ISSUE # 08 * NOVEMBER 2013
www.northernlandscape.org
NORTHERN LANDSCAPE
HAVING COFFEE WITH ANNDIXON
NORTHERN WINDS: THE CALL OF THE WIND? THE BIG CHALLENGE
THIS IS (HI)STORY! AN AUSIE PHOTOGRAPHY TUTORIAL HOW TRAVELS THROUGH CANADA II TO MAKE THINGS FLY? (HOVER/ LEVITATION EFFECT) FEATURED WORK
COVER Maligne Lake, Canada (please view large) by AnnDixon CANON EOS 350D & Canon 18mm – 55mm lens Maligne Lake is a lake in Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada. It is famed for the colour of its water, the surrounding peaks, the three glaciers visible from the lake and Spirit Island, one of the most photographed locations in the world. The lake is located 44 km (27 mi) south of Jasper town, and is accessible by motor vehicle, including shuttle buses from Jasper. Boat tours run to Spirit Island in the spring to autumn season. The 44 km Skyline Trail, Jasper’s most popular, highest and above treeline, multi-day hike, begins at Maligne Lake and finishes near the town of Jasper. Other popular day hikes include the Opal Hills and Bald Hills loops. Winter activities include cross-country skiing. Maligne Lake is approximately 22.5 km (14.0 mi) long and is 97 m (318 ft) at its deepest point, in the south end of the lake. It averages 35 m (115 ft) in depth. It sits at approximately 1,670 m (5,480 ft) asl. Easily visible from the Maligne Lake Day Lodge are Leah and Samson Peaks1 and Mount Paul to the east, and Mounts Charlton, Unwin, Mary Vaux and Llysfran Peak to the south and west. The Charlton, Unwin and Maligne glaciers are visible from the lake, which boasts a self sustaining population of introduced rainbow trout and brook trout. It is a popular spot for sport fishing, kayaking and canoeing. Parks Canada maintains two camping sites, accessible only by canoe, at Fisherman’s Bay and Coronet Creek. Maligne Lake is fed and drained by the Maligne River, which enters the lake on its south side, near Mount Unwin and drains the lake to the north. Maligne Lake, as well as Maligne River, Maligne Mountain, and Maligne Pass, takes its name from the French word for malignant or wicked. The name was used by Father Pierre-Jean De Smet (1801–1873) to describe the turbulent river that flows from the lake (in the spring), and soon spread to the lake, canyon, pass, mountain and range. It is also possible that early French traders applied the name to the river for its treacherous confluence with the Athabasca River.
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FROM THE EDITOR It is a great pleasure to meet again! One more month, one more magazine... We have a lot of news for you and a lot more are yet to come! For starters, in case you still haven’t noticed, we have a brand new shiny website. From now on our website is responsive which means that you are able to see it from your smart phone or pad with no problemo. We will now be able as well to comment on the tutorials, so that you can give your perspective into the subject we are talking about on the tutorial. All feedback is welcome, but just be nice!
Editor Chief
You probably also already noticed that we are having now the articles available (all of them: Northern winds, This is (Hi)story and Facts. We will probably not be having all the articles available in our website – due to copyright issues of articles where some authors do not wish to showcase their text and/or photographs outside of the mag – but we will have as many as possible!
Web site
João Figueiredo
Test readers Charles Kosina, Alyson Kosina
Graphic Artist João Figueiredo
Tutorial by João Figueiredo
www.northernlandscape.org
E-mail contact info@northernlandscape.org
Featured artist AnnDixon
If you are a visitor to our website you also noticed that we have now a poll. I will be trying to develop this feature and one day in the feature we will be running our BIG Challenges right there on our website. As previously explained, Redbubble is not really the most supportive company in the world (quite much on the opposite I would say) and therefore we are smoothly and slowly moving out. This is a change that will not happen in the next month or so, but perhaps in one or two years from now. We will see how things go! For now I will not unveil more secrets, this is enough so far. So go on and enjoy your magazine, next month I will probably have more news for you... Your host João Figueiredo
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INDEX 02 About the cover 03 From the editor & technical data 06 Northern winds - The call of the wild? 14 October features ~ Pure nature 40 NLM photo tutorial #8 - How to make things fly? (hover/ levitation effect) 48 October features ~ Man touched 68 This is (hi)story! ~ An Ausie travels through Canada II 92 October features ~ Man made 110 The BIG Challenge ~ October 118 Having coffee with AnnDixon + her Featured works 126 Northern Landscape: Some facts 131 Back cover artist 132 Back cover 4 • Northern Landscape Magazine
THIS AMAZING MAGAZINE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY
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Norden winds
The call of the wild? Ian Maclellan is a member of the Northern Landscape community and lives and works in Scotland after having spent many years away. As well as photography, Ian is undertaking postgraduate research into aspects of Scottish environmental history. He also writes and manages a scrap-book of photography and writing on his blog at http://diasporran.wordpress.com/. The landscapes of the North are dominated by wild, wide and open spaces. Our ideas about these places and our photographs of them often involve a sense of wilderness. In this article, one Northern Landscape contributor looks at how some of our ideas about landscape have been shaped by history and culture and wonders just how ‘wild’ our wildernesses are.
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hat are we photographing when we photograph landscape? This is a question we all should ask ourselves, but probably don’t consider often enough. Answers might range from “nature” to “scenery”, even “beauty”. As a landscape photographer, I think it’s important to have an understanding of where the idea of “landscape” comes from, what informs our choice of subject, and how we interpret it.
Northern Landscape is understandably full of images of the “wild” - mountains, forests, rivers, lakes. Are these truly the wildernesses we thing they are? And how did these subjects (first for painters and poets, later photographers) come to symbolise The North? As a Scottish photographer and researcher, I’ll use the example of my own country to explore these issues.
The mountains of Wester Ross - typically “wild” scenery in the north of Scotland First some background. Until eighteenth century, most people in lowland and urban Europe didn’t regard mountainous regions as beautiful. Instead, they were dangerous, threatening places with hostile climates, hostile animals and often hostile peoples. In Scotland, the highlands and islands of the north and west were regarded by lowlanders of the south and east as a barbarous region and the landscape was viewed in similar terms - a dark, brooding, menacing place with difficult roads, dangerous mountain passes and little in the way of comfort for the civilized traveller. When these more remote regions became more accessible to outsiders, attitudes began to change. As the Romantic movement gathered pace, writers and artists re-
interpreted the wild places of Britain and began to contrast the “beautiful” (gentle pastoral and arable landscapes) with the “sublime” experience of great cliffs and vertiginous mountain paths. “Sublime” did not signify beauty, but rather the ability to provoke intense reactions, a sense of greatness. A mountain might be sublime (imposing, intimidating, threatening), but not necessarily beautiful. Both the sublime and the beautiful could, however, be “picturesque”. In Scotland, the great Romantic writer Walter Scott (author of “Ivanhoe” and “Rob Roy”) and others championed the re-imagining of Scotland which adopted the Highlands as a symbol of the whole country. This process meant that symbols of mountain culture tartan, bagpipes, Gaelic language and the mountains they came from - were
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More “sublime” mountains appropriated as symbols of Scotland as a whole. This “discovery” of the highlands came alongside a long term process in which highland society changed almost completely. This process started long before, but accelerated after the last Jacobite rebellion in 1746. “Improving” landowners in both the lowlands and the highlands restructured their tenancies for farmers and peasants and, in the highlands, behaved less like clan Chiefs and more like landlords. They also experimented with new ways of exploiting the land, like sheep ranching, deer forests (treeless hunting preserves for the very wealthy) and even planned villages intended to develop new industries. Eventually, population pressure and some of these new techniques, which required more land than people, meant that folks moved from traditional settlements to planned villages, crofts (smallholdings), or to the lowlands, or North America. This process of depopulation included, but wasn’t limited to, the infamous and historically controversial “Highland Clearances”, when landowners shifted tenants off the land, sometimes brutally, suddenly and on a large scale. Meanwhile, as the Industrial Revolution gathered pace and more and more people lived lives removed from “nature”, the wealthy escaped on holidays to the country. Industrialisation also meant trains, and trains meant quick travel to remote places, certainly by the time of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). 8 • Northern Landscape Magazine
Scotland’s mountains had attracted Southern visitors before, but during the Victorian era they became a playground, first for grouse shooting, deer stalking and salmon fishing, and later for less bloodthirsty sports. The landscape came to symbolise a kind of pure Eden, unspoilt by the grim industries that funded the leisure of the tourists and blackened the cities and the lungs of workers, typified by work of artists such as Landseer (who painted the original “Monarch of the Glen”). The social changes connected to industrialisation, agricultural “Improvement” and, in Scotland, the Clearances, also meant that fewer people actually lived and worked in the mountainous areas, adding to their sense of remote emptiness. In our minds, mountain areas stopped being places where people lived and worked and started to be places apart from everyday human existence. This idealised image of wild places is the basis for contemporary landscape aesthetics of the North. This magazine even divides images into three categories depending on how evident “man” is in the image. The absence of people and the idealisation of “untouched” landscapes is not new - back in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries many landscapes had no human figures, or only ones that were there only to emphasise scale or to add local colour. It seems that the more we have become urbanised, the more we have idealised “wilderness” until we now regard a “pure” landscape as one that has no
Buachaille Etive Mor (The Great Herdsman of Etive) - a photographer’s favourite in Glen Etive, Scotland) sign of human influence. Is this realistic? Even remote wildernesses are touched by humans, directly or indirectly: through climate change, pollution and exploitation of natural resources. Many of the wildernesses of the North are at least partly man-made. As well as the fence posts in the image of a Scottish mountain above, the absence of trees is also a result of human action. The presence of introduced species (in Scotland, chestnut and sycamore trees for example) or cultivated plants gives a hint of the man-made. Even natural woodland
was managed by humans - for cropping the wood, grazing animals, making charcoal or stripping oak bark for tanning leather. In some places, the absence of trees is the result of ancient human activity, in others, their presence is an obvious human addition; commercial forestry is very visible in Scotland. Water features and even geology can also be altered by humans, sometimes subtly and deceptively.
Loch Drunkie, near Aberfoyle, Scotland Northern Landscape Magazine • 9
Take for example this image of a loch and forest in the Trossachs of Scotland. Despite the appearance of a “natural” place, almost all the features are man-made. The loch is artificial - part of an extensive water management system that dams streams and enhances existing water features - and the trees that are planted are Norwegian spruce and larch (neither of which is native to Scotland). Yet this has the atmosphere of the “wild”.
As with trees, so with people. In a world with a rapidly rising population, we tend to think that this means there must be more people, everywhere, but actually in some remote regions (like the highlands of Scotland), populations declined in the nineteenth century though migration and the remaining population left traditional settlements for new villages and smallholdings. What this means for landscape is that many places where people once lived are now deserted.
Highland history writ small - Kilmory Oib - an abandoned settlement in Knapdale, Scotland, surrounded by modern plantations of spruce and larch, where once would have been farmland Indeed the late Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean draws the connection between the exodus, ancestors and trees in his poem Hallaig. The people and nature are not separate, they are interconnected:
The window is nailed and boarded through which I saw the West and my love is at the Burn* of Hallaig, a birch tree, and she has always been *Burn = a stream
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For the full English translation text of this and other poems see the Sorley MacLean web site. If people have lived on, managed, chopped down trees on, planted and otherwise tampered with the land, can we regard it as “wilderness”, even if it’s empty today? There may be wild places in Europe, some of them more wild than they used to be, but they’re not true “wilderness” in the sense of never
having been touched by human-kind. Of course colleagues who work with a bigger canvas - say in Canada or Alaska - have at their disposal vast areas with less obvious human influence, though even here precolonial native American land management, parks services, carbon emissions and atmospheric pollution have had their effects. It seems to me that the act of making a photograph (because we don’t just simply “take” them) is one that involves fantasy, imagination and escapism. When we create an image we create an impression, a suggestion of that the image represents, what it means. And how we understand this is influenced by the way we have learned, consciously or unconsciously, to understand
“landscape”. When we create images of “wild” places, we invite the viewer into a particular world, often one which we feel to be separate from the human and in many cases an idealised image of the “wild”: majestic mountains, sweeping vistas and big skies. But this is an act of creation and illusion. We are asking the viewer to buy into our version of the place we’re photographing. Perhaps by rethinking the human as having a part in “nature” and a place in shaping natural landscapes, our ideas of “wilderness”, and what we mean by landscape, and what landscape means to us, might change?
Another wild space? No: old, human-managed woodland
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ALL TEXTS AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY IAN MACLELLAN COPYRIGHT 2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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MAKE YOU
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UR SUGGESTION TO:
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October fe pure lands
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eatures scape 99 FEATURES 31 DAYS
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Assynt 2~ ~Ian Mac
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North Uist: Rocks and Clouds~ ~Kasia-D
On Stob Choire an t-Sneachda~ ~VoluntaryRanger
Barren rocks III (HDR)~ ~zumi
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afterglow~ ~Rebecca Tun
Watchet Summer Sunset~ ~kernuak
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Arethusa creek and peaks II~ ~zumi
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Loch Etive in Black and White~ ~kernuak
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Reflection~ ~Mark Gamblin
The Green Pool~ ~Mark Gamblin
Stormy Moors~ ~kernuak
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Vermillion Lakes and Rundle Mountain~ ~Vickie Emms
Seven Sisters Cliffs, East Sussex~ 22 • Northern Landscape Magazine ~Ludwig Wagner
Mourne Mountains, Northern Ireland~ ~Ludwig Wagner
Harris: The Great Expanse~ ~Kasia-D
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Don’t Stir the Water~ ~Kathleen M. Daley
Buachaille Etive Mor~ ~Ian Mac
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The Brecon Beacons~ ~Steve Liptrot
Garell Glen,Kilsyth,Scotland~ ~Jim Wilson
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Tree Swag~ ~Yannik Hay
From The Flåm Railway (2)~ 26 • Northern Landscape Magazine ~Larry Lingard-Davis
Pyramid Mountain~ ~Charles Kosina
In the heart of Primeval forest~ ~Remo Savisaar
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Striding Edge in winter.~ ~Justin Foulkes
Blue Sky~ ~julie08
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Kilve Pill under a Mackerel Sky~ ~kernuak
Grandeur~ ~Roxanne Persson
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Towards the blue sky~ ~Veikko Suikkanen
Forest Sunbeams~ ~Justin Foulkes
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On the way to Lom (1)~ ~Larry Lingard-Davis
Cathedral Mountain~ ~Charles Kosina Northern Landscape Magazine • 31
Fiery Sunset over Loch Leven~ ~kernuak
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Great Gable From Wastwater~ ~VoluntaryRanger
Gilmore Point~ ~PhotosByHealy
Wastwater And The Scafells~ ~VoluntaryRanger
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Lake Annette Jasper National Park~ ~Ron Finkel
Early morning at Wastwater~ ~Justin Foulkes 34 • Northern Landscape Magazine
Athabasca Falls - Canada~ ~Ron Finkel
Tavy Cleave, Dartmoor, Devon.~ ~Justin Foulkes
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Autumn in Wimbledon~ ~Ludwig Wagner Golden~ ~Line Svendsen
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Loch a’ Chàirn Bhàin agus Quinag~ ~Ranald
On the way to Lom (2)~ ~Larry Lingard-Davis
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NLM PHOTO T HOW TO MAKE THINGS FLY? (HOVER/ LEVITATION EFFECT) You don’t need to have super powers to make things levitate. Only a camera, Photoshop (or another software that works with layers and masks) and some time. I did this example in about 20 minutes, without even going out of the office! I think I am getting lazy... Read this tutorial and learn how to make things levitate/ hover without any complicated special effects, complicated tricks or expensive equipment!
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TUTORIAL #8
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S
hooting objects or people levitating is a lot easier than what it might look like. In this tutorial I try to explain how to do a very basic levitation effect so that you learn the grounds of the “how to” so that later on you can develop the process your own way. I am using Adobe Photoshop CC which does not differ a lot from other Photoshop versions. If you have another software that works with layers and masks (or a similar system), then go ahead and use it. Personally, I don’t know of any other, perhaps GIMP... So, let’s go for this, shall we?
THINGS TO HAVE IN CONSIDERATION BEFORE STARTING As I said, this does not imply the use of expensive equipment or complicated tricks, so you don’t even need to have a great camera. If you want you can even do this with your mobile phone or even with a point-andshoot camera. No need for advanced functionalities like RAW or others...
MATERIAL YOU WILL NEED:
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A camera as obvious!
A tripod, or something that can replace it, like a pile of books, a box, etc. Steady hands won’t do it...
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After you have picked a motif and a place, you will need appropriated “things” to be the support for what you want to levitate, no matter if it is a person or an object. These can be boxes, ladders, chairs, whatever really. No rules apply, you will need to have the necessary discernment to decide what to do according to your specific needs! You can see that in this example I used my
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own office, and a lens box and some piled post-it notes. We will be levitating a vase with a plastic plant. Creative, huh?
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Photoshop or another software that allows you to do the same. In this tutorial I am using Adobe Photoshop CC.
GETTING YOUR HANDS DIRTY!
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This is going to be very simple. After I chose my place and object to levitate, I imagined in my head how I wanted it to look like. Don’t underestimate this part! This tutorial is not about your Photoshop capabilities, it is about your imagination! So take your time to imagine the final result before you shoot and go from there.
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As you can see in the cover shot of this tutorial, I placed my object over a box and used some piled post-it notes to “simulate” some perspective so that the levitation wouldn’t be “plain vanilla”. In other words, to make it a little bit more interesting. There is also a very important fact: I am using a quite low point of shooting. So if I didn’t use this post-it notes trick, I would probably have problems with the bottom of the vase (due to the low shooting point, it would be logical to see the bottom. But because I am using a trick and actually not levitating the vase, I would not have any bottom to show). This could get unnoticed to many people, but for most of us, or perhaps to the most important audience – the ones who are more serious into photography – would certainly notice that there was something wrong with the perspective. Here in this tiny detail we can see the importance of the previous point... It is very important that no details or parts of the object your person/thing is standing on get in the front of what you are trying to levitate. Example: If you have a ladder with
a person on, make sure that the feet won’t stand behind any part of the ladder or otherwise you will have trouble later... The Image on the left shows exactly what in the vase I am talking about.
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Like the photographs below show, take two shots, one with your object/person and another without.
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Open both shots in Photoshop and paste/place the shot you have with your levitation target (people or object) on the one that is “clean”. This way we will have a layer with the clean shot in the bottom and the one with the your levitation target on top. This is exactly what we want!
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Take a look at the picture below:
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Many people don’t mind about this step, so if you don’t like or don’t care about having high detail or concern with details, then you might want to do the same. Unlock any blocked layers you might have blocked. Select both layers and go to the menu “Edit” and chose “Auto-Align layers”. Play a bit with the options according to your needs/wishes. In this tutorial, I just pressed “OK” directly and it worked. This will align both layers so that in case of anything went unexpectedly wrong during shooting (like the tripod has moved due to the vibration of the camera or some touch for instance), both layers will have matching features. This can be crucial for you! Northern Landscape Magazine • 43
Now it is time to add a layer mask. Select the top layer (the one that has your levitating target) and click on that tiny button to add a Layer Mask. This will allow us to hide/show the parts of the shot we want instead of erasing or cropping. This has so many advantages that I cannot talk about this over here. If you don’t get the concept, the best thing you can do is to make some research of your own about “Layer masks”.
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Now we are going to press “D” on our keyboard to make sure we have only the default colours in usage (which are black and white). Done? Ok, now press “B” on your keyboard and you will have the brush tool selected. You can pick a brush and a size that you prefer and depending on what you are hiding/showing. Now here is how the mask works: Make sure that the mask is selected on the layers tab and with the brush on black colour, paint to hide! Did you make a mistake and hide too much? No problemo! Take the white colour and paint on the same place to show what you have previously hidden. Great or what? See below how it shoud look like when you are paiting on the mask:
parts of your levitating target are hidden – your shot is basically done. From now on it is your personal taste and imagination that rule.
CONCLUSION: As you can see on the shot below and on the final result shot, I added a little bit of Drop Shadow on the table (via adding a dark circle, adding some transparency, Gaussian Blur and some perspective) so that the hovering would look a bit more “real”. As you can see the result is not really the most accurate as it would be if the hovering would be real because the shadow is completely wrong. But hey, like I said in the beginning of this tutorial, I am getting lazy! Besides, the goal of this tutorial is to teach you the ground of the concept. The rest has to come from you, from your own needs, goals and imagination! No one can tell you what to do...
(me applying the perspective onto the fake shadow)
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When you are done with your mask painting – you will be done as soon as all the
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So, don’t spare on imagination! Use all the tricks you want: Textures, light, shadows, perspectives, etc... Have fun!
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FINAL RESULT!
WANT TO SEND US YOUR TUTORIAL?
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US TO:
INFO@NORTHERNLANDSCAPE.ORG Northern Landscape Magazine • 47
Septembe man touch D
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er features hed 99 FEATURES 31 DAYS
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Winter Landscape~ ~Ludwig Wagner
The View At The End Of The Road~ 50 • Northern Landscape Magazine ~VoluntaryRanger
Farewell Summer~ ~jules572
Early morning in Ulvik - Norway~ ~Arie Koene
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Rundemannen viewed from Ulriken~ ~Algot Kristoffer Peterson
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Shadowy route 40~ ~zumi
Early Morning on the Thames~ ~Ludwig Wagner
Another View From The End Of The Road~ ~VoluntaryRanger
Barden Moor~ ~Kat Simmons
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Ring of Kerry - Ireland~ ~Arie Koene
Misty view, Loch Duich~ ~Stuart Blance 54 • Northern Landscape Magazine
The white boat~ ~Mark Williams
Islay: Kilnaughton Bay & Lighthouse~ ~Kasia-D
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Fallow Deer~ ~John Thurgood
Torridon clouds~ ~Ian Mac 56 • Northern Landscape Magazine
Saami tents at Olderfjord - Norway~ ~Arie Koene
Canoes on Pyramid Lake~ ~Charles Kosina Northern Landscape Magazine • 57
Joy~ ~LadyFi
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Muckross garden - Killarney - Ireland~ ~Arie Koene
The Sognefjord Light (1)~ ~Larry Lingard-Davis
Lighthouse Bovbjerg Fyr (Denmark)~ ~Dirk Wiemer
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Loch Ard, The Trossachs,Scotland~ ~Jim Wilson
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From The Flåm Railway (1)~ ~Larry Lingard-Davis
Old boat shed in Autumn~ ~PhotosByHealy
Tromsø Bridge and the Arctic Cathedral~ ~kernuak Northern Landscape Magazine
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Dusk over Bossington Hill~ ~kernuak
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Road Trip - Wasdale~ ~VoluntaryRanger
Burst of pink~ ~LadyFi
NT Property - Fountains Abbey~ ~Gavin68
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Foggy path~ ~Henrik Hansen Slioch From The A832~ ~VoluntaryRanger
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Autumn in Denmark~ ~Henrik Hansen
The Road To Elgol~ ~VoluntaryRanger
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This is (h
CHARLES KOSINA IS STILL GUIDING US THROUGHOUT THE AMAZING CANADA, VIS THE MOS BEAUTIFUL PLACES ON EARTH AND FIGHTING FOR SOME GOOD COFFE 68 • Northern Landscape Magazine
hi)story!
SITING SOME OF EE...
In this edition we keep on following the adventures of Charles Kosina throughout Canada... Northern Landscape Magazine • 69
P
art 1 of my article had us in Jasper, Alberta. But I may just backtrack slightly to the drive between 70 Mile House (yes that is the name of the town) and Little Fort. This includes a section of Highway 24 and is a very scenic drive along a high plateau through beautiful forests and past lakes. There are numerous resorts along this route. And whilst we did not take many photos, it is memorable for having the best cappuccino and hot chocolate that we experienced in our Canada and USA trip! Coming from Melbourne, Australia, arguably the world’s coffee capital (João disagrees with me on this point - but that’s another story!), I am very fussy about my coffee. The little resort, built by an Italian migrant, certainly was a great place to stop and relax for a while overlooking a beautiful lake and sipping our drinks. I had intended Part 2 to be the rest of our trip but once I started to sort out the photos I realised that it would have been ridiculously long. There is just so much to see along the Icefields Parkway and Bow Valley Parkway. So Part 3 will follow and take us to some equally spectacular scenery back to Vancouver.
THE ICEFIELDS PARKWAY This 230 km highway from Jasper to Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies would probably rate as the most scenic drive in the world. Ideally, many days or even weeks could be spent along here and not cover all the possibilities. But there are obvious problems as who has the time available? Also, there is limited accommodation along the
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COFFEE STOP
road which makes planning a real problem. Apart from campgrounds, the only places to stay are Sunwapta Falls Resort, 54 km south of Jasper, The Icefield Center at 103 km and Saskatchewan River Crossing Resort at 153 km. August is peak season so it can be difficult to get accommodation at these places. In the end we spent one night at Sunwapta Falls and two nights at Johnston Canyon Resort, which is between Lake Louise and Banff on the Bow Valley Parkway.
MOUNT EDITH CAVELL If you don’t like very narrow mountain roads, give it a miss. This mountain named after the famous nurse who was in Belgium in World War 1, and who was executed by the Germans in 1915 for aiding more than 200 Allied soldiers to escape. The mountain is only a few km south of Jasper, the road is sealed all the way but has a drop off on both sides so that if a wheel goes over the edge, severe tyre damage could result. There are warning signs about this both sides of the road, but meeting a car coming the other way means great care has to be taken to not drop a tire over the edge. Fortunately we survived this ordeal. Parking can be limited at the end of the road, so get there early. There is a steep, well formed track which leads to the viewpoint overlooking glaciers. In 2010, a huge portion of the glacier broke away. The resulting avalanche of debris and water from the lake below caused considerable damage down the valley and completely ruined some of the walking trails lower down.
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ANGEL GLACIER
Although we did have sunshine on this trip, we were looking into the sun which made exposures tricky at times. I converted two to black and white which seem to work better than the colour version. The pretty little creek is typical of many in the area.
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ATHABASCA FALLS
Thirty kilometres south of Jasper are the Athabasca Falls. Did I mention gloomy weather in Part 1? That’s exactly what we were served up again on this occasion. So to give full justice to these falls, I am also including a photo from July last year when we had brilliant sunshine and the spray created a double rainbow. This is also an extremely popular tourist bus stop so we had to compete with hundreds of people jockeying for the best photographic vantage points.
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ATHABASCA RIVER SUNWAPTA FALLS The resort we stayed at is a very short distance from these falls on the Sunwapta River. This made early morning access easy to get the good light and avoid most of the hordes of people.
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LOWER SUNWAPTA FALLS
SUNWAPTA RIVER
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There are in fact two Sunwapta Falls. Most of the hordes only visit the upper one as the lower one requires a slightly longer walk. I normally try to avoid having people in my nature shots, but in this case it’s unavoidable and at least they provide scale.
GLACIERS
STUTFIELD GLACIER
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STUTFIELD GLACIER CLOSEUP
ICEFIELDS CENTRE
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PARKWAY ROAD
ALONG ICEFIELDS PARKWAY 80 • Northern Landscape Magazine
There are numerous glaciers on the Columbia Icefield as we progress down the road. At 94 km south of Jasper is the Stutfield Glacier. This is more impressive than the Athabasca Glacier accessible from the Icefield Center. Last year we did the trip on the Ice Explorer, a specially built vehicle that takes you onto the Athabasca Glacier. It was worthwhile doing once, I guess, but a bit of a let down. Once on the glacier you are limited to a very small area to walk on, for safety reasons obviously. So we did not feel it justified a return visit this time. A coffee at the visitor center and some photos of the area sufficed.
BRIDAL VEIL FALLS
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PEYTO LAKE
BOW LAKE
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CROWFOOT GLACIER
PEYTO LAKE AND BOW LAKE Both of these lakes are very popular tourist stops. The very distictive Peyto Lake requires about a 20 minute walk up from the car park although tourist coaches can go to a parking lot at the top. The weather had started to deteriorate (again!) by then so the photos are not marvellous. Some enhancement was needed using NIK software. Above Bow Lake is the Crowfoot Glacier. By then the weather was getting so gloomy, we didn’t take a single photo of this glacier! But I have included one from our visit last year when the weather was perfect. I should also mention the numerous waterfalls visible from the road. To stop at every one would have extended travel time way
past what we could afford. Bridal Veil Falls, 14 km south of the Icefield Centre is typical of the kinds of waterfalls on the way.
JOHNSTON CANYON We didn’t stop in Lake Louise on the way down but branched off into the Bow Valley Parkway to Johnston Canyon Resort, our stop for two nights. We chose this rather than going on to Banff another 25 km further south. Alas, this was not a particularly good choice. Our accommodation was a cramped cabin with no cooking facilities and worst of all no WiFi. It was not even available in the restaurant attached to the resort.
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CASTLE MOUNTAIN
It did have one advantage, however, in that it is right on the canyon where a walking trail takes you up past numerous waterfalls. In places there is a catwalk attached to a cliff face and I admire the engineering feat that was required to do this. But the people! It is obviously a favorite place to visit and I think half the population of Banff must have been there. In places we had to queue for the best vantage point for photos. At one point is a tunnel through the hillside and that really was impossibly crowded.
WATERFALL
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JOHNSTON CANYON CATWALK
TUNNEL ENTRANCE
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TUNNEL EXIT
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One of the nights in Johnston Canyon we had an electrical storm. Now that was impressive with the thunder echoing around the mountains for long periods.
Not far north of Johnston Canyon is the imposing Castle Mountain, 2766 meters tall, so named in 1858 because of its castle like appearance.
WATERFALL 3
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BANFF Banff is well known as a ski resort, but it is certainly very popular in summertime. The Fairmont Banff Springs hotel is known around the world. Close by are the Bow River Falls. A mixture of sunshine, clouds and rain was ideal for our photos. We also travelled to the nearby Vermilion Lakes just to the west of Banff, and were rewarded by a perfect view of Mt Rundle.
WATERFALL 4
FAIRMONT BANFF SPRINGS HOTEL
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BOW RIVER FALLS
BOW RIVER
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BOW RIVER
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ONE STEP CLOSER TO THE END... So that concludes Part 2 of our travels. Our route from Banff back to Vancouver took us through Lake Louise, Yoho National Park to Golden then over Logans Gap to Revelstoke. We then avoided the Trans Canada highway and took a most scenic southerly route to Kelowna. This was followed by a day in the most picturesque town of Hope, and then back to 3 days in Vancouver. All this in the December edition of this magazine.
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VERMILLON LAKES WITH MOUNT RUNDLE
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PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY CHARLES KOSINA WANT TO SEND US A STORY ABOUT YOUR LOCAL STORIES? MAIL US TO: INFO@NORTHERNLANDSCAPE.ORG Northern Landscape Magazine • 93
October fe man made D
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eatures e 99 FEATURES 31 DAYS
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Low Tide in Tarbet~ ~Kasia-D
tower at dusk~ ~Stuart Mcguire 96 • Northern Landscape Magazine
Waiting on the Tide~ ~kalaryder
Danish Farmhouse and Barn~ ~Margaret Hyde
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Canyon Creek Bridge~ ~Yukondick
Barra: Kisimul Castle~ 98 • Northern Landscape Magazine ~Kasia-D
Woodbastwick village green and church ~ Avril Harris
The Lom Stave (1)~ ~Larry Lingard-Davis
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Carloway Broch~ ~hebrideslight
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Bunratti - Ireland~ ~Arie Koene
Union Canal~ ~Kasia-D
Gone Fishing~ ~Nigel Bangert
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At the end of the road is Granny’s Kitchen~ ~Arie Koene The Flåm Viking House. (1)~ ~Larry Lingard-Davis
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Denmark..... Nyhvn (1)~ ~Larry Lingard-Davis
Waterhead Sundown~ ~John Dunbar
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Being Royal in Stockholm (1)~ ~Larry Lingard-Davis To Fish No More~ ~hebrideslight
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A Bridge in Stockholm (1)~ ~Larry Lingard-Davis Tivoli Gardens (1)~ ~Larry Lingard-Davis
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Across the bridge to Funen~ ~Larry Lingard-Davis The Lom Stave (2)~ ~Larry Lingard-Davis
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Down on the wharf in Stockholm (3) ... the SS.SANKT ERIK~ ~Larry Lingard-Davis
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THE BIG CHALLE
20 ENTRIES 47 VOTES 1 WINNER
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5 DAYS FOR VOTING
ENGE ~ OCTOBER
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ANNDIXON
MALIGNE LAKE, CANADA (PLEASE VIEW LARGE)
9 VOTES
DUSK SHORELINE NEAR MOVILLE, DONEGAL (RECTANGULAR) GEORGE ROW 112 • Northern Landscape Magazine
6 VOTES
The BIG top ten
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NYBROKAJEN, STOCKHOLM
JOﾃグ FIGUEIREDO
6 VOTES
ATHABASCA FALLS - CANADA
RON FINKEL
5 VOTES
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FIERY SUNSET OVER LOCH LEVEN
ICE TREE
KERNUAK
LUDWIG WAGNER
5 VOTES
4 VOTES
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UNION CANAL
KASIA-D
ALASKAN RANGE OVER REFLECTION LAKE
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3 VOTES
GRAEME HYDE
3 VOTES
DARK PAST
REBECCA TUN
THE BRECON BEACONS
3 VOTES
STEVE LIPTROT
3 VOTES
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ANNDIXON
A
Featured artist
Ann Dixon was the great winner of our monthly BIG Challenge with 9 votes and her amazing Maligne Lake shot. It seems that Canada is the great leader for our challenge winners (first and second places), counting already with many trophies in our group. What’s with that place? And what’s with the rest of the world? A mystery to unveil perhaps on the next edition. For now we will have some coffee with Ann and go through all her beautiful featured works. Enjoy!
# When did you join Redbubble? May 2008.
# What can you tell us about yourself?
Retired, Grandmother of 7 (4 girls, 3 boys) another boy due March 2014, and Great Grandmother to three boys, another girl due February 2014, a new Great Granddaughter born April 27th 2013, and a beautiful Cavalier Spaniel called Charlie Girl. I love photography, I love to travel and to meet people, I also enjoy seeing the world through the eyes of others too.
# How does photography fit in your life? And where do you want to get with it? My camera goes with me everywhere, I am happy with it as a hobby.
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INTERVIEW
Having coffee with AnnDixon + her Featured works Northern Landscape Magazine • 119
# What photographic gear do you have?
Canon EOS 650D, 450D & 350D, Sigma Macro lens, 70-300 Canon IS lens, 35-55 lens x 3, ring flash, flash, Fuji Finepix S200 EXR bridge camera.
# How does it feel to win our BIG CHALLENGE and have such a feature on our monthly magazine? I am delighted.
# Tell us about the winning shot!
It was taken when touring the Rockies, going fro Calgary to Vancouver, but we like to go off the normal roads and find less tourist places.
# Describe us how would your perfect photo be!
I like Clarity, a clear image is so much nicer as one can see all the detail.
# Any other thoughts that you want to put out there?
Nothing exciting springs, I am not getting about far just now owing to health issues.
VANCOUVER SKYLINE
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ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH
VILLAGE CHURCH SNOWDONIA
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THE ROCKIES, CANMORE, ALBERTA, CANADA
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AT ONE WITH NATURE : LAC BEAUVERT, JASPER, CANADA
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MALIGNE LAKE, CANADA (PLEASE VIEW LARGE) BY ANNDIXON THE WINNER OF OUR BIG CHALLENGE ~ OCTOBER
WANT TO BE FEATURED? DON’T LOSE OUR NEXT BIG CHALLENGE!
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Northern La Some facts
Russian America - The w
T
he Alaska Purchase was the acquisition of Russian America by the United States from the Russian Empire in the year 1867 by a treaty ratified by the U.S. Senate. Russia, fearing a war with Britain that would allow the British to seize Alaska, wanted to sell. Russia’s major role had been getting Native Alaskans to hunt for furs, and missionary work to convert them to Christianity. The United States added 586,412 square miles (1,518,800 km2) of new territory. Reactions to the purchase in the United States were mixed, with opponents calling it “Seward’s Folly”, feeling that U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward, the primary American negotiator, got the worst of the bargain.
The modern flag of Alaska
Originally organized as the Department of Alaska, the area was successively the District of Alaska and the Alaska Territory before becoming the modern state of Alaska upon being admitted to the Union as a state in 1959. Russia was in a difficult financial position and feared losing Russian America without compensation in some future conflict, especially to the British, whom they had fought in the Crimean War (1853–1856). While Alaska attracted little interest at the time, the population of nearby British Columbia started to increase rapidly a few years after hostilities ended, with a large gold rush there prompt-
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The Russian flag of Alaska ing the creation of a British crown colony on the mainland. The Russians decided that in any future war with Britain, their hard-todefend region might become a prime target, and would be easily captured. Therefore the Russian Emperor Alexander II decided to sell the territory. Perhaps in hopes of starting a bidding war, both the British and the
Location of Belarus in Europe (dark green)
andscape -
worst business ever? Americans were approached. However, the British expressed little interest in buying Alaska. The Russians in 1859 offered to sell the territory to the United States, hoping that its presence in the region would offset the plans of Russia’s greatest regional rival, Great Britain. However, no deal was brokered due to the American Civil War. Additionally, the Russian Crown sought to repay money to its landowners after its emancipation reform of 1861 and borrowed 15 million pounds sterling from Rothschilds at 5% annually. When the time came to repay the loan, the Russian Government was short on funds. The Emperor’s brother, Grand Prince Konstantin Nikolaevich offered to sell something useless. Russia continued to see an opportunity to weaken British power by causing British Columbia, including the Royal Navy base at Esquimalt, to be surrounded or annexed by American territory. Following the Union victory in the Civil War, the Tsar instructed the Russian minister to the United States, Eduard de Stoeckl, to re-enter into negotiations with William Seward in the beginning of March 1867. The negotiations concluded after an all-night session with the signing of the treaty at 4 a.m. on March 30, 1867, with the purchase price set at $7.2 million, or about 2 cents per acre ($4.74/km2) which corresponds to $112 million in 2012!
American public opinion was not universally positive; to some the purchase was known as Seward’s Folly. Nonetheless, most editors argued that the U.S. would probably derive great economic benefits from the purchase; friendship of Russia was important; and it would facilitate the acquisition of British Columbia. Forty-five percent of newspapers endorsing the purchase cited the increased potential for annexing British Columbia in their support. Historian Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer summarized the minority opinion of some American newspaper editors who opposed the purchase: Already, so it was said, we were burdened with territory we had no population to fill. The Indians within the present boundaries of the republic strained our power to govern aboriginal peoples. Could it be that we would now, with open eyes, seek to add to our difficulties by increasing the number of such peoples under our national care? The purchase price was small; the annual charges for administration, civil and military, would be yet greater, and continuing. The territory included in the proposed cession was not contiguous to the national domain. It lay away at an inconvenient and a dangerous distance. The treaty had been secretly prepared, and signed and foisted upon the country at one o’clock in the morning. It was a dark deed done in the night… The New York World said that it was a ‘sucked orange.’ It contained nothing of value but furbearing
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animals, and these had been hunted until they were nearly extinct. Except for the Aleutian Islands and a narrow strip of land extending along the southern coast the country would be not worth taking as a gift… Unless gold were found in the country much time would elapse before it would be blessed with Hoe printing presses, Methodist chapels and a metropolitan police. It was ‘a frozen wilderness.’ While criticized by some at the time, the financial value of the Alaska Purchase turned out to be many times greater than what the United States had paid for it. The land turned out to be rich in resources such as gold, copper, and oil. The strategic geopolitical value of the purchase which could hardly be known to people at the time, was significant to the United States in the context of the 20th Century “Cold War” and beyond. An Aleut name, “Alaska,” was chosen by the Americans. This name had earlier, in the
Russian era, denoted Alaska Peninsula, which the Russians had called Alyaska (also Alyaksa is attested, especially in older sources). The seal fishery was one of the chief considerations that induced the United States to purchase Alaska. It provided considerable revenue to the United States by the lease of the privilege of taking seals, in fact an amount in excess of the price paid for Alaska. From 1870 to 1890, the seal fisheries yielded 100,000 skins a year. The company to which the administration of the fisheries was entrusted by a lease from the U.S. government paid a rental of $50,000 per annum and in addition thereto $2.62½ per skin for the total number taken. The skins were transported to London to be dressed and prepared for world markets. The business grew so large that the earnings of English laborers after the acquisition of Alaska by the United States amounted by 1890 to $12,000,000.
The US$ 7.2 million check used to pay for Alaska ($116 million in 2012 dollars)
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IMAGES AND TEXT FROM WIKIPEDIA
WANT TO SEND US YOUR FACTS? MAIL US TO: INFO@NORTHERNLANDSCAPE.ORG
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Back cover artist
I’
ve been a computer programmer in the telecoms industry, a computer science academic, an online-media producer, but I have always been a Photographer – at present I am specialising in Panoramic Photography. What I like about panoramic photography is that after almost a decade of composing panoramic images I am still learning about it!
Originally my 360° panoramas were only accessible as immersive virtual reality images on the computer. Over the last few years I have been experimenting with ways of making prints of those panoramas. Having tried a few methods the “stereographic projection” has proved to be the most effective. It typically turns the immersive panorama into a “little planet “ as if the horizon in a landscape was the edge of a globe. I also sometimes make images from the panoramas that look like a conventional photograph but may actually take in more than 180° of the view. I am based in Derry in Northern Ireland and many of my early panoramic images were of that town and the surrounding area. My website veryderry.com provides the visitor with a virtual tour of the city. I have a huge collection of panoramic images from throughout Ireland that I have shot over the last few years. While my initial gallery here was of panoramas of Derry, as I have worked through my backlog of photography I have been adding to my collection here, panoramic images from throughout Ireland in general. My Ness Glen panorama turned out to be something that the Judges at the SoJIE-10 EarthDay exhibition liked! :-) Northern Landscape Magazine • 131
NORTHERN LANDSCAPE ISSUE # 08 * NOVEMBER 2013
www.northernlandscape.org
DUSK SHORELINE NEAR MOVILLE, DONEGAL (RECTANGULAR) The source images were shot on a Canon EOS 5d DSLR with a 16mm fisheye. This 360째 panorama was taken at twilight on the shoreline of Lough Foyle between the town of Moville and the fishing port of Greencastle on the Eastern coast of the Inishowen peninsula in County Donegal, Ireland. In the nineteenth century Moville was the final embarkation point for many emigrants who left this area for a new life in America. In the mid-twentieth century Moville had many of the qualities of a sea-side town for outings by the p o p u l a t i o n o f t h e C i t y o f D e r r y w h i c h l i e s t w e n t y m i l e s u p r i v e r. The panorama is shown here as an equi-rectangular image with a 2:1 aspect ratio, that is, it represents a 360째 view left to right and 180째s top to bottom.
NORTHERN LANDSCAPE MAGAZINE - ISSUE #8 NOVEMBER 2013