Posts Tagged “clouds”
A juvenile bald eagle prepares for take off at the Kitamaat Village waterfront. (Robin Rowland)
Portrait of a juvenile bald eagle at Kitamaat Village, March 10, 2019. (Robin Rowland)
The juvenile bald eagle just after take off, March 10, 2019. (Robin Rowland)
A flock of Barrow’s golden eyes hug the shore off Kitamaat Village. (Robin Rowland)
A crow caws on a snag at low tide at Kitamaat Village, March 10, 2019. (Robin Rowland)
A song sparrow on stump on the Kitamaat Village waterfront. (Robin Rowland)
Storm clouds over Douglas Channel, March 10, 2019. (Robin Rowland)
A crescent moon sets over the mountains of Kitimat, with “earthlight” from our home planet illuminating the sphere, March 8,2019. (Robin Rowland)
A seagull hunts for oolicahn on the Skeena River, March 6, 2019. (Robin Rowland)
As the tide goes out, the ice covering a briny tidal creek collapses, leaving patterned cracks. Minette Bay, Kitimat January 1. 2016. (Robin Rowland)
I spent New Year’s Day on the mudflats of Minette Bay, near Kitimat, with other local photographers. At low tide, of course. Ruth and Howard Mills who run the luxury B&B the Minette Bay Lodge invited us for the photo walk on the ice and mud followed by hot soup and great New Year’s snacks.
Most of my images look best in black and white. There are few in colour at the end of the blog.
Looking across Minette Bay with Kitimat’s iconic Mt. Elizabeth in the background. Just after noon the water was just a couple of centimetres deep, covered in thin layers of ice. The cold made the mud solid enough so that it wouldn’t be boot grabbing ooze you experience in the summer. January 1, 2016 (Robin Rowland)
The beach, covered in seaweed, snow and old logs looking west from the trail, January 1, 2016. (Robin Rowland)
Looking west toward Douglas Channel, and the Rio Tinto aluminum plant with the winter sun low over the hills to the south. January 1, 2016. (Robin Rowland)
The twisted roots of a dead tree lying on the beach in some ways reminded me of the Iron Throne. Game of Stumps, anyone? (Robin Rowland)
Walking back to the lodge along the creek trail. January 1, 2016. (Robin Rowland)
Another angle on the creek from a bridge a little further along the trail. (Robin Rowland)
Ice on a chunk of rotten log on the mudflats. January 1, 2016. (Robin Rowland)
An ice crystal floats on the thin layer of water on top of the frozen mud. (Robin Rowland)
The winter sun shines through the rain forest. January 1, 2016. (Robin Rowland)
Happy New Year! Kitimat’s photographers celebrate in the middle of a day on the ice. (Robin Rowland)
A juvenile bald eagle surveys the Kitimat River from a log on a sandbar. (Robin Rowland)
Once again this year I joined the Kitimat Christmas Bird Count, helping out the Kitimat Valley Naturalists. Here are some of the best shots from that day, Wednesday December 16. 2015.
Gulls huddle together on the shore of MK Bay at low tide. (Robin Rowland)
A great blue heron watches from an old stump in the Kitimat River estuary. (Robin Rowland)
A female mallard duck in flight over MK Bay at low tide. (Robin Rowland)
A scaup (duck) in intermediate plumage on a mound of reeds in the Kitimat River estuary. (Robin Rowland) (Corrected caption, duck was identified in the field as a ringed-neck but on further review of the photograph, the consensus of the naturalists was scaup)
A red-tailed hawk surveys Haisla Boulevard at the LNG Canada turnoff just as the light fades in the late afternoon. (Robin Rowland)
The next day, on my morning walk, the neighborhood’s resident ravens followed me through the bush. Ravens are intelligent and I almost think they are posing for the camera, for this is the third time that they’ve gone to the same trees, in the same sequence, when I was there with my camera.
One of the ravens directly overhead. (Robin Rowland)
And flying from branch to branch of bare alders. (Robin Rowland)
And perched on a conifer (Robin Rowland)
The December sun over Kitimat harbour and Douglas Channel, December 10, 2015. (Robin Rowland)
The view of Douglas Channel from a park near my house in Kitimat. A panorama created with Lightroom CS new merge and panoramic feature. The original would be 38 inches wide if printed at full size.
“Super” low tide on the Skeena River at Telegraph Point, Sept. 28, 2015 (Robin Rowland)
I had great plans for shooting the super moon and the eclipse blood moon on Sunday night, September 27. Unfortunately the ideal shot of the moon rising over our iconic Mt. Elizabeth (which I have captured in the past) was impossible, there was a storm blowing in, and the overcast was so heavy that dark moon wasn’t even visible.
But today, I captured the related super tide –at low tide–which is the shot, I am sure, no one was looking for. To be honest, I was trying to shoot fall colours on a gloomy day where the Skeena lives up its original in name in the language of the Tsimshian First Nation, K-shian, “water that falls from the clouds,” also translated as “river of mists” and now is colloquially called “the Misty River.”
I was amazed at the Skeena was so flat, and so low at a time when it had been raining for the past couple of days and should have been much higher.
A few hours later when I was driving back from Prince Rupert, in a pounding rain and wind storm, the river was actually higher than I had ever seen it before.
I didn’t realize what I had until I was watching the weather segment on the CBC National, and the Weather Network presenter mentioned there was a super tide. Google checks confirmed that a super tide accompanies a super moon.
Telegraph Point, on the Skeena, taken at 1135 hrs on September 28.
Telegraph Point is about 44 kilometres (27 miles) inland from where the Skeena reaches the Pacific Ocean, and the tides do reach even further inland than that. Low tide at Prince Rupert was at 0811 on Monday. There aren’t tide tables this far inland (not needed for sailors)
As I arrived for an appointment in Prince Rupert, it started to rain. By the time I had completed my appointment and had had lunch, I drove back in a wind driver rain storm. I stopped briefly at Telegraph Point and grabbed some quick shots.
This shot, roughly the same angle as the first low tide shot, was taken at 1457, just after high tide at Prince Rupert at 1426. You can’t see it in a still image, but in the river the water was moving rapidly upstream.
This was taken at 1512 from the same spot as the first low tide shot.
Another angle from Telegraph Point taken during the storm at 1512.
(All images above taken with Sony Alpha 55)
This was one of my first shots of the day, taken about 25 kilometres further upstream at 1101. (taken with Sony Alpha 6000)
Related
Shots of fall colors along the Skeena, October 16, 2014.
Sources
DFO tide table for Prince Rupert, Sept. 28
Supermoon 2015 to cause highest ‘super tides’ for 19 years (Independent UK)
I was in Prince Rupert and Port Edward, BC on Friday, May 29. I was able to pay a brief visit to the North Pacific Cannery National Historic Site. I had always wanted to see the site, but in the past my visits to Prince Rupert were either in the winter, when the site is closed, or I was too busy filing to clients to have the time.
So here are some of the photos I took, converted to black and white, appropriate since the North Pacific Cannery was the longest running cannery on the west coast, operating from 1889 to 1981. It was named a National Historic Site in 1987.
The west end of the cannery site. The two small buildings are replicas of the houses that were occupied by workers from local First Nations. The large building to the left is the machine shop and First Nations net loft (Robin Rowland)
A fishing net hangs from the rafters in the First Nations Net Loft. The building was built in Port Essington and moved to the cannery site in 1937. The loft was where First Nations fishers stored, repaired and hung their nets. (Robin Rowland)
Another view of the loft. (Robin Rowland)
The main part of the cannery at low tide. (Robin Rowland)
The cannery’s old fuel dock was separate from the rest of the facility for safety reasons. (Robin Rowland)
Another view of the old fuel dock. (Robin Rowland)
An old rowboat on the cannery grounds. (Robin Rowland)
The west end of Smith Island, Port Edward, BC, captured driving back from the cannery site just as the fog rolled in. (Robin Rowland)