Smoke in the Canadian Rockies

When I look at my photo archive I’m impressed by how much we accomplished on this date in 2017, all of it accompanied by varying amounts of smoke from forest fires. The first picture shows a view along the Trans-Canada Highway as we drove east that morning from our hotel in Golden, British Columbia.

We continued on to two scenic and therefore much-visited lakes in Alberta’s Banff National Park. The photograph above shows Moraine Lake, with its richly colored water, later in the morning. The view below lets you see how sunshine radiated through the clouds and smoke over Lake Louise as dusk approached.

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

I like clarity and contrast in my photographs.

Yes, I usually do like clarity and contrast in my photographs. If what’s in front of me doesn’t lend itself to those qualities, then I go with the toned-down reality that’s available. Here from September 8th along Highway 93 in British Columbia’s Kootenay National Park are two takes—one horizontal, the other vertical—on a formerly burned forest hazily visible through the smoke of the latest fires in the area. Subtlety can be special, too.

© 2017 Steven Schwartzman

Bishop’s Cap Mountain and more

When you scanned the previous picture from Glacier National Park on August 31st, did your glance get caught on the rocky protrusion way off to the left in the same way it probably did on the much more prominent Pollock Mountain? This time you get a closer of view of Bishop’s Cap Mountain, which is the name of that other peak. Despite the appearance of blue sky, there were clouds, and they moved rather quickly. You see the shadows of two of them, one to the right of the picture’s center and the other in the lower left corner. Intruding itself at the lower right, immobile, is a flank of Pollock Mountain.

So much depended on where I looked. The picture of Bishop’s Cap shows a clearer view than I had for much of the rest of the day. Compare that to the photograph I took two-and-a-half minutes later, also from the Logan Pass visitor center, facing in a different direction.

© 2017 Steven Schwartzman

Eerie

The smoky haze that accompanied us westward across Glacier National Park on August 30th stayed with us when we drove back the other way the next day. In some places the haze hovered above the remains of trees from a previous forest fire, reddening the sun and turning the world eerie.

© 2017 Steven Schwartzman

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em

Following the adage in the title, sometimes I was able to make artistic use of the smoky haze from forest fires that was with us for much of our stay in the Canadian Rockies. In today’s picture, from the morning of September 7th along the Trans-Canada Highway in Yoho National Park, British Columbia, the haze abstracted the mountains into overlapping margins whose darkness decreased as the distance increased. The resulting minimalist photograph keeps reminding me of a classical Chinese landscape painting.

© 2017 Steven Schwartzman