Landscape
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Snow Moon Blues
The February full moon illuminates the snowy field where a lone tree stands in solitude.
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Moonrise into the Autumn Sky
The supermoon rose against a vibrant pink / blue glow in the sky on this autumn day. The glow, also called the “belt of Venus” (even though it has nothing to do with Venus the planet), is an atmospheric phenomenon that can be seen close to sunset time looking east (as when this photo was taken), and close to sunrise time looking west. The belt of Venus is a demarcation of day and night – the pink on the top comes from atmosphere lit by the sun, while the blue in the bottom comes from atmosphere in the shadow of the Earth.
Capturing this image requires paying attention to the alignment of time and space. This shot was taken on a clear day when sunset and moonrise were only a few minutes apart, and when the rising moon lined up with the tree. There are often only one of two days a year when all the conditions are aligned.
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Smoke Lake Milky Way
While scouting for locations for Milky Way shots, I found this bay that opened up to Smoke Lake in Algonquin Park in the south-southwest direction. I returned at 1:30 am to take the shot, while the Milky Way lined up with the opening to the lake. Fog was rolling off the surface of the lake due to the unseasonably cold air (7 degrees Celsius) for a mid-summer night. The shoreline and the fog were lit by two flood lights from the shore – no light-painting needed.
The sky was a 17-frame stack (255 seconds in total) and the land and lake were from a single 15-second exposure.
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Airglow over Misty Canisbay Lake
A one-hour star trails session taken over Canisbay Lake, Algonquin Park got an extra shot of vibrance from airglow. While the airglow wasn’t visible to the eyes, it readily registered on the camera. Even the fog on the lake picked up the colour.
Airglow is a type of chemiluminescence – the emission of light from chemical interactions between oxygen and nitrogen atoms, and other free radicals created from solar energy in the upper atmosphere. While airglow may look somewhat similar to aurora, the energy producing aurora comes from solar wind particles directed towards Earth’s atmosphere through interacting with Earth’s magnetic field.
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Moonrise, Lake of Two Rivers
This high dynamic range (HDR) composite image captured the summer full moon rising over an unnamed island in Lake of Two Rivers.
Even on a day when the full moon washed out most of the features in the night sky, there were opportunities for astro-landscape photography in Algonquin Park. Paying close attention to time of twilight, moonrise / moonset, and orientation of celestial objects and landscape, allowed me to capture moments of beauty at the right time and the right place.
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Windswept
“Windswept” captures the views around the Chikanishing River and Collins Inlet area. Our kayak gave us great vantage points from the water, unencumbered by land. This image started out as a regular photograph. Through creative digital edits, I worked on colours and texture, striving to bring out the feeling Killarney brings to me – tranquility, and an appreciation of the untamed beauty, sculpted by forces of nature.
“Rugged Killarney” series.
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Rugged
“Rugged” captures the views around the Chikanishing River and Collins Inlet area. Our kayak gave us great vantage points from the water, unencumbered by land. This image started out as a regular photograph. Through creative digital edits, I worked on colours and texture, striving to bring out the feeling Killarney brings to me – tranquility, and an appreciation of the untamed beauty, sculpted by forces of nature.
“Rugged Killarney” series.
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Standing Tall
“Standing Tall” captures the views around the Chikanishing River and Collins Inlet area. Our kayak gave us great vantage points from the water, unencumbered by land. This image started out as a regular photograph. Through creative digital edits, I worked on colours and texture, striving to bring out the feeling Killarney brings to me – tranquility, and an appreciation of the untamed beauty, sculpted by forces of nature.
“Rugged Killarney” series.
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Neowise at Sundown
Comet C/2020 F3 Neowise behind the iconic Southampton Lighthouse on July 20, 2020. Comet Neowise was the brightest comet visible in the northern hemisphere since Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997. It can be seen with the unaided eyes in July 2020.
Comets are “dirty ice balls” made up of ice, dust, and various organic compounds. As a comet nears the sun, the ice sublimes (turns into water vapour) from the heat of the sun, and the dust is pushed away from the comet nucleus by the solar wind, creating the dust tail.
This image was one of the 80 photographs selected to represent Canada in the 2022 Four Nations Photo Competition.
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Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS in Southampton
Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS was the brightest comet visible in the northern hemisphere since 1997. With its original from the Oort Cloud in the outer reach of the solar system, the comet was first spotted in January 2024 by the Tsuchinshan (Purple Mountain) Observatory in China, and then independently discovered by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in February, which also confirmed it to be a comet.
This image was captured at the Southampton Lighthouse by the shores of Lake Huron, under an almost full moon. 65 frames were stacked for a total exposure time of 6.5 minutes in creating this image.
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Midnight Starscape and Comet Neowise
A starry midnight scene by Lake Huron, where two prominent features in the night sky made a natural alignment with the Southampton Lighthouse. The first object is the Big Dipper, the seven brightest stars in the image, is part of the constellation of Ursa Major (the Big Bear) and is one of the most well-known asterism in the northern sky. The second object is Comet C/2020 F3 Neowise, which was visible with the unaided eye in July 2020. Comets are “dirty ice balls” made up of ice, dust, and various organic compounds. As a comet approaches the sun, the ice sublimes (turns into water vapour) from the heat of the sun, and the dust is pushed away from the comet nucleus by the solar wind, creating the characteristic dust tail of the comet.
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Great Lakes Sunset
Vibrant sunset by the Southampton Lighthouse.
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Killarney Star Rise
“Killarney Star Rise” captures the experience of watching stars rising behind the picturesque Killarney Lighthouse, as evening twilight turns into darkness. A total of 135 separate exposures were used to compress this 80-minute experience into a single image. All individual exposures were taken with the same camera position and focal length to reflect the true trajectory of the rising stars in relation to the landscape.
What else do you see in this image? There are stars of different colours. The mass of each star, and the phase of stellar evolution it is at, determines the surface temperature of the star, and hence its colour (red is cool, blue is hot). Diphda, the brightest star on the right of the image, changes from dim red to bright yellow as it rises from the horizon. How does that happen? This is the exact same phenomenon we observe during sunrise – near the horizon, starlight and sunlight have to travel through a lot more atmosphere to reach us. The atmosphere dims the light and scatters the blue end of the spectrum, leaving predominantly red light through. And why do the stars rise at about 46 degrees off the vertical? That’s due to the latitude of Killarney at 46 degrees north. If we are at the equator looking east, stars will rise straight up from the horizon.
