New...

Story boards from my trip:

Just a reminder...

that you can order prints of any of the photos on my site (or even this blog)!  I can do enlargements, panos, custom sizes or even greeting cards...whatever you'd like!  Send me an email and I'll hook you up :)

http://emilymacdonald.weebly.com/

Okanagan Part 3

In my previous post I mentioned walking along the canal, so I'll share some more shots I got while doing so...

One night we went out to an old farm house and barn that were built in the late 1860's.  It was built by the first judge in the area, John Haynes.  At one point his ranch covered just shy of 21,000 acres (which is hard to believe looking at it now).  Sadly it is getting extremely run down and is all fenced off for safety reasons...I don't know how much longer it'll last.  It's too bad that it couldn't be preserved since it's such a major piece of Osoyoos history. 

One thing I wasn't prepared for when I went out to shoot this was the mosquitoes!  They were brutal and started to swarm me as soon as I got out of the car.  Some of my images were completely covered in grey splotches from them diving in front of my lens LOL!  I'm sure I must have looked like I had a disease or something when I got back to the camp site from all the bites I had on my face - it was horrible!  Here's a behind the scenes look at me trying to shoot and stay protected from those nasty blood suckers:

Sigh if you must, but I have to share some "Mini Marmot" (as I call them) pics from Manning Park.  They're just so darn cute!

That's all folks, hope you enjoyed :)

Okanagan Part 2

One of my favourite things to while we were camping was to walk along the canal with my dog.  One day I went for a couple of hours and had a wonderful time strolling past horse filled pastures, flower covered fields and old barns and paddocks.  I saw a tonne of birds, everything from Red-Winged Black Birds, Cedar Waxwings, Osprey and Finches.  One of the birds I was most captivated with was the Sandpiper.  There were quite a few of them nesting near the path and it was fun seeing their different tactics when it came to defending their nests.  One of them was particularly feisty and would fly madly back and forth in front of me (driving my dog crazy)!  Most of the other ones would just vocalize from a distance, but not this one!  She was a bold little thing. 

I came to know one Sandpiper quite well over the course of my walks.  As I discovered on my second walk, she had a nest with four eggs in it right on the edge of the path!  It was hidden pretty well, but was still too close to where people walked for my comfort. 

Here she is standing guard (her nest was under the green shrub directly behind her):

And, here is her nest with her wonderfully camouflaged eggs:

When I went back two days later, three of the fours eggs had hatched!  I was able to get so close to them that I had to use my macro lens to get the shots.

Mom kept a very close eye on me and tried to distract me by bobbing up and down and vocalizing.  I didn't stay very long since I didn't want to stress them too much.  (The next day when I went back they had left the nest, leaving behind one dud egg.)

Another amazing opportunity I had was to shoot a Red-Necked Grebe sitting on her nest (with Dad floating nearby).  She was very protective (understandably) and would squawk at me whenever I got too close.  I only wish I could have been there to see her swimming around with her babies on her back.

One day I was sitting in our campsite and just happened to have my camera on my lap when a beautiful quail jumped up on a stump right infront of me!  I swear he was posing LOL!

I think that's all I'll post for now.  Yet more later!

Okanagan Part 1

I'm going to share the photos from my trip in parts because there are so many of them:)

One of the first places we went to was the White Lake Grasslands Park (located west of Okanagan Falls).  This beautiful and unique area was established as protected land in 2001 to preserve its fragile grasslands, open pine forests and endangered wildlife. It has everything from thinly forested areas, to rock cliffs, to rolling hills and open fields.  It was interesting being there not only earlier in the season but also during a cooler, wetter summer and seeing green on the hills and flowers blooming.  Unfortunately the lake wasn't pure white yet, due to the high rain fall, but it was still spectacular (and hot)!

We also went to Hardy Falls in Peachland.  It was very luscious in the park and there were trees in bloom with white flowers covering them which made the air smell just amazing!  There had been a rock slide next to the water fall at some point which blocked the bottom of the fall from view, but I still took a couple photos although they weren't as stunning as I was hoping for.

More to follow later...

Okanagan Trip

We just got back from an amazing trip into the Okanagan!  The fam and I went away for a week long vacation to OK Falls (which is located between Oliver and Penticton) and had a great time!  The scenery there is spectacular and so completely different from what we have here on the Island that I got a little trigger happy and shot just shy of 800 frames in six days.  Needless to say, I have a lot of editing to do now!  Some of my more memorable moments were doing a sunset shoot of a farm house built in the 1860's, sneaking some photos of a nesting Red-Necked Grebe, and getting up close and personal with a nest of newly hatched Sandpipers!  I'm one lucky gal :)

I've barely scratched the surface of the editing, so you'll have to be patient with me...but I will leave you this cutie to tide you over.