This Is Alberta.

When Canadians think of Alberta, they each have their own expectation: Prairie. Dinosaurs. The Rockies. The oil fields. With an area of 661,848 square kilometres, Alberta is all of these. Prairie in the east, the oil fields in the north, badlands in the south and in the west: the Canadian Rocky Mountains. 

This.

Is.

Alberta.

Specifically, this is Maligne Canyon in Jasper National Park.

This is the deepest canyon in the Rockies.

This is a massive boulder suspended between two cliff faces.
And tiny sprouts rising from the shelter of solid rock.

This is a vertigo-inducing views straight down.

And this... is paradise.

This is home for some magnificent wildlife.

And this

is a photographer's paradise.

This is one of my favourite views in Jasper: 
Off the side of highway 16 just leaving the park.

It took me 5 years to get this shot just right, and I still don't believe I've done it justice.

This was a long overdue trip to Jasper. I still hadn't come close to capturing everything about this place that I'd wanted to see. But in the summer of 2020, there was somewhere else I had to be. 

And at that point of my life, that was even more beautiful than this.

T7i

 I was miraculously called back to work in May, courtesy of nothing short of another natural disaster in Fort McMurray. The Athabasca River had grossly overflooded its banks, and flood victims and the homeless were being moved from town into the camps until the water subsided. Cue 28 straight 12-hour nightshifts for me, and a brand new camera as a reward to myself for 336 hours of work in under a month.

After much consideration, I decided on the Canon T7i - the descendant of the T1i I had used diligently for over a decade. I was excited to get home and find it waiting on my doorstep, and even more excited to get out and play around.

I scanned a map for a place I'd never been and made my way to Alberta Beach, just northwest of Edmonton. I parked on the water's edge and walked up the wharf to where a number of folks were launching boats and fishing off the shore. I took a few shots to test out the new camera, but wasn't overly thrilled with the location or the weather that looked like it was coming in, so I didn't stay long. I was itching to get home and load the pics onto my computer to have a look.

Well.

As it turns out, I forgot to turn on the RAW format for shooting. I had taken straight JPEGs which, while mildly useful, are not ideal for post-processing or detailed editing. Afterward, I learned that even if I had shot in RAW, my version of Photoshop is too out-dated to read the new camera's format. 

But.

It wasn't a completely lost cause.
I managed to capture these two, looking oddly posed and picturesque...

...and this little marvel in so much detail you can count the fuzzes on the seeds one by one. 

So the camera itself was definitely a chalk up in the W column. 

Though my day as a whole, maybe not so much!