My first chance for a photo op were with my photographer's brother's dogs. I like dogs and was pretty excited at first. Then I saw them eat. They actually inhale their dog food without a single chew! And I noticed that they seemed to put everything in their mouths. A trip down a dog's long intestine is a bit more adventure than I wanted, so I went back to the bag. My photographer's brother drove her and the two dogs to our shoot.
When I came out of the bag I was in the countryside! Outside of a small town called Okotoks which is southish of Calgary are a couple of large rocks as large as a two-storey house. These rocks are leftovers from a glacier that crawled through the area during the ice age. They are called erratics. They are pretty cool. These huge rocks sit in the middle of flat fields and the Rocky Mountains can be seen off in the distance around 100 km away (maybe a bit less, but around that).
People often use these rocks to practice rock climbing. In fact, my photographer went on a school trip to do that when she was in junior highschool. She said that she really liked rappelling but that a free climb freaked her out enough that she decided never to do that sport again. I guess she got over it enough to do the shoot, but I notice she did avoid the same straight ascent from her youth.
One of the good things about climbing was that I was high enough to be safe from the dogs. I also enjoyed the view. It was quite interesting to see so much open space after the short part of my Tokaido walk. Another lucky thing was that two climbers were practicing rope ascents and they let me try climbing on the rope!
Here is a slide show of me at the Okotoks Erratic. The person with me is my photographer's brother Michael.
When I came out of the bag I was in the countryside! Outside of a small town called Okotoks which is southish of Calgary are a couple of large rocks as large as a two-storey house. These rocks are leftovers from a glacier that crawled through the area during the ice age. They are called erratics. They are pretty cool. These huge rocks sit in the middle of flat fields and the Rocky Mountains can be seen off in the distance around 100 km away (maybe a bit less, but around that).
People often use these rocks to practice rock climbing. In fact, my photographer went on a school trip to do that when she was in junior highschool. She said that she really liked rappelling but that a free climb freaked her out enough that she decided never to do that sport again. I guess she got over it enough to do the shoot, but I notice she did avoid the same straight ascent from her youth.
One of the good things about climbing was that I was high enough to be safe from the dogs. I also enjoyed the view. It was quite interesting to see so much open space after the short part of my Tokaido walk. Another lucky thing was that two climbers were practicing rope ascents and they let me try climbing on the rope!
Here is a slide show of me at the Okotoks Erratic. The person with me is my photographer's brother Michael.
