Leaving Riding Mountain National Park, looking back at the weather we left behind.

Wish I had a graduated ND filter there or at least a tripod so I could capture the dynamic range of the scene in two pictures. I wanted to capture the dramatic sky, which necessarily meant I had to underexpose the rest of the picture quite severely.

Scene from Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba. I travelled there with a colleague at IISD to go hiking over a weekend when I was in Winnipeg last summer. It rained virtually the entire time! We had the worst luck with the weather; I did not actually bring my camera on the hike, it was too wet. In the afternoon the following day it stopped raining and we stopped to see buffalo and take in the scenery.

Manitoba has a fair amount of Icelandic influence, owing to a bunch of settlers that came over in the 19th century and founded a town called Gimli. Naturally, Gimli has to have an Icelandic festival every year, the highlight of which is a viking camp put together by various “living history” groups.I went there with a couple of colleagues form work; it was really cool, very well done. Sadly, we missed the highlight — the fighting demos. But we did get to try archery, that was fun.

Inside the atrium of the Manitoba Leglislature, taken from behind the grand staircase and the iconic bison, mascot of Manitoba.

The Manitoba Legislature, home of the provincial parliament, is a pretty impressive building, and a monument to the ambitions this city had in the early days of the 2oth cewntury. Winnipeggers owe a lot to the people of that day, whose entrepreneurship ensured that the city now has a lot of historical buildings with lots of character, and not just urban sprawl and blight.

We got a free tour of the building, but strangely enough, among all the trivia our tourguide had to offer (fossils in the walls — that’s pretty cool), she didn’t mention it was heavily influenced by freemasons who may have intended it to be a replica of King Solomon’s temple… The CBC produced a very interesting documentary about this, see it on youtube (quality isn’t very good).

I went out to take pictures of the sunset, and finally try out my Cokin graduated neutral density filters. I bought them back in April, and I still hadn’t had an opportunity to use them. I found out that I just had to make myself an opportunity, so I went out.

I took this picture of the Assiniboine River around 10:30PM, long after the sun had set. The picture was taken with a 10 second shutter speed, but with max aperture. To control the light I used all three Cokin filters, which darkened the sky while letting through all the reflection from the river. Hence the camera picked up lots of red wavelength from the sky, and the the water looks like a vibrant blue veil. I’ve not done any post-processing at all (let me know if you think it needs it!).

Notice the family of geese in the lower right corner!

See the previous post, Maskwa.

Here’s a sunset shot. It was so incredibly clear, the colours were really stark. And it was completely quiet… except for the rustling of the wind, the tweeting of birds… not a manmade sound to be heard… very tranquil. I miss that.

Around this time we saw a beaver swimming past. It came back several times. I followed it upriver, and as I came through some bushes I was right on the riverbank, and I saw bubbles right by the shore. I point my camera in that direction and the beaver surfaced, scarcely two metres away! It was more surprised than I was; it made a big splash and disappeared. I got a great picture of the splash. Fun though.

Ahh, it’s been too long since the last post. Get ready for a flurry of pictures.

I went with some colleagues from work to a cabin at a place called Maskwa. It’s a couple of hours north of Winnipeg, east of Lake Winnipeg, on a small river. This was a few weeks ago, mid-June. This being Manitoba, spring was just starting to really get under way. It was the first really warm weekend; until then it was rather cold.

We had a really good time there, canoeing a little on the river, sitting by the fire grilling hot dogs and enjoying the first hint of summer. It was beautiful there, and it reminded me a great deal of Norwegian nature. This is the first I’ve seen of Canadian wilderness (I know, it’s a shame… I’ve been here for five years now).

This picture shows some rapids. Yes, actual rapids. Manitoba is pretty flat, but go a little north and you’ll at least get some ‘gentle sloping’. And — totally off-topic, but can you believe it — Winnipeg has a ski hill! Yes! It’s located on the inside of the giant floodway that circles the city, with a drop of something like 30 metres (I’m guesstimating). Saw it on our way back.

So I’m in Winnipeg right now, and for the rest of the summer (why? More on that later, maybe tomorrow — I should have written about this sooner). As I was walking around, taking in the sights, I was looking for scenes that would capture the essence of this prairie city. Winnipeg is a fairly large city and downtown is dominated by highrises. But nothing you haven’t seen elsewhere. I settled on the Manitoba Legislature — the stately home of the provincial assembly — built during an age of tremendous optimism, when Manitoba’ s future looked golden. It still is — though not fantastically rich (at least not in a Beverly Hills 90210 sense) , it looks like Winnipeggers have done a lot to make this a very liveable and friendly place. I look forward to exploring more of what this city has to offer, and hopefully see some of the rest of the province.