Walking in the West – July 24

As part of Scott Kelby’s Third Annual Photo Walk we all sauntered down to the Bar-U Historical Ranch south of Longview, Alberta for some authentic old time ranch scenes. What fun! With old buildings, lots of tack, ranch gear and actors in period costumes there was a wealth of stuff to photograph. We had classic Alberta Blue skies and for those photographers who could ‘see’ beyond the high contrast mid-morning light they were rewarded with great opportunities.

Personally I only made a few images in between helping out fellow photographers and the four ‘keepers’ I made are below. I definitely need to go back to shoot more from this absolute gold mine for photographers. I must also say that we had an amazing group of friendly, helpful, and talented shooters come out. The best part of the Photo Walk was meeting wonderful people and making new friends. Thanks all for making the event a success!

Also congratulations to Barry who was the first to sign up for the Photo Walk and won a canvas print from yours truly. The first person to sign up for any of the worksops, tours or lectures that Sam and I host wins a nice prize. Watch this blog and Sam’s blog for upcoming tour announcements. Also Hendrik won the draw for the ‘excess’ money we collected for the entry fee to the Bar-U ($125  just for hanging out with us – see… we need to pay people to be our friends!). Also John Fujimagari did a smashing job of taking our group photo. Thanks John!

©John Fujimagari

©Darwin Wiggett

I took the photo above with natural window light and I used my new Sigma 8-16mm ultra-wide lens (love it!) to take in an ultra-wide view of this scene from the Bar-U (click on the photo to see it bigger). I also used my new Canon Rebel T2i for this shot and was pretty darned impressed by its performance at ISO 800 (see 100% detail shot below).

©Darwin Wiggett - ISO 800, 100% detail, Canon T2i

There were wonderful opportunities for existing light photographs of ranch hands at work as we see here in the photo from the blacksmith shop.

©Darwin Wiggett, Canon T2i, Sigma 8-16mm lens

Here are a couple of more shots I did with the Sigma 8-16 on the Canon T2i.

©Darwin Wiggett - Canon T2i, Sigma 8-16mm

©Darwin Wiggett - Canon Rebel T2i, Sigma 8-16mm lens

To see how I made the shot of the Long Johns above check out this link. And finally if you want to see the results from the participants just go this Flickr group and watch as fresh stuff is uploaded over the next week or so.