Rural Alberta Advantage

Prairie panoramas in black and white.

Going back to Alberta is always a treat, I just got back from a trip there to visit family, and of course to take some photos.

For a province gripped with division, its big skies and open prairies outshine all of the separatist bullshit and offers up something that reaches beyond the politics and hateful rhetoric. It’s a place that I once called home but it has always left me with mixed feelings of belonging.

But going back with fresh eyes once or twice a year, now that I’ve gained the maturity and knowledge that comes from almost 50 years on this earth, I look at it and marvel at the magnificence that it puts in front of me. With my camera in hand, I do my best to capture it…but it’s impossible to truly do it justice - Alberta is vast and difficult to explore with the little time I had there, and so I humbly offer some panoramas that I took while traversing the prairies by car in between the towns and cities of Strathmore, Drumheller, and Calgary.

These were all shot on my phone using the Moment app set to a 2.35:1 aspect ratio and then edited in Lightroom to taste. Shooting indiscriminately on narrow streets and into the vast openness, I managed to document what I think most people know of Alberta, which is what you see from the road.

It is a Province of city and highway drivers, and I’ve always known it to be a place where you spend a lot of time in a vehicle to get everywhere. True to that, I spent a fair bit of time in vehicles once again while on this trip and it allowed me to capture some of that prairie light and stretch it out into these ultra wide panoramics.

I also shot a few rolls in my FM2, MJU, and a lot with my D750 and I’ll be sharing some of that over the next little bit, but I'm in zero rush.

This trip was good for my soul and these panos were a nice little surprise for myself when I decided on a whim to shoot in this way, as I rarely reach for my phone to document - but when I took the first one, I knew I had to keep it going and so I did.

Stay focused.