Andrew Strain Photography

Same glacier as yesterday. All photos here taken with my K10D, the first three with the DA 50-200, and the B&W with the DA 10-17 Fisheye.
































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Some photographers will sit and wait for days at the terminus of an ice sheet, hoping to capture on film the awesome power of hundreds of tonnes of ice peeling away from the glacier and thundering to the ground below. I don't exactly have that kind of time while I'm at work, so I kinda figured I'd never manage to get a photo of calving in progress. Unfortunately, my camera was secured in its pelican case for the main event: about an hour after this, a block the size of several houses broke loose, shaking the ground as it crashed several hundred metres to the valley floor...

Before:



















After:



















Waterfall in the top left, for scale:
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I seem to have the worst (or best, depending on how you look at it) luck in the bush when it comes to wildlife: I don't see a damn thing. As a result, I've resorted to taking photos of arachnids to satisfy my weekly wildlife quota. This particular spider is seen dangling from the leaves of the ever-tender Devil's Club (which I'll be sure to devote an entry to at some point this summer). Both shots were taken with my K10D / DA 50-200, which isn't actually a "macro" lens; it's minimum focusing distance is 1.1m away, throughout the focal range. I found myself wanting to get much closer to my subject here... perhaps a true macro lens is something to add to my kit in the near future? At any rate, what the DA 50-200 lacks in macro capabilities, it makes up for with butter-smooth bokeh. Full Post and Comments

Pentax K10D / DA 18-55
After several days of non-stop downpour, the sun's rays transform the coastal rainforest into a natural steam-bath. I'm certain the high humidity is horrible for my camera...

Does shake reduction work? 1/5 sec @ 18mm (27mm equiv), handheld. Full Post and Comments

Pentax K10D / DA 50-200
The same Hawkair Dash-8 from a couple entries down, with a black and white treatment. Full Post and Comments

Pentax K10D / DA 18-55
The Unuk River flows through Alaska on its way to the Pacific Ocean; this is taken from the BC side looking south towards the border. National Geographic just ran an article, "The Truth about Tongass," July 2007, on the battle between logging and conservation in the United States' largest protected area; the feature photo is of a bear researcher on the Unuk River, taken just a few kilometres downstream of where I took this photo... Full Post and Comments

"Heavy" traffic on the Eskay Creek Mine road.

Pentax K10D / DA 50-200
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The small community of Bob Quinn is basically just an airstrip along the Cassiar highway, a couple hundred km north of Terrace, and is one of the main staging areas for the mining industry in the Eskay(ish) region...

A Hawkair Dash-8 prepares for takeoff. Pentax K10D / DA 50-200



















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Terrace (pop 12109) marks the last point along my journey into the wilderness of northern BC that could be described as "urban." North of here, towns aren't much more than an old gas station and a few run down buildings. Sorry Kitwanga and Stewart... thats all you are to me.

The CN railyard in Terrace, Pentax K10D / DA 18-55

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Taken on the same day as "HDR Bridge" and "After the Storm," processed in Lightroom from a single .pef RAW file...

Pentax K10D / DA 18-55
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Last weekend, while I was visiting my dad, I had the opportunity to try out one of his old-school Pentax lenses: the Pentax M 135/3.5

The lens was dirty, scratched, host to a very impressive colony of fungus, and older than me but, like my M 50/1.7, it mounted on my K10D as if it was made only yesterday. While the lens isn't particularly fast, it delivered impressive sharpness and smooth bokeh, and I found the focal length to be very useful on the 1.5 crop factor K10D (~200mm equiv. Pentax, are you listening? A DA* 135 2.0 would be perfect...). My only complaint is with regards to chromatic abberation: the lens is rather prone to lateral CA (blue-yellow) at all apertures. Lightroom (and other RAW converting software) deals with this problem very well, so in the end it isn't much of an issue.

There wasn't really anything overly exciting going on during my stay (their local bear cub failed to show himself while I was there), so I had to settle on the driveway and the flower garden as my main subjects...















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The interior got a major dose of coastal rainfall over the past few days, and while soggy weather can be depressing and dull, when the clouds finally break, everything looks a little greener...

Pentax K10D / DA 18-55
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I don't do a lot of High Dynamic Range processing, but I think this one turned out rather nicely. This is the Silver Bridge over the Tulameen River in Princeton, BC.

Pentax K10D / DA 18-55
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Looks like I'm falling behind again on my plan to keep updating this blog regularly... Here's a couple shots from the past few days. All taken with my K10D / DA 50-200














A pair of deer in the early morning:













The K10D weather sealing came in handy here:
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Horses are all fine and dandy, but modern technology has provided us with better ways of traversing the range. Dustin surveys the landscape after taking it on with the ATV.

Pentax K10D / DA 50-200
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There are birds everywhere out on the ranch, but it's always a refreshing change to get a visit from the occasional bluebird. Starlings (curse them!) and blackbirds just aren't photogenic...

Pentax K10D / DA 50-200


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You know its a boring town when I start posting photos of horses...

You know, horses are pretty dirty animals. The dark one took a crap, and the light one started licking it. Nasty. And Meghan wonders why I don't like horses...

Pentax K10D / DA 50-200
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So I've started work for the summer, with my first stop being the small town of Princeton, BC. I'll be here for three weeks before moving off to...somewhere else (no idea where yet).

In the meantime, heres a couple ranchland inspired B&W's...

Pentax K10D / DA 50-200



























PS: I'm working off my laptop now, which isn't a calibrated screen. If these look like bunk, please let me know! Full Post and Comments

I took advantage of the good weather and low tide today, and went on a Heron hunt. The last few Herons I'd come across weren't too happy having me near them; this guy didn't seem to mind me too much...

Pentax K10D - DA 50-200

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