not seeing any snowy owls that day - we both acknowledge how great it was just to be outside exploring the country side with our cameras RB.