Gone Walkabout.

One of my favourite films is "Crocodile Dundee" and one of the terms I heard for the first time (as did many North Americans) was gone walkabout.  When Walter explains to Sue that a walkabout "is an aboriginal term meaning to go off and discover new places" it struck a cord with me.  Shortly after that I did my own walkabout as I headed out on my first trip around the world.  For many years after I put this to good use and travel fairly widely both abroad and locally.

However the last few years as I have settled down to raise my family and to teach my classes at SAIT I have been more bound to routine and my patterns have limited the areas to where I have shot most of my images for the last 528 days.  There has been some travel during this time but I have created most of the images close to home, SAIT or where the boys have their activities.

Now I have lived in Northwest Calgary my entire life and had explored much of the area thus I thought I was familiar with it's entirety.  So today when I found myself with three hours to do what I wanted I decided to explore some areas of my youth.  So I headed down towards Bowness Park, a place that I had rode my bike to many times as a kid.  Things have changed and Calgary has grown.  There are many new roads and loads of development.  I first headed down Bearspaw Dam Road where I use to go with my father as we would take our canoe and boat and fish on the reservoir behind the dam.  I was deeply disappointed when I found the road is now closed due to safety issues along the rail road tracks.

So I turned around and decided to head over to Bowness Park on the South Side of the Bow River.  As I headed don the road something told me to take a side road that lead of on the north side of the river and I ended up at Baker Park.  Now I had seen this park from the other side many times, but for some reason I had never explored it before today.  So I parked the car and headed out on my first walkabout in a long time.  It was pleasing, relaxing, and a chance to discover a gem I had not known before.  The following are a sample of the photo's I shot here today.

I found this flower at the start of my walkabout.  I had decided earlier that I wanted to use the Hipstamatic app on the iPhone for most of the photo's today and to shot them in Black & White.  The above was shot using the Roboto Glitter Lens, Claunch 72 Monochrome Film. There was no post processing on this photo at all.  It was also shared as my Instagram 366 image for today.

I next wandered towards the bridge for Stoney Trail.  I looked for a nice angle and positioned myself under the bridge and used some trees to frame it as well.  There was some wind so the leaves in the upper corner were moving which gave a nice feel to the photo.  Film stock remained the same but the Americana lens was used this time.

On the other side of the river at the West end of Bowness park stands a protected area of old growth forest. I took a walk through the woods and found this tiny flower alongside the path amongst these giant trees.  I tried a number of films and lenses but found that the Roboto Glitter Lens, Claunch 72 Monochrome Film gave me the look I wanted.

As I crossed the bridge back the sun peeked out from behind the clouds for a split second casting these wonderful shadows. I loved the lines and quickly used the normal camera on the iPhone to snap an image.  However in the few seconds that it took me to switch to the Hipstamatic app, the sun had disappeared behind the clouds and this scene had faded away.  When I returned to the car I used Snapseed to crop the image and convert it to B&W and add the frame.

In all it was a good day and one that I hope leads to some more Walkabouts.