Wildlife in the Canadian Rockies I

In the latter half of our time in Canada, we were fortunate to see a lot of wildlife, including some impressive large game that I will feature in a future blog entry. One animal, however, was a daily companion. Although I would call this cute creature a chipmunk, our guide to Canadian fauna called it a squirrel. In any case, they were everywhere, and they lacked all fear of humans, even crawling into our backpack during a brief stop atop Sentinel Pass.

Day Four: Mt. Rundle over Vermillion Lake

On Day 3 in the Canadian Rockies, Stephanie and I drove the Icefields Parkway north from Lake Louise to Jasper National Park. It was an enjoyable day that included walking on Athabasca Glacier, hiking around Mt. Edith Cavell, and staying in a lovely chalet outside of Jasper, Alberta. Unfortunately, it was also a gray, rainy day, and none of the pictures from our third day of vacation were particularly impressive. I did take some shots of memorable stops along the way, and I'll link to them eventually.

But for now, I'll jump ahead to Day 4, when we left Jasper and headed back to Banff National Park for two nights in the town of Banff itself. Day 4 included a bear sighting, a return trip to Moraine Lake, and some shots of Mt. Rundle and its reflection in Vermillion Lakes.

This particular shot of Mt. Rundle illustrates one of the most fascinating aspects of the Canadian Rockies- namely, that they are remarkably different from the American Rockies. Mt. Rundle and many other mountains near Banff show their youth- they look like a continental plate that has been driven upwards after colliding with another plate, which is precisely what they are. Because they are so young, their eastern faces remain smooth, having not yet had time to have been textured by erosion.

Stephanie and I spent a lot of time comparing these young mountains to the mountains we know best, the Appalachians of western North Carolina, which are one of the oldest mountain ranges on Earth. One of the striking things to us was how two ranges so different in appearance could both be so beautiful.

Day Two: Moraine Lake

We spent our second day in Banff National Park at stunning Moraine Lake, one of the most beautiful sites I've ever seen. After driving through some incredible mountain views en route from the village of Lake Louise, we started our exploration of Moraine Lake by taking a wonderful hike through Larch Valley and onto Sentinel Pass, one of the highest mountain passes accessible by trail in the Canadian Rockies.

After retracing our steps to the lake, we rented a canoe, like those shown in the picture, for a lovely paddle around this gorgeous lake. In addition to the shot that I've shown on this blog entry, I also took some shots providing unencumbered views of Moraine Lake.

Day One: Takakkaw Falls

After leaving Emerald Lake, Stephanie and I headed to Takakkaw Falls, officially Canada's highest unbroken waterfall (Vancouver Island's Della Falls is higher overall, but it's largest drop is broken by a rock ledge). The lower portion of Takakkaw Falls drops an impressive 830 vertical feet, producing a spray that will obscure camera lenses 200 yards away.

My understanding from photography classes and books is that protocol for American photographers is to use long exposures at waterfalls to produce silky, blended images. Unfortunately, to get that kind of an exposure without bleaching out your image, you need to use a very small aperture opening. The day we visited Takakkaw was bright enough that my long exposure images bleached out, even with my highest f-stop. In the future, I hope to artificially increase my aperture options with a neutral density filter. For now, I'm taking solace that, unlike the preferred U.S. convention, apparently Japanese photographers prefer crisper waterfall images. Consequently, we'll just pretend that this picture was intended to as a tribute to British Columbia's large Japanese immigrant population.

I also used my tripod and the delay feature on my camera to take a similar image with Stephanie and I in it.

Day One: Emerald Lake, Yoho National Park

The first destination for Stephanie and I after arriving in the Canadian Rockies was British Columbia's Yoho National Park. We started our day at Emerald Lake (after our planned stop at Takakkaw Falls was temporarily detoured by a rock slide). As you can see from this photo, photography was difficult our first day (as well as a few subsequent days) because of cloudy skies that obscured many mountain tops. However, for a few moments at least, those clouds added some intrigue to this view, and I captured a few shots before the mountains were fully hidden.

A few notes on Emerald Lake itself- high above the lake, one can find one of the most important fossil beds known to evolutionary biologists, the famous Burgess Shale. The fossils found there by Charles Doolittle Walcott tell the story of the Cambrian Explosion, a period of dramatic diversification of marine body plans. My interest in these fossils dates back to reading Stephen Jay Gould's A Wonderful Life as a college student, a book I'd recommend to all biologists interested in evolution and in good science writing.

Banff National Park, Canadian Rockies

After six great days in the Canadian Rockies, Stephanie and I are back in Calgary this evening, with a scheduled departure for the U.S.A. tomorrow morning.

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to post pictures from our trip. This picture may have been the best shot that I took all week. I took it last Friday morning, as Steph and I drove to Moraine Lake, above Lake Louise, Alberta. Our entire day at Moraine Lake was fantastic, and the view on our way there, captured here, was the first of many highlights.

Crepe myrtles in bloom

From February through August in North Carolina, you can pretty much determine the date by noting which trees are in bloom. It starts around Valentine's Day with a burst of pinks before the leaves are even on the trees. The white Bradford Pears soon follow, and after that, a procession of colors takes you all the way into June.

When summer first arrives, it seems as though the trees are done blossoming, and other than the rhododendrons in the mountains, North Carolina becomes mostly green. However, it's only a brief pause before the summer's grand finale- in late June, the magnificent crepe myrtles begin to explode with color.

I love crepe myrtles. Their pink, fuscia, and lavender blooms have amazed me each of the seven summers we've spent here. Unfortunately, I think that they are difficult to photograph. My pictures never seem to capture their magnificence. This shot is no exception, but it is the best shot I took out of about forty yesterday. This particular tree sits just up the road from our place, in a boulevard leading into our subdivision.

Starting tomorrow, "Lucky Shots" will probably go silent for about 10 days. Stephanie and I are headed to Canada for a vacation, and unless our modest accomodations have unexpected internet access, I won't be able to post any shots until we return. Once we're back, I'm sure that the next several weeks worth of entries will be devoted to the shots we take up there.

-N

Raleigh hydrangeas with flash

This is the same shot that I posted yesterday, except that I used a fill flash here rather than just taking advantage of the ambient lighting. I'm curious as to whether visitors like this shot or the original one better.

One caveat to this vote- how you see the pictures will certainly be dependent on your monitor. As a result, there are two variables- personal preference and monitor settings.

Raleigh hydrangeas

For the next few days, Stephanie is pet sitting for a family in Raleigh. For a city of 300,000 people, Raleigh is unexpectedly liveable. The house where Stephanie is staying is magnificent. The home itself is gorgeous, and the backyard looks like it's taken out of a magazine. I went over there for a few hours this evening to see Stephanie and to photograph the beautiful yard. This was one of my favorite shots- in large part because hydrangeas may be Steph's favorite flower.

Eno River State Park

Today, I took my parents, who are visiting from Illinois, to Eno River State Park west of Durham. We went for a nice walk along the park's beautiful, rocky namesake. After spending 30 minutes taking pictures of a sunning turtle, I turned to this dragonfly for about 3 quick shots. As it turned out, the turtle pictures were nothing special, but I thought that this one turned out pretty well.

A little lesson for a little mind

Today, Riley learned something about our new place. There's a balcony-area overlooking our living room. Since we moved in three weeks ago, he had failed to make the connection that he could look over the balcony and see the room below.

Today, he finally made the connection, and I was able to catch his post-discovery excitement with a photograph. It's amazing how proud he can be of himself over such a simple thing.

In fairness to Riley, we have had the balcony blocked with boxes until recently, so although Mensa isn't likely to send Riley an invitation anytime soon, he hasn't exactly had daily opportunities to figure this puzzle out before now.

The End of an Era

I took this shot in the Fall of 2001 when I was a first year graduate student rotating in Dr. Bob Duronio's fruit fly genetics lab. These are chromosome spreads from larval brains. Whereas humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes, fruit flies have only 4. In this image, the chromosomes from two cells are shown. From the cell at the top, you can make out all 8 chromosomes. The pair of X chromosomes are "v" shaped, whereas both chromosomes 2 and 3 are "x" shaped. Chromosome 4 is very small and looks like a dot (in the cell in the lower right, only one Chromosome 4 is visible. The other is likely hidden below one of the larger chromosomes).

I came across these and similar images as I was sorting through a stack of CDs on my desk at work. After almost six years as a research scientist at UNC, I'm hanging up my pipetteman for the last time today. As I've been sorting through six years worth of accumulated belongings, I've found myself being reminded of many things I'd long ago forgotten. As such, it seemed fitting to use today's blog entry to take a trip down memory lane to the beginning of my graduate career. These have been six wonderful years.

Moving forward, it's possible that I may never again be a scientist by title or by trade, but I hope that I am always a scientist by mindset.

Name that plant...

I took this shot at Raleigh's Ralston Arboretum last month, but I failed to note what this plant is called. For somebody who majored in biology and did graduate work in a biological science, I'm a pretty miserable botanist. Consequently, I could use some help. Does anybody know what this thing is called?

Old Well II

This shot of UNC's Old Well was taken from the vantage point I've historically favored, across Cameron Avenue, just west of South Building.

For those who have not visited Chapel Hill, the Old Well is one of the two most recognizable landmarks on the UNC campus. Tradition says that freshmen should drink from the well the night before classes begin for good luck. Unfortunately, just down the road at NC State, tradition says that students should drive drive down I-40 to Chapel Hill in order to urinate in the the same well. As a result, I favor hygiene over history and photograph the well without drinking from it.

Old Well I

I took this picture of the Old Well in April when the azaleas were in bloom. Many azaleas were hit hard by a late freeze this year, and although the flowers at the well maybe weren't as spectacular as they sometimes are, they were still pretty impressive.

This particular shot is interesting because I didn't love it immediately. Honestly, I didn't pay it much attention at all. But in recent weeks, it's become one of my favorite Old Well shots that I've ever taken (and I've taken hundreds). As you'll see later in this series, usually my preferred view of the well is from a distance (for those familiar with Chapel Hill, I'm normally standing across Cameron in front of or beside South Building). This is a rare photo that I took from a different perspective. I like how the well emerges from the flowers.

Those who visit our home in Durham may recognize it as one of the two framed photos I put in our office. However, those who visit from Illinois are perhaps less likely to notice my shots, instead distracted by the adjacent wall with three framed newspapers, two of which celebrate UNC's victory over Illinois in the 2005 NCAA Mens Basketball Championship game.

No new shots in a month

Yesterday, I got out with my camera for the first time since early June. Unfortunately, I only took about five shots and none were keepers. It's been a hectic stretch, and something has needed to give. That something has been photography.

We're headed to Canada in two weeks, and I'm certain that we'll get some great shots up there. In the meantime, I think I'm going to spend the next two weeks putting up a series of shots of the Old Well at the University of North Carolina. In the unlikely event that I take some decent new shots between now and then, I'll preempt the series.

Waxing gibbous

As I'm still having trouble finding time to get out to take new shots, here's another older shot. I took this picture on the evening of New Year's Day in 2007.

Moon shots are more difficult than I ever would have expected. I fully utilized my camera's optical zoom for these shots in order to capture as much detail as possible. However, even with a tripod, it becomes difficult to keep the moon in the view at that magnification.

Additionally, the fuller the moon, the brighter the reflection off of the moon. As a result, I was using extremely fast shutter speeds for these shots, typically at least 1/500 second. On a full moon, even my maximum shutter speed of 1/1000 second is often too long to capture any detail, in which case the moon comes out looking like a big white ball without discernible features.