Canadian Nature Photographer Newsletter August 1, 2010

Dear Friends summer is almost half over and I hope you are having opportunities to get out and photograph. I have been out every weekend photographing shore birds, prairies and badlands. I finally had an opportunity to photograph a prairie rattlesnake, something I have been looking forward to for several years. I also recently taught a course on flower photography at Olds College and played with creative vignetting and using water drops as magnifying lenses in front of the flowers. I have posted 5 new articles since the last newsletter and hope you get a chance to check them out. Click on any of the links below to be taken to the full article or see my articles section on the web site.

1. How to Photograph Flowers

Water Drop technique for photographing Flowers

2. Prairie Photography Expedition - Halle Flygare and I traveled 1400 km from Calgary to Saskatchewan looking for prairie photographs and we found beautiful canola fields, pronghorn antelope, numerous hawks and a prairie rattlesnake. Read more..

3. Red Rock Coulee is like visiting the planet Mars it features large 2 meter diameter concretions that formed under an ancient sea. Read more..

4. Writing-on-Stone is a hauntingly beautiful place in southern Alberta that relatively few photographers know about. It features tall sandstone hoodoos, pictographs and petroglyphs left behind by Blackfoot warriors during their vision quests. Read more.

5. Dinosaur Country - Alberta's Badlands. Alberta's badlands are one of the most unusual and photogenic places to visit. The word Badlands comes from the translation of the French phrase, les mauvaises terres a traverser, meaning - bad lands hard to cross. The Badlands follows the Red Deer river for much of Southern Alberta and are accessible at Drumheller, Dinosaur Provincial Park and Dry Island Buffalo Jump. These areas have in common the alternating coloured bands of sediment with little vegetation except sagebrush, cacti and a few grasses. The river banks are lined with old cottonwood trees that provide shelter to over a 150 species of birds. White tailed deer, mule deer, coyotes, rabbits and badgers are found here. Temperatures in the valley can reach over 40° C in summer and then drop below freezing at night .. read more.

Not sure what sort of pictures August will bring forth, but my plan is to hike the Whale Back ridge and head down to Waterton National Park. I am also working hard on getting up to speed on new features in Photoshop CS5 which is turning out be a real memory hog - you will need 3 GB or RAM or more to get satisfactory performance.

Until the next newsletter, I hope you are enjoying the summer and that you are getting some great shots.

Sincerely

Robert Berdan