Tag: Photography

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Last Call for Critter Captures

As the colder weather approaches, animal photo opportunities become less plentiful, and that scarcity, real or imagined, makes me want to take more pictures.

Considering I have thousands of neatly organized reference photos I have never used, for well over a hundred animals, running out has never been a problem. But it’s hard to ignore the impulse to stock up, just in case.

Hey, squirrels store way more than they need for the winter, too.

Time ticking was the prime motivation for my trip to the Alberta Birds of Prey Sanctuary in Coaldale last month. Releasing two hawks into the wild was worth the trip alone, but after editing and sorting my pictures, I’ve also got dozens of new photos I can paint from.

Still open until September 30th, Discovery Wildlife Park usually closes from October to the end of April. But during the pandemic, they created a holiday lights drive-through feature. With the worst of the health crisis thankfully over, their impressive Light The Night experience has continued to grow, open this year from November 15th to January 5th.

With winter gift shop stock in mind, they placed a surprising end-of-season order for prints and stickers. I always like to deliver those in person so I have an excuse to take photos.

I had driven to Coaldale in a torrential rainstorm, but that meant great light for pictures when I arrived. In an unwelcome repeat, but with the same result, I drove to Innisfail last week in another storm. When I got there, the weather was so foul I was the only person in the park.
While I had lunch with my zookeeper friend, Serena, a couple of other people arrived. Coincidentally, they were also longtime friends of the park. Rather than the usual bear education presentation we’d seen several times, Serena gave the three of us a behind-the-scenes personal tour and visit with the bears.
Cold, dark, and windy, the rain at least let up for a few hours. While the pictures I got weren’t impressive photographs on their own, some of these shots will be amazing for reference. I’ve written before about how sunny days aren’t great because they can wash out detail in the highlights and shadows, but an overcast day provided some very exciting photos of bear fur and features.
If that weren’t enough, Serena has been hand-raising an orphaned raccoon since he was tiny. Shonna I got to see him earlier this summer, but on this day, he was getting his first look at a much bigger world, as he was let loose for a bit to run and play in a large enclosure. If you’ve ever seen a cat or dog with the zoomies, imagine that with a raccoon. He was having a very good time.
After the park, I took my parents out to dinner in Red Deer and spent the night at their place for a nice, albeit short, visit.

This past week, the cool fall weather has shown up. Though I’m not a fan of the winter that follows, fall is my favourite time of year. The light on the mountains around here is softer and ever-changing, and we get some beautiful sunrises, which I can see from my office window. And when the larches change colour, it’s like somebody spilled brilliant yellow and orange paint all over the place.

Though I generally dislike driving, the route south on Highway 40 through Kananaskis, up to the Highwood Pass is an exception. It’s the highest paved road in Canada and the spectacular scenery is some of the most beautiful in the world. While busy on weekends, self-employment affords me the luxury of going during the week. Thursday was a pretty day for a drive, and even though the larches haven’t changed yet, they’re beginning to. Traffic was light, the weather was great, and I enjoyed the 40-minute climb from Highway 1.
Several years ago, a local photographer told me about Rock Glacier, just off the highway below the Highwood Pass. He had said that if I wanted to see pikas, that was the place. It’s a massive scree slope of rocks, and I can’t even guess how many of the little ‘rock rabbits’ call it home.

It’s hardly a secret, as the site has two extra parking lanes and several Alberta Parks educational signs about the critters.

Their peeping is unmistakable, but it can be hard to see them as they’re very small and perfectly camouflaged among the rocks. It’s only their darting movements that give them away. I’ll admit that chasing them around the rocks is part of the fun. They’ll scurry along routes only they can see, pausing on rocks along their path, perfect for photo ops.
Their primary motivation is food, so they’re usually en route to one of the small patches of grass and vegetation among the rocks, where they’ll stuff their faces before running back to their stash. It’s fun to watch.

The challenge is usually to get a few pictures before they run out of range, but twice on this visit, I was delighted to see one running toward me. With each pause, I’d get a better shot until one eventually ran right by my foot, intent on a patch of green behind me. All I had to do was circle it and take more photos. They didn’t seem to mind my presence as long as I avoided quick movements.
It can get cold up there at 2200m (7200 ft), and I always pack extra layers, but it was a pleasant fall morning, and I only needed a light jacket. On a few visits, there’ve been ten or 12 other people, often photographers with much bigger lenses than my 70-300mm, doing the same thing. But on this visit, I spent an hour and a half crawling over the rocks and snapping pics with the whole place to myself. Nobody else stopped.
On each drive up to Rock Glacier, I usually see black bears or grizzlies, but none this time. They’re likely still low in the valleys, eating as much as possible before winter. But they can show up anywhere around here, and on these excursions, I’ve always got bear spray on my hip. Aside from the above pic of a line of bighorn sheep walking the top of the ridge, I only saw the wildlife I came for.
Though I have kept dozens of pika photos over the years, I’ve always felt I hadn’t quite got the one I wanted, that perfect photo to paint from. I finally got one on this trip, but I haven’t shared it in this post. It’ll just have to be a surprise.

Now, you might be thinking, “I’m seeing plenty of photos lately, but where’s some new artwork on this artist’s website?”

I am working on several pieces and a commission right now. However, taking photos for future paintings is also a big part of my work. I can’t paint ‘cartoony, but real,’ if I don’t know what real looks like, and taking photos always inspires new paintings. Though I often plan to paint a critter and then go looking for reference, it’s frequently the photos that come first, inspiring the paintings that follow.

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You Never Know What Will Find You

About a month ago, Shonna was able to take a couple of days off, and we drove to Red Deer to see our parents and spend a little time at Discovery Wildlife Park. A scorching and bright sunny day, less than ideal for photos; we only spent a couple of hours at the park. But we got to visit with our friend, Serena, and meet the baby orphaned raccoon she was looking after.
Despite the bright sun, I got some shots of the two black bear cubs. There might be inspiration for a painting or two in the few photos I kept, but I will let them simmer and review them in a few months. My mood and circumstances can colour my perception, so shots that don’t inspire me in August might push the right buttons in January.
Although I prefer to take my own reference photos whenever possible, I am not interested in becoming a professional photographer. Connecting the dots between aperture, shutter speed and ISO and understanding how they work together, it just seems like math and bores the hell out of me.

I’ve read plenty of books, watched videos and taken classes, but I’ve never got ‘the hook,’ that thing where you connect to something on a level that makes you want to pour all your energy into becoming better at it.
I know that hook because I have it for drawing and painting. I can spend hours detailing little hairs or working to get the texture of a bear’s nose just right. I am confident that would be incredibly dull for most people.

I admire plenty of photographers whose artistic skills inspire and baffle me. The art they create and capture is impressive. But when I see their work, I don’t think, “I want to do that!”

What I do think is, “I want to see a coastal grizzly walking out of a Vancouver Island rainforest!” or “Yeah, that’s a beautiful shot of a bald eagle grabbing a salmon, but I’m gonna need a closer zoom of that face to see her expression.”

I love the experience of taking photos, especially when it involves critter faces. I paint personality in my images because that’s what I see. I instinctually imagine animals as characters, and the twitch of a lip or crease in an eye ridge suddenly becomes an anthropomorphized expression I can exaggerate.
So, while I revel in learning a photography trick or technique that helps me take better reference, like David DuChemin’s tip this winter that allowed me to capture much better detail shooting ravens in the snow, I’m always thinking about the painting.

If I take a photo where the light isn’t great, and I can’t fix it well enough in Photoshop, a picture that would easily be in the discard pile for a professional photographer might still inspire a painting. My Smiling Tiger is a bestselling image, and I based it on a blurry, grainy reference photo I captured at The Calgary Zoo. Any self-respecting photographer would have deleted it on the first pass.

While I consider taking photos an integral part of my creative pipeline, that’s only the beginning.
At the end of July, on the day I sent my last post, I headed to the cabin north of here with my friend, Darrel. With my current workload, time off hasn’t been a priority, so leaving for a few days felt irresponsible, but we had booked it months ago and paid our deposit.
Though most of Alberta had been dealing with heavy wildfire smoke that week, it completely cleared up by the time I got to the cabin and stayed that way the whole four days we were there. The temperature even dropped to a comfortable level and we got some welcome rain. In fact, on the first night, it cooled off so much that we wondered if we might need a fire in the wood stove. Given the oppressive heat we’d just escaped, we had no appetite for that. But wearing long pants and a hoodie seemed strange that evening, given how uncomfortable the past month had been.

With the developing situation in Jasper, evacuees finding out that 30% of their town had burned down, it was impossible to completely relax or shut off the news. The weather reports warned of the potential for tornadoes and violent storms in our area due to the rapidly changing temperatures. Thankfully, those never materialized, but it still meant keeping one eye on the phone.
Even though I couldn’t turn off my busy brain, it was good to get away. We did what we always do: sat around talking, napped on the decks in the afternoon, walked around the large property, and played guitar, cards and Scrabble. Yes, we’re boring old men.

While I slept well the first couple of nights, I had bad dreams the last two. On the third morning, I woke up from one about 5:30 and tried and failed to go back to sleep. Darrel and I are both early risers, and while I’m up before then most days at home, I like to sleep a couple of hours longer at the cabin. So, I wasn’t impressed.

Though we have separate bedrooms, it’s a small cabin, and I didn’t want to risk ruining Darrel’s sleep by moving about that early. I quietly dressed, grabbed my camera and crept out the back door for a walk.
It was a very pretty and delightfully cool morning, and I knew there would be plenty of time to nap on the deck later in the day, so my mood improved. I wandered up the road, spooked a few deer and watched them take off across the neighbour’s newly cut and bailed hayfield. I kept my eyes peeled for other wildlife, hoping for an owl or coyote.

At the top of the long dirt road is a treed area that falls away to forest on both sides. That time of morning, that section of road was dark and shaded. I briefly saw a long, little critter standing tall on its hind legs on the side of the road before it squealed and ran down the steep bank to the forest floor below. I don’t know the critter’s gender, but with a 50/50 shot, I’m going with she instead of it.
The base of the tree she ran up to escape was twenty feet below me down the steep bank, so her ‘safe height’ now put her at eye level with me as I stood on the road. And she was NOT happy about it.

But I was thrilled, shooting pics of this sassy little pine marten as she grunted and squealed at me. She didn’t seem to know if she should climb higher or go back down. After a few back-and-forth scurries, with pauses to glare at me and curse my existence, she opted for down and made her escape.
Though I had done what I could to boost my exposure compensation to account for the dark area in which I was shooting, I needed to keep the shutter speed high to try to capture this quick little marten. In the end, none of the pictures I got were very good, but I enjoyed the moment. I don’t know if I have ever seen a pine marten in the wild, but I was pleased with the early morning treat.

While the pics I got aren’t good enough for reference, I’ve added a pine marten to the list of animals I hope to encounter on future cabin visits.

I’m certain she feels differently.

Cheers,
Patrick
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Dark Days and Raven Reference

You can attribute it to seasonal affective disorder, lack of light, or the extreme cold weather that settled in this week, but January is not my favourite month. I am at my most miserable and misanthropic this time of year, coupled with a short fuse. My jaw has been bugging me for a couple of weeks, a consequence of unconscious clenching and teeth grinding. I’m not sleeping well and have bad dreams.

As a result, I’ve been keeping to myself more than usual.

I haven’t got any motivation right now, and when I mentioned it to Shonna, she reminded me this happens every year. It’s funny how I forget.

I’m still up at five each day and at my desk by six because this is my job, and I have obligations and daily deadlines. The best advice I ever give anyone who asks me about art-for-a-living is that you have to work when you don’t want to, just like everybody else.
But at the moment, each cartoon takes longer to draw because I’m easily distracted. I’ve got two paintings in progress, but I’m finding the work about as exciting as assembling IKEA furniture.

Though we plan to keep riding our bikes all winter, it’s far too icy right now and brutally cold, something we’re both genuinely pissed about. I’ve been forcing myself to get out and walk most days, finding any excuse to run an errand downtown. I’ll layer up and walk the 6 km round trip to Safeway for only a couple of items, just to get some exercise and light exposure.
On the way, there’s a long stretch of paved pathway beside the train tracks. It runs behind another grocery store, recycling drop-off, and Canadian Tire and several ravens hang out in the area, scavenging for scraps.

Ravens can get quite large here. They often seem comically arrogant with their vocalizations and antics. They bicker at each other, and me if I get too close, but they’re usually too lazy to fly away until the last minute. I’m likely projecting my own impressions upon them, but given the nature of my work, I do that with most animals.
But when a raven flops down on his back and rolls around in the snow, pausing several times to look right into my lens, it’s hard not to imagine it’s doing it for my benefit. I took quite a few shots of this clown before he (or she) finally got back on his feet.

So, despite my brooding melancholy and lack of enthusiasm, I’ve been taking my camera along on these forced marches. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve captured dozens of remarkable reference photos for future paintings, many more than the ones you see here.
Thanks to a recent photo tip technique on my friend David duChemin’s site, I’ve been using Auto-ISO, adjusting the EV Compensation as much as +2 and cranking the shutter speed to higher than I usually would. Though many of the photos came out lighter than expected, requiring Camera RAW correction in Photoshop, I was suddenly capturing amazing detail in the raven feathers and features. Some of the flying shots are so sharp I can paint from them.
While a professional photographer might deem them unworthy for prints or portfolio pieces, I use the photos strictly for reference, so any flaws don’t matter.

I’m currently working on a raven painting from shots I took two weeks ago. But I now have dozens of others I can paint from down the road.
Though I’m struggling to find my creative spark right now, I know it will return as spring gets closer, and my mood will improve with more sunlight and warmer weather. It always does. And should I want to paint more ravens then, I’ll be grateful I forced myself to get out now and that I took my camera with me, even though I didn’t feel like it.

Cheers,
Patrick

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Lingering With the Local Wildlife

A couple of weeks ago, I biked a trail between a suburban neighbourhood and the Canmore Golf Course. It’s a popular pretty route in the trees, and I’ve taken it often. Rounding a turn, I encountered a large harem of elk lying down in the trees next to the path, with one very large bull elk standing among them.

Whether it’s females in the spring during calving season or the bulls in the fall during the rut, elk can be dangerous animals. Live here long enough, and you’ll likely have been charged by either just because you got too close or they didn’t like how you looked. While living in Banff, I’d hidden behind a car or ducked into a building more than once to avoid an elk. So has Shonna.

When I realized I was within the danger zone and too far in the middle of the herd, going forward was the same as going back. So, I maintained a steady pace, kept my head down and avoided eye contact with the bull, watching him in my peripheral vision. His head followed my course.

Once past them, I breathed easier and warned some people coming the other way. You can always tell the locals, especially the ones walking their dogs. A herd of elk? Let’s go the other way.
It is maddening to explain to a tourist that they are too close to an elk and, for their own safety, they should move away, only to have them dismiss you with a wave or a middle finger, saying, “Yeah, yeah, mind your own business.”

I wanted to take some photos; it just wasn’t safe in that area.

The following week, our yoga instructor sent me a photo she took on her phone of a big bull elk hanging around with his harem at the quarry recreation area on the other side of the valley from where we live.

So, whether it was that herd or another, I biked up there last week to look for them. It was a beautiful ride in the fall sunshine, but no elk. The next day, I tried again and came up empty.

On Sunday, after drawing cartoons and working on paintings, I decided to try once again. My route took me along a popular pretty trail beside the Bow River, with stunning views. Frequented by tourists and locals alike, the river trail is the result of flood mitigation many years ago. The path runs the top of an artificial berm between adjacent homes and the riverbed, which is mostly dry this time of year.

As I crested the berm, I noticed an unusual number of people stopped on the path, looking into the riverbed. Sure enough, there was a large harem of elk, complete with a majestic-looking bull. Because they were spread out on the riverbed and in the trees on the opposite bank, a fair guess would be about thirty cows and calves in the herd, erring on the low side.
It was an ideal situation for wildlife watching because people could look as long as they wanted and take pictures, and nobody was in danger. I expected somebody might foolishly climb down the bank to get closer, but fortunately, no one did.

From a photography perspective, the conditions were not good. The bright afternoon sun, lower in the cloudless sky this time of year, was directly across from me. I was shooting handheld at full zoom at 300mm. I probably should have gone with a higher shutter speed, but I often get that wrong. I’m only keeping a dozen of the hundreds of photos I took. While none are suitable for photo reference, I enjoyed the experience, especially taking pics of this impressive fellow.
I’ve lived here for almost thirty years and still love seeing wildlife, even the common sightings of deer, elk and bighorn sheep. Parking the bike off the path for a couple of hours, snapping photos, listening to a bugling bull, and watching a herd of elk on a beautiful warm fall day in the mountains was time well spent.

Cheers,
Patrick

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Blizzard Bear

While I’m not a big fan of the season, I love winter colours, the blues, greys and whites. Seems like I’m on a bit of a snow kick right now.

I’m proficient with a camera but have no designs on working as a professional photographer or even being a serious hobbyist. I love taking photos, but only because it’s the first step in painting my whimsical wildlife. Images a pro would toss in the trash can still work well for reference. If the photo shows the necessary details, I can ignore any flaws, artifacts, lighting and exposure issues.

I prefer to take my own reference, but it’s not always possible, especially when the animals aren’t all that local. My Humpback Whale and Sea Turtle paintings come to mind. Thankfully, I’ve known several generous photographer friends willing to share their beautiful photos. If I tried to list them all, I would forget somebody and wouldn’t want hurt feelings. Hopefully, I adequately conveyed my gratitude to them at the time and in the blog posts accompanying any new painting.

I could buy stock photos for reference, and I’ve done so before. But if I’m going to use somebody else’s photos for reference, I prefer to have a connection with the person who took them. It often makes for a better story, and I have a lot of respect for artists who have skills I don’t, especially wildlife photographers.

I spend many long hours painting, obsessing over little hairs on a grizzly bear’s ears or the challenging horn texture on a bighorn sheep, but I’m in a comfortable office while doing it. I haven’t the patience, time, or funds to travel long distances to remote locations with a ton of expensive gear, only to sit in a blind for days, waiting for any animal to come down a trail, hoping to get that perfect shot.

And since wildlife doesn’t punch a clock, they often don’t get the shot. I admire those folks and their commitment.

For most of these artists, the experience and pursuit are often as important as the photos, but I’ve always been more of a destination guy. I don’t even like road trips.
My friend David duChemin is a talented and skilled photographer. He’s been on multiple trips to northern Manitoba to take photos of polar bears. I don’t remember if I had asked or if he volunteered, but he once offered some of those photos for reference.

When I ask to use reference pics, I’m okay with receiving a No, which has happened a few times. I also expect to pay for the exchange, in cash or trade, and am prepared that I might not be able to afford the asking price, which has also happened. Photographers work hard for their craft and deserve compensation. Even with that perspective, I always feel a little weird about asking, wondering if I’m crossing a line, especially with friends.

But I wanted to paint another polar bear, so I swallowed my pride a couple of weeks ago and asked David if the offer was still good. He not only replied right away, but within a few hours, I had a large collection of his photos to download.

I hadn’t planned on using them for a month or more, so I asked early, wary of implying any rush. I was surprised to get them so quickly. I loved looking through the photos because they are all beautiful shots. Rather than try to anticipate what I wanted and create unnecessary work, David just uploaded a bunch and let me decide. Most of them wouldn’t be suitable for reference, but quite a few gave me what I needed. The photos inspired me, so I started this painting the next day and completed it this past Sunday.

If you’d like to see some of David’s polar bear shots, here are two posts (first and second) where he shares some of them. He’s also an excellent writer, so look around his site and enjoy his photography and stories. He casts a wide net with his subjects and themes, but it should come as no shock that I’m partial to his wildlife images, especially the bears. David has taken several trips to hard-to-reach locations all over the Pacific coast and interior to capture glimpses of bears in their natural habitats.

David underwent a surgical procedure earlier this summer, and I drew this cartoon for him. He’s recovering well and will undoubtedly be back in bear country soon. I’m happy with how this polar bear painting turned out, and I look forward to the day I can repay David for his generosity.

Because of the whimsical nature of my work, with an almost caricature quality to the animals, and that I don’t often paint landscapes or detailed backgrounds in my pieces, my paintings rarely look the same as the photos I use for reference. I’m not looking to replicate a picture; I just need to see the details, where the shadows and highlights fall in the anatomy, and what the fur texture looks like. I can’t paint my version of wildlife unless I know what the reality looks like.

That said, I like to take my own photos whenever possible because there have been countless times where the photo has inspired the painting. It might be a hint of an expression I can exaggerate, the way the light hits fur or feathers, or the personality I see in the actual animal that I can develop in the painted version.

But for those times I haven’t been able to take my own reference, I’m grateful for so many photographer friends who have helped bring some of my paintings to life. You know who you are.

One of the challenges with a square format painting is that I need to crop it for my standard 11”x14” print, either vertical or horizontal. I tried both layouts, and vertical was the clear winner. Of course, you can always order the original square format as a canvas or metal print. Drop me a line for more details.

Cheers,
Patrick

 

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Close Encounters of the Bear Cub Kind

DISCLAIMER: Don’t EVER approach bears, bear cubs or animals in the wild.

Earlier this week, Shonna and I were thrilled to be invited to Discovery Wildlife Park to meet their latest adoptees.

Bos and Piper are two Kodiak cubs from the US who needed a new home. While they’re not siblings, they are the same age, three months old today. The amount of paperwork and regulatory hurdles required to rescue these cubs from an unsustainable situation, especially during this unprecedented time of COVID, was monumental.

Our friend, Serena, the head keeper at DWP, has been around animals her whole life. With her staff’s help, she has raised quite a few bears, wolves, and other animals in need of rescue, ones that couldn’t be rehabilitated and returned to the wild.

Discovery Wildlife Park, the Alberta Birds of Prey Centre and the Calgary Zoo, are places I support and the Alberta Institute of Wildlife Conservation, which rescues, rehabs, and releases animals back into the wild. I have no real interaction with the last one, aside from a monthly donation. To be released back into the wild, the animals need as little human contact as possible.

We would like to believe that this could be a world where no animal would ever need to live in captivity, but that would require sacrifices most of us aren’t willing to make. Our addiction to excess is one of the main reasons for disappearing wildlife habitats around the world.

With almost 8 billion people on the planet, each with our own opinions, vices, and levels of acceptable compromise, nothing is ever as black and white as we would like to believe.

Co-existing with wildlife is a never-ending discussion. There are strong opinions on both sides of the argument, from the average person on the street to nature and conservation experts, each speaking from their own experience and perspective. And those experts rarely agree. Unfortunately, there’s often more talking than listening, and the middle ground is mainly unpopulated and devoid of footprints.

I’ve personally wrestled with the issue for many years and will continue to do so. I’ve asked the hard questions from the dedicated people who work in these places. While the answers aren’t always the ones I’d like to hear, I believe they’re doing the best for these animals in their care and that their intentions and motivations are honourable.

I’ve seen how the animals interact with the park staff for years now, their evident trust and affection. I wouldn’t support any facility that didn’t treat its animals with respect and kindness or contradicted my wildlife protection values.
It’s with no small amount of gratitude that I enjoy such a close relationship with Discovery Wildlife Park. Their allowing me close contact with the animals over the past several years is a profound trust I don’t take lightly.

I’ve taken thousands of reference photos at the park, which has allowed me to create some of my best work. But I’ve also learned an incredible amount about wildlife, their behaviour, medical and dietary challenges and their profound intelligence.

Discovery Wildlife Park sits on 91 acres, fenced and double-fenced in places. There is a forested shallow ravine on the western edge of the property, complete with a flowing creek. As this area is inappropriate for any structures, it’s largely untouched and remains natural. This is one of my favourite photos of Berkley from one of our excursions in this little forest a few years ago.

When they’re small, many of the animals spend plenty of time in these woods, where they can run, explore, climb trees, eat berries, and play.

On the day that Shonna and I visited, the cubs were teething, as traumatic for animals as humans. Along with the physiological problems that accompany teething, there’s not much that can be done for the pain and discomfort.

We watched Piper have a full-on meltdown for about a half-hour, bellowing and bawling her way through the woods. She was cranky and having a bad day, reminding me of a child throwing a temper tantrum in a supermarket. It was just as uncomfortable to watch, but Serena wasn’t concerned, as it’s all part of being a baby. Piper eventually exhausted herself and went about exploring, playing and climbing trees.
The following morning, I sent Serena a text asking how Piper was doing.

“She is a happy girl today.”
Bos was much more subdued, a little lazier, but curious and seemed to be enjoying himself as he chewed on trees, dug in the dirt, and wrestled with his adopted sibling.

Just like people, they have their own unique personalities. As my only other experience with a brown bear cub is Berkley, the differences are remarkable. Berkley rarely vocalized, whereas these two are talking all the time. Piper was so named because she’s got a real set of pipes on her.


Though she’s always had an overall genial way about her, Berkley went through a bit of a rebellious teenage phase where she would push Serena’s buttons to test her boundaries. It’ll be interesting to see how these cubs grow into their personalities.

Presently, they require constant care, familiar territory for Serena and the staff. It will be some months before the cubs can spend any significant time alone. There’s little time off for those who care for animals, but I’ve never heard them complain. It’s a demanding but rewarding lifestyle.
In the hour and a half we were out in the woods with the cubs, I took just under 1500 photos. With bright sunshine and dark shadows, the lighting wasn’t ideal. The bears were often between me and the sun, so I didn’t get as much light on their faces as I would generally like. Hard to complain, though, since I was watching bear cubs play in the woods. I wanted to take some video, but it was too much to handle and would have ruined the experience.



As I don’t like hoarding photos, I’ve already gone through them all and kept just over 100. Most are shots I simply liked, the ones you see here. But I did get about a dozen that I think will be the seeds for future work; there are two paintings in there for sure.

We didn’t get to visit Berkley this time around for a couple of reasons. Her large enclosure is on the far side of the park, and they’re doing a lot of work right now getting ready for their season-opening. Most importantly, the animals thrive on routine, and right now, visitors aren’t part of that, so there’s no need to confuse her.

I’ll have to return often this spring and summer to spend some time with her.

If you’d like to watch the cubs grow up, you can follow Discovery Wildlife Park on Facebook and Instagram, where they regularly post photos and videos. They can only care for these critters thanks to the generosity of donors and visitors during the summer season, so if you’re in the Innisfail area, consider stopping in to check it out. It’s easy to keep your distance from others with plenty of outdoor space while still enjoying all that the park has to offer. They open May 1st, and annual memberships are available.

© Patrick LaMontagne
Follow me on Instagram @LaMontagneArt

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The Great Grey Hunter

With the brilliant fall colours and abnormally warm October temperatures, the timing couldn’t have been better for some R&R in Central Alberta ranch land with a good friend of mine. For five days, we caught up, reminisced, ate good food, tipped back a few drinks, played Scrabble and cards like old men, and enjoyed the slower pace.

As usual, I took plenty of photos, mostly of horses, cows and Jingles, the most good-natured dog you’ll ever have the pleasure to meet.

I even caught sight of a moose one evening, though too far away for reference. But anytime I see wildlife is a win.

In my regular day to day, I get up at 5am, even on weekends. For anyone who is self-employed, weekends often don’t mean much anyway. So when I do take time off and sleep in, I’m still an early riser.

On our last morning, I woke just after 7 to an eerie warm light coming through my window. I got out of bed, pulled the curtain back and thought it looked like that strange hazy glow of forest fire smoke. Since we haven’t had any of that in a few weeks around here, it took me a minute to realize it was just the light bouncing off the yellow leaves on the trees and ground.

I quickly dressed, grabbed my camera, and snuck out the back door of the cabin. I didn’t want to go past my buddy’s bedroom and possibly wake him. My photography skills just weren’t adequate to figure out how to capture the weird light I was seeing, so I resigned myself to simply appreciating the moment. The three previous mornings had been pretty, but this was much more intense.

Since I was up already, I wandered out to the road to see if there might be some deer or a coyote around. I knew that anything I might encounter would take off as soon as I saw it, so the best I might hope for would be a few quick snapshots.

When I emerged from the lane onto the road, I spotted a large shape on a fence post. At first, I thought it might be a hawk. I’ve long been trying to get photos of a red-tailed hawk in the wild, but each time I see one, it’s usually while I’m driving with nowhere to pull over.

At the same time, a little way down the road, there were two white-tailed deer. They spotted me just as I raised my camera. I got one shot before they bolted into the trees, but it isn’t worth sharing.

My attention quickly returned to what I now realized was a Great Grey Owl. A common species in Alberta, but I’ve never seen one in the wild. I thought I might get a few quick shots before it took off, especially since it looked right at me, but my presence didn’t seem to be a problem.

Female Great Grey Owls are larger than males but there’s no other way to easily tell their gender. As this was a single and quite large, I’m going with she.

With each step I took, I expected her to fly away, but she seemed more interested in finding her breakfast than worrying about me. I crept closer and moved a little farther down the road around her to get the best light, continuously taking shots.

Eventually, I got to within 8 or 10 feet and figured that was close enough. I didn’t want to crowd her. With a 70-300 mm lens, I knew I’d still capture plenty of detail.

Finally, after watching her snag a mouse and eat part of it on the next post, she gracefully dropped from the post and silently flew down the fence-line. Having taken a few dozen photos, I thought that was it, and I was grateful for the gift.

But she didn’t go far. Her next perch was even closer to the cabin than the first. I wandered back the way I came, again expecting her to take off, but she stayed put. I enjoyed her implied audacity at ignoring the No Trespassing sign, coupled with the fact that the sign colour matched her eyes.

Eventually, she flew into the trees, but still close to the property line. I took even more photos because her perch this time clearly showed the incredible camouflage of her feathers against the nearby tree bark.

Since Darrel is also an early riser and I didn’t want him to miss out on this privilege, I walked back to the cabin to tell him. I knew she might be gone before we returned, but I’d already taken plenty of shots and thought it worth the risk. He was eager to see her as well, and by the time we got back, she was in the same spot.

We watched her move between three different perches. We were so close that Darrel could still get some nice shots with his phone. He took some video as well, but it also captured the sound of my camera shutter on rapid fire.

At one point, a brief gust of wind came up, throwing clouds of yellow leaves around her. It was such a treat to take photos of her in multiple environments, almost like she was a model for hire.

Finally, we decided we’d invaded her space enough and I didn’t want to ruin her chances of getting a meal, even though I’d seen her catch one mouse already.

I thanked her for her patience, and we walked back to the cabin, looking through the shots we’d taken.

After we’d eaten a small breakfast, Darrel saw movement out the window and said, “She’s back!”

Now perched on the fence on our side of the road, she still didn’t seem to care that we were there.

We watched her jump down into the grass to catch a mouse, hop back up on to the same perch, eat it down whole and repeat the process. Here’s a time-lapse of the Great Grey hunter in action. Not a good day to be a mouse.

I’ve taken photos of Great Grey Owls before, at the Calgary Zoo Aviary and at the Alberta Birds of Prey Centre in Coaldale. In those cases, they’ve been orphans and rescues that can’t be released back into the wild. I’ve even painted a closeup of a Great Grey before.

But to see one this close, at eye level in the wild, going about her morning, so tolerant of our visit, was a truly special experience for which I’m grateful.

As the cold weather will no doubt be fast upon us, and with nowhere to go, I plan to spend a lot of time painting. Much like the squirrels and other critters storing up food for the winter, I’ve been stockpiling reference photos for new pieces and have a few already planned.

I believe I’ll add a Great Grey Owl to that list.
If you’d like to support these beautiful birds and others like them, please donate to the Alberta Birds of Prey Foundation. They do great work for wildlife conservation and education.

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© Patrick LaMontagne
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Walking with Wolf Pups

If you’d asked me how I was doing during the past couple of months, I might have answered that I’ve had OK days and not-so-OK days, for reasons I need not explain.

This past Sunday, however, was the first good day in a long while. And it was a really good day.

Discovery Wildlife Park is open as a drive-thru right now, an Alberta Health Services approved method for people to still come and see the animals, but they must stay in their vehicles. It’s proving very popular and they’ve been busy, with a steady stream of cars winding through the park on their well-manicured gravel pathways. The staff helps the animals be seen, they answer questions and do their best to make it an enjoyable experience for their guests, despite the distancing measures.

While I think it’s great they have this option, it’s not one I’d planned on experiencing. I’ll admit to being spoiled by my connection to the park, and the access they’ve given me. I just don’t want to see Berkley from my car, especially given the drive time to get there.

Shonna and I have been very good at following the isolation rules in all of this. She still goes to work at the law office each day, but it’s closed to the public and they have the appropriate safety measures in place. I’ve stayed home, only going out once a week for groceries, completing all of my errands in as few days a week as possible.

Alberta relaxed a number of restrictions on Friday, allowing people to get together in small groups. Some more businesses have been allowed to open and people are venturing out of their homes, though still being advised to wash their hands, keep their distance, and exercise caution.

Serena and I were texting Saturday night as we sometimes do, as I’m always curious to see how the animals are doing. She often sends behind-the-scenes pictures and videos for us. I made the off comment that it’s too bad I wouldn’t be able to see the wolves while they were pups, to which Serena replied, “Why not?”
As she did with their Brown bear Berkley when she was a cub, Serena takes 8-week-old Sassenach and Highlander for a walk each evening in the large fenced wooded area at the park. She lets them explore, play, and get into trouble, without having to worry that they’ll go anywhere.

We’ve had the privilege of many walks in the woods with Berkley. So it was exciting when Serena invited us to come up Sunday evening and meet the wolf pups in the same way.

Shonna later said she was impressed at how I jumped at the chance without overthinking it. Spontaneous is not my default setting.

We couldn’t have asked for a better day. With warm temperatures, sunny and cloudy skies, very little traffic on the highways, we headed up that afternoon, a little over two hours’ drive one way.

I talk with my parents often enough on the phone and via FaceTime, but we hadn’t had an in-person visit since they left for Arizona in the fall. As they live ten minutes from the park, we made time for a short visit on their deck beforehand, keeping our distance, of course.

We met Serena at the park at 6, drove over to the wooded area and before long; the wolves were doing their thing while we took pictures.
Part of the reason we have such a good relationship with the park is that we’ve always given the animals their space. There’s no chasing, lunging, grabbing, yelling, basically any behaviour that’s going to freak them out. We were content to watch, let them get comfortable with our presence and it was up to them to come to us.



Thankfully, once they did, both pups did check us out, but their primary focus was on each other, exploring, playing and attacking.
As Serena said, “It’s Fight Club, every night.”

We spent about two hours with them, visiting and catching up with Serena and taking a lot of pictures. I had my camera, but also my phone. Shonna and Serena took pictures with their phones and I got copies of all of them. So most of these pictures are mine, but some are theirs, too. And we don’t really know which are which.
The funny thing is that like most young animals, they were just bundles of energy, until they weren’t. Once they crashed, they crashed hard. Serena then told us we could pick them up, because at that point, they didn’t care. Holding a snoozing wolf pup is a real treat.
As always, we are forever grateful for our connection with Discovery Wildlife Park. Their orphaned and rescued wildlife critters receive the best care, and you need only look to how the keepers and animals behave around each other to realize how much love there is between them.
We were happy to make another donation to the park while we were there, as they really need it right now. In a regular year, they’re only open from May to October, but they still need to feed and care for the animals the other six months of the year. Maintenance of the facilities, upkeep of the grounds and enclosures, veterinary bills and a long list of accessory expenses, not to mention the salaries of the dedicated staff, makes for an expensive undertaking.

I came home with about two thousand photos. After hours of weeding out the ones I can’t use, I still ended up with dozens of reference shots. I’m so glad to have taken photos while they were little, because they certainly won’t remain that way for long. Their eyes are already changing from blue to yellow. There’s no doubt I’ll eventually create paintings of both of them.

After more than two months of being locked down, that was the perfect break from isolation. And to top it all off, Shonna and I drove back into the mountains that night under a brilliant red sky, one of the prettiest sunsets we’ve seen this year.

Cheers,
Patrick
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© Patrick LaMontagne
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A Cheetah Painting and Photoshop Friends

For many years, I was a member of a group called the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. I don’t remember when I joined, but I think it was sometime in the late 90s or early 2000s, and I remained a member until 2014 when it rebranded.

Owned and operated by Scott Kelby, the organization contained a wealth of online tutorials, a magazine called Photoshop User, and the Photoshop World conference. There was extensive training from internationally well-known instructors, each with their own areas of expertise.

Before social media ruined it all (yeah, I said it!), when like-minded individuals wanted to learn from each other, share their work for critique, answer each other’s questions and simply offer support, there were online forums where artists could gather.

I learned a lot from the NAPP forum and made some terrific friends there. Quite a few of them, I never got to meet in person, but when I finally got to Photoshop World Las Vegas for the first time in 2009, that was the best part of the whole experience, meeting this community in real life.

Over the next five years, I enjoyed seeing them each year, attending classes together all day, parties at night, hanging out at different venues. It was a fun event.

My involvement with NAPP was in a large way responsible for my now expert level skills in Photoshop. The networking opportunities introduced me to people and companies that advanced my career in many ways. I recorded a couple of training DVDs for Photoshop CAFE, wrote some articles for Photoshop User magazine, and won a few prestigious awards. It was due to a weird comedy of errors at my first conference that led me to a long and productive relationship with Wacom, the company that makes the digital tablets and displays on which I create my artwork.

I honestly believe that if I hadn’t been a member of that organization, with the opportunities and insights it afforded, I wouldn’t be painting my whimsical animals today. There’s a direct line between those people and experiences and the work I enjoy most.

Sadly, nothing lasts forever. The organization changed focus, became the Kelby Media Group, they retired the forum,  and most of my friends stopped attending Photoshop World. It doesn’t hold the same value that it used to.

I still talk to some of them now and then, but not nearly as often as I’d like. To this day, there are still a few people who call me Monty, my username from that forum.

For the first part of my career, while I’d been drawing editorial cartoons, I would also paint detailed caricatures of celebrities, and people would hire me to paint them for weddings, anniversaries, birthdays and the like. But I didn’t see a future in it. The first funny looking animal in 2009 was an experiment, inspired by some personal reflection following my first Photoshop World that year.

Without good reference photos, I can’t paint the detail I enjoy, so in the beginning, I had to buy stock photos and relied on the generosity of photographer friends I knew through NAPP.

In 2014, I had already been taking my own photos with a decent camera I’d bought, but it was essentially a point-and-shoot with a good zoom lens. That spring, I painted a family of owls from the reference I’d taken myself here at Grassi Lakes above Canmore.
At Photoshop World that year, I won the Best of Show Guru award for that painting. At the last minute, they announced that part of the grand prize would be a Canon 5D Mark III camera. The oohs and aahs from an audience of mostly photographers indicated that it was something special. I had no clue.

When I won, I remember somebody laughing and saying, “Of course, the illustrator won the camera!”

When I returned to my seat, the friends I’d been sitting with told me just how good it was and that it was worth thousands of dollars. I remember calling Shonna to tell her I’d won, and we mused that I should probably sell it on eBay as such a professional camera would be wasted on me.

When I mentioned that idea to my buddy Jeff from Boston, he gave me some of the best advice I’ve ever received in my career. He told me to keep it and learn to use it.

Since then, I’ve discovered a love of taking reference photos, and it has become as much a part of the creative process for me as the painting itself. While I don’t make a habit of calling myself a photographer and have no designs on going pro, I enjoy it a great deal.

I’ve taken good care of that camera, been using it for six years, and it still does the job I need it to do. If something happens to it, or when it comes to the end of its life, I’ll buy another professional camera, because it’s now such a big part of my work.
Still, now and then, I find myself unable to take my own reference pics. This is especially true of commissions, where I rely on clients to provide me with the photos I’ll use to paint their furry family members.

Or it’s merely a case of access and travel being prohibitive. I’ve been searching for the right reference for an elephant painting for years. My friend Serena from Discovery Wildlife Park went to Africa earlier this year and brought back the perfect photos for me.

One of the people I knew well from my years in the NAPP organization and Photoshop World was Susan Koppel. It’s not enough that she was a flight instructor at 18 and then became an aeronautical engineer, but she’s also an incredible photographer and supporter of animals.

Now retired from the aviation industry, Susan’s photography business is her primary focus, pun intended.  She volunteers for the Nevada Humane Society taking pictures of the animals to make them look their best for their adoption photos. She also donates her skills to a wildlife sanctuary and nature center in Reno called Animal Ark.

The facility has adopted several cheetahs, and one of their regular events is to have cheetah runs. This gives the animals much-needed exercise opportunities to run full out, as they would in the wild, but also provides photographers with a chance to take pictures they can’t get outside of Africa. These photography events give the sanctuary added funds to continue the work they do.

Years ago, Susan provided me with the reference for my Raccoon and Fox paintings. I’ve seen her cheetah photos before and recently asked her if she’d be willing to share some. I’ve wanted to paint a full body cheetah in a running pose, mostly inspired by the photos Susan has posted over the years.

Susan generously opened up her online archive to me and told me I could use what I’d like. I ended up grabbing a dozen or so and expect to do three cheetah paintings in the near future. The reference was just so good that I couldn’t decide.
This is the first of those cheetah paintings, and I obsessed over the details. I expect I could have spent another 10 hours on this one, just nitpicking every little hair. But as every creative knows, eventually you just have to abandon one piece so that you can start on the next.

I miss all of those great people in the NAPP organization and at Photoshop World conferences. Each of them, in one way or another, inspired and contributed to my creating the work I love most, and I believe I’m a better artist and a better person for having known them.

Cheers,
Patrick

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© Patrick LaMontagne
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A Visit with Birds of Prey

After my first visit to the Alberta Birds of Prey Centre in Coaldale, Alberta last year, I was looking forward to another visit this season. Unfortunately, with other obligations close to home, I didn’t manage to get there before they closed last month for the season.

After reading their latest newsletter, which is always informative, I realized that I had not only failed to visit this year, but I hadn’t contributed financially either. I called up last month to make a donation and the patriarch of the family, Colin Weir, told me they’d be in Canmore again on October 5th at the Civic Centre.

I marked it in my calendar and made sure I wouldn’t be away or have other obligations.

A really nice day for it, I got there first thing on Saturday to avoid what would later become a good crowd of people. The birds were outside, in conjunction with a larger event focusing on Geology, fossils and the Canmore Museum, located in the Civic Centre.

The regular cast of characters were there, the ambassadors that travel with Colin when he goes to these events. These are birds that can’t be released back into the wild and have lived at the Centre for a long time. A Great Horned Owl, Short Eared Owl, Barn Owl, Burrowing Owl and Golden Eagle, each with names like Basil, Dexter and Edgar.
Their Golden Eagle is in her early thirties, and I painted her a couple of years ago. Sarah is a beautiful bird and Colin admits he’s very close to her, having raised her since the 1980s. His daughter, Aimee has joked that Sarah is the favorite child.

While I enjoyed painting Sarah, it’s not one of my more popular prints, largely because when the general public thinks of eagles, they’re most often after the Bald variety and that painting of mine is far more popular than this one.

Even still, I couldn’t resist taking more photos of Sarah, knowing I still may do another painting of her, for my own enjoyment.
I spent a good couple of hours there, taking hundreds of photos of all of the birds. The opportunity to get up close and personal, acquiring such detailed reference is one I rarely pass up. I was happy to leave another donation for the privilege of having the birds come to me.
When it comes to supporting charities and causes, I would encourage you to find the thing for which you feel a personal connection.

Whether it’s research into a medical illness that has touched you or a member of your family, efforts for building a new library in your community, or a regular donation to the food bank, find something you can regularly support that makes you feel like you’re making a difference.

As this is a wonderful facility that rescues and rehabilitates birds of prey, I know how much they rely on public support to continue the work they do. With so many worthwhile charities and causes out there, it can be overwhelming to want to give to everybody, but only having the funds to support a few. I decided quite some time ago that all of my charitable donations would go toward wildlife causes, especially facilities that help animals in need of emergency care and rehabilitation. I make a monthly donation to the Alberta Institute for Wildlife Conservation in Airdrie, contribute to Discovery Wildlife Park in whatever way I can, and I support the Alberta Birds of Prey Foundation, but I say No to most everything else, even though I still feel guilty while doing so.

Giving is one of the most selfish things we do, because it feels so good. It’s addictive. I’ll freely admit that it’s also self-serving for me to support wildlife causes and facilities because it’s allowed me to be able to get up close and personal with many of the subjects I’ve painted. How could I not support them in return?

I make a good living, but I’m not wealthy, despite the outsider’s view that everybody who lives in Canmore and Banff is rich. That’s right, the people serving coffee in the local shop, working at the gas stations, cleaning hotel rooms, and working in the grocery store are all rich people, slumming it because they’re bored.

To support a charity, any charity, doesn’t required a huge outlay of funds. A monthly donation of even $20 helps these places because they’re not just relying on your contribution but all of the others who can only give a little, which amounts to a lot. A monthly donation helps them budget for the year, to get the most of their donations and stretch it as far as they can.

I was talking to Colin on Saturday about the challenges faced with fundraising in a facility like his. He told me that their small staff does everything, from rescuing the animals, caring for them, releasing them, training new staff and volunteers, ordering for the gift shop, maintaining the facilities and what I can only imagine is a much longer list of daily duties that go on even when the facility is closed to the public in the off-season.

He told me about somebody who had called him recently from Fort McMurray who hit a Great Horned Owl with his truck at night. Colin showed me the picture of the owl trapped inside the damaged grill, looking out at the man taking the photo. He had to talk the guy through the extrication over the phone and they managed to free the owl that was seemingly undamaged. These types of calls are not unusual, and come at all hours.

On top of all of that, they also have to have a sharp focus on fundraising, or it all stops.

While the Alberta Birds of Prey Foundation has a few generous corporate sponsors, like Fortis Alberta and AltaLink, they don’t receive any funding from the Alberta or federal governments. When governments change, priorities change and funding can suddenly be frozen or come with strings attached that would ultimately hinder their good work, rather than help.

If you think about some of the larger, more well-known charities, Colin points out that those organizations often have fundraising and marketing departments with more people in them than the entire staff at the Alberta Birds of Prey Foundation. Not to mention that the marketing budgets of larger charities often exceed the entire operating budget of a facility like the Birds of Prey Centre, where all of the funds raised go directly to conservation.

The next time you’re thinking about where best to put your limited charitable donations, I would encourage you to find somewhere that does great work that aligns with your values. Consider choosing a small facility, where they might not have the flashiest of ad campaigns, but are on the ground doing great work that matters, necessary work that if they didn’t do it, nobody would. You won’t get the chance at a lottery prize or be invited to a gala fundraiser, but you’ll be able to see firsthand where your money goes and the good that it does.

It might be your local SPCA or animal shelter, a local greenhouse that grows food for struggling folks in your own community, or somewhere like the Alberta Birds of Prey Foundation.

Be selfish. Give a little.

Cheers,
Patrick
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