I’ve come to real­ize some­thing about myself‚ lately, I just love detail shots.

There was a crazy snow­storm yes­ter­day so it was the per­fect time to go out­side and take pic­tures.

I took about 10 shots of var­i­ous scenes but when it came time to select just one image, I grav­i­tated toward this detail shot below. I had no ‘goal’ in mind except to take a win­tery shot. What attracted my eye to this shot were the lines. Lines in gen­eral are an extremely pow­er­ful com­po­si­tional ele­ment when used cor­rectly. Often they are used to guide the eye to another ele­ment in the image. In this case though, the lines them­selves are part of the sub­ject mat­ter and they just screamed to be photographed.

Win­ter Mat by Marko Kulik

Last month I went on a photo-tour in the Rock­ies led by Dar­win Wiggett and after the tour was over he asked if we could send over our 6 faves for him to post on his site. Now that they have been posted on his site for a week or so I thought I’d also‚ post them here. Feel free to com­ment or cri­tique any aspect of these images.

Icy Sun­rise at Preacher‚„s Point, Abra­ham Lake, Alberta by Marko Kulik

The ice for­ma­tions at Preacher‚„s Point were just awe­some. I could have eas­ily stayed there the entire day and the sun­rise was also one of the best that we had. I spent a good part of the morn­ing on my belly slid­ing on the ice look­ing for cool ice for­ma­tions. Although the ice I laid on was solid, the lake was not totally frozen and I kept hear­ing ice crack­ing sounds which freaked me out quite a bit.

Ice Cave at Beauty Creek, Jasper National Park, Alberta by Marko Kulik

I must have 20 shots of this ‚Ëœice cave‚„. I kept mov­ing closer and closer and closer until my footwear would not let me move any closer or my feet would have been soaked with ice-water. I was super-intrigued with the ice-forms to the right of the cen­tral rush­ing water as they seemed smoke-like to my eye.

Wave­form at Cole­man Creek, Banff National Park, Alberta by Marko Kulik

I really dug Cole­man Creek and had the 105mm Macro on for close up details. The great thing about the 105 (I have the Nikon ver­sion) is that it‚„s also a lovely por­trait lens. When I spot­ted the inter­play between the water and the ice here, I imme­di­ately focused a few feet in front of me. I thought of surf­ing as I cap­tured this waveform.

Junc­tion, North Saskatchewan River, Banff National Park by Marko Kulik

The rush­ing water, the ici­cles, as well as the rock faces all caught my atten­tion in this com­po­si­tion. I was also struck by the strong shapes and the inter­play between them.

Icy Tree Reflec­tion at Water­fowl Lake, Banff National Park, Alberta by Marko Kulik

I was struck by the painterly feel of this reflected tree in the ice. The cracked ice and tex­tures made for a nice can­vas for the tree‚„s reflection.

Ice Disks, Abra­ham Lake, Alberta by Marko Kulik

This was a chal­leng­ing shot to get because I cut my pinky fin­ger on the ice maybe 5 min­utes before tak­ing this shot. I was bleed­ing a bit and tried to stop it with kleenex and it worked for a while. Every time I needed real dex­ter­ity though I moved the kleenex and it started up again. Any­way it healed up nicely. Sorry if I spoiled any macro com­po­si­tions for any­one. Wait a sec the inter­play of blood and ice ‚œ that might have been cool! I chose to con­vert this image to black and white because the nat­ural colours of rocks in the back­ground were inter­fer­ing with the form of the ice disks I wanted to highlight.

And those were the 6 that I sent off to Dar­win. Just in case peo­ple are inter­ested to see a few addi­tional shots, I posted 2 threads in our forum here.
http://www.photography.ca/Forums/f11/alberta-rockies-batch-1-a-12807.html
http://www.photography.ca/Forums/f11/alberta-rockies-batch-2-a-12821.html