Landscape | MiKS Media Photography

Can’t Argue With That Sky! – Alberta Landscape Photography

by Kasia Sokulska | Sep 10, 2015 | Landscape

One of my favorite pass times during summer is driving back roads around Edmonton and discovering new interesting places. I am grateful for my husband’s driving during those times because I have no sense of direction and would get helplessly lost if it wasn’t for him. He also is smart enough to mark those interesting places on GPS so that if the weather looks promising, we can go back for a sunset shoot. We have discovered this little old farmhouse in May driving to a different location and decided to visit it several weeks ago. We were very lucky that day and were granted a beautiful sunset. To me, there is nothing more relaxing and enjoyable than watching interesting skies when they turn colors with setting sun. Sharing such experience is even more fun. With relatively low costs of gas, I am a cheap date. Buy me a coffee, take me out for a few hours drive and I’m happy. My husband must be a lucky guy, eh? ;D

Kasia

Summer Sunsets From The Past

by Kasia Sokulska | Aug 25, 2015 | Landscape

Sunsets are my favorite times of day, no matter the season. Summer ones are particularly wonderful, since the world is so colorful in itself and the warm glow of the setting sun makes it looks so much more appealing. It has occurred to me, while reading Mac’s recent post (A year ago… Photography Reflections.) , that I have a lot of images from our wanderings from last year, that I’ve never managed to post. I thought, it would be a perfect opportunity to do it now, before summer is over..

Kasia

From Columbia Icefields to Abraham Lake – Landscape Photography

by Kasia Sokulska | Aug 19, 2015 | Landscape

It is not that long of a drive from Columbia Icefields to the famous Abraham Lake, and there is still a few nice spots to stop here and there. We were getting a bit tired by that time, during our May visit to the Rockies, but we could not resists those stops, even with a long way ahead of us. I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of Abraham Lake. Winter pictures of it, with gas bubbles frozen in ice, are quite famous, but it is a very pretty place during fall and spring as well. This time, we were very surprised to find most water gone from the lake. The dry lake bed (reminded me of Death Valley, sans the wandering rocks ;D) was covered with tracks of vehicles. So we have taken a bit of a tour as well.. The sky was wonderful, the views amazing, the colors so eye catching one could hardly not stop and admire. And snapping a few pictures while there was just a bonus. Here is what we saw..

Kasia

Columbia Icefields – Landscape Photography

by Kasia Sokulska | Aug 4, 2015 | Landscape

Our spring adventure in the Rockies could not have been completed without a stop at Comumbia Icefields. Check out my 2 previous posts: Cloudy Day in the Mountains and One Sunset by Two Lakes to see what happened during the first two days of our trip . They are located pretty much in the middle of the road between Jasper and Banff. High up in the mountains glaciers rule. Snow and ice cover tops of the Rockies year around there and it is a great escape from the heat of summer to come for a visit. This time we have decided to do a little bit of climbing instead of taking the famous buses. My climb, however, ended pretty quickly, because my footwear was not good in the snow that cover the mountain in patches (that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it!!) so I was forced to spend some time on, pretty much, the bottom of the climb. Oh well, there is always the next time, isn’t there? ;D It was a beautiful spring day. The clouds, were lovely and the mountains, as always, amazing. Here is a few shots from this part of our adventure. Hope that snow on top with some glaciers here and there will help us all to cool off a bit during these hot summer days. Next time, I will take you for a short visit to Abraham Lake, where, due to the very low level of water we were able to take a drive on the lake bed. But that’s a story for another day. For now, enjoy the ice and snow of Alberta glaciers..

Kasia

One Sunset by Two Lakes – Alberta Landscape Photography

by Kasia Sokulska | Jul 17, 2015 | Landscape

Wherever you go world always looks better with the sun hanging low above the horizon. Especially mountains seem to develop more texture and dimension. Harsh light flattens them out and robs us of the details so beautifully revealed during sunrise or sunset. Such was the case one evening, during our May visit to the Rockies. We have decided to stop at the place where on one side of the highway we can see Jasper Lake and on the other Talbot Lake separates us from the mountains. This stretch of the highway is always a pleasure to travel, but when it is getting close to sunset it becomes even more beautiful to the eye… Here is a few shots from this evening. I hope you enjoy.

Kasia

Fuji and Aurora Borealis or Marriage Advice

by Mac Sokulski | Jul 15, 2015 | Fuji Landscapes, Fuji X, Landscape

It is a dangerous territory I wade in. As my wonderful wife, Kasia, blogs here, and reads my posts. She’s also a photographer. This arrangement has a lot of pluses, like being able to bounce ideas off each other, or being able to just go shoot northern lights, at the spur of the moment at 2 am in the morning. What are we doing up at 2 am, you may ask, well I’ll just leave that alone…. or I’ll phrase it this way…. we are editing pictures :D. It helps a lot that our kids are old enough and responsible enough that, that we know we won’t come back to a burned out house. Another huge plus, is that we learn from each other, be it camera settings for a particular situation, or post processing. Funny enough we don’t pat each other on the back. Kasia is my harshest critic. She can very quickly kill my excitement, by quickly flipping through my latest images, and don’t say a word.

As for minuses, we like to take pictures of the same things. So if we go for a little road trip, we usually come back with very similar images, even though she still shoots with Sony NEX cameras. I thought of introducing Kasia, to Fuji, but then I thought about lenses and having to fight over them (I’m bigger, but I would still loose), eventual silent treatments, sleeping on the couch…. nah way to complicated. So we have a Fuji / Sony photo marriage with a sprinkle of Canon for good measure.

Our latest Aurora trip is a perfect example. We both took our fish-eye lenses, one for Fuji and one for Sony. The advantage of those is that they are manual lenses, and it’s easy to set them to infinity focus. Also the focus by wire lenses common on most mirrorless cameras, do not have focus infinity markings on them. Fuji to their advantage has few very good lenses that allow for this. Also another advantage Fuji has over Sony, is the distance scale on the LCD display. Going by that scale you can approximate the infinity focus of a lens even if there are no markings. Sony and their NEX lenses do not have this, making them all but useless at night. Well the results of the trip are pretty obvious. Here are Kasia’s images of Aurora from that night, and mine are below. Images are almost identical. Well….. Fuji makes them better, but that’s only because it’s Fuji 🙂

…. and I guess I will be posting next time from the dog house…. barq barq

P.S. Honey, you know I love you 🙂