Cranbury Digital Camera Club Exhibit, Cranbury, NJ Town Hall, May, 2025

Rocky Mountaineer near Banff

I arrived at the Banff, Alberta, Canada train station about a half-hour before train departure time and found the train parked at the platform. Supplies and passengers for the westbound run were being loaded. I had ridden the eastbound, arriving the previous evening. The trip from Vancouver had taken two days, the Rocky Mountaineer operators wisely scheduling the train to put the passengers in a hotel in Kamloops, British Columbia so none of the incredible scenery would be missed due to darkness. I again congratulated myself for riding the eastbound so that the views out the train’s large picture windows would only improve with each mile traveled. I made a record photograph of the train in the station, but that was not my primary mission. I had less than a half hour to conduct a frantic search for a setting for the westbound Rocky Mountaineer before it left Banff—being careful not to be so picky as to end up with nothing. I left town on an unfamiliar road that loosely followed the tracks. After a few miles, I came around a bend in the road and knew immediately that I had found what I was looking for. Before me was a lake, its shores lined with fir trees with just the right “window” to allow the train along the far shore to be reflected on the lake’s surface. Above the rails, a low cloud screened the distance, but not so much that two rocky peaks were unobstructed as they reached into a sky filled with cumulus clouds. Soon enough the train arrived and I made the image.

8/5/15 Canon 60D with Sigma 18-250mm lens @30mm 1/200 sec @f/10 ISO 500

White Ibis

The Stainton Memorial Causeway connects Ocean City, NJ with the mainland. Driving across Little Egg Harbor Bay toward the beach, the first island you come to is where the Ocean City Welcome Center is located. Adjacent to the Center’s parking lot is a large rookery where the elevated vantage point allows you to look right into the nests of great and snowy egrets, yellow-crowned and black-crowned night herons, little blue herons, and glossy and white ibis. The photo opportunities attract me to the location at least once each spring. On one of those visits I captured this white ibis flying back to its nest with the marshland visible behind it.

5/25/24 Canon 60D with Tamron 150-600mm lens @450mm 1/1250 sec @f/8 ISO 500

Point Vicente Lighthouse

South of Los Angeles, CA, a peninsula named Palos Verdes reaches into the Pacific. At its southwest corner stands Point Vicente Lighthouse. Hiking trails along the bluffs provide several vantage points of the ninety-nine-year-old lighthouse, including this one.

3/23/15 Canon 60D with Sigma 18-250mm lens @28mm 1/200 sec @f/5 ISO 200

House Wren

Thompson Park in Monroe Township, NJ is a county park that offers a diversity of wildlife and habitats. Within walking distance of my home, I visit the park frequently. One of my favorite sections features an interface between woodland and open field, which is where a variety of species of wildlife is more likely to be encountered. In the morning, this section is evenly lit while the shadows in the woods to the rear provide dramatic—almost theater stage lighting. This was the lighting situation when I came upon this house wren exploring a downed tree trunk.

7/26/24 Canon 60D with Tamron 150-600mm lens @600mm 1/1250 sec @f/9 ISO 2500