Welcome back!
What is going on? It’s mid November, and winter has barely touched us. Super El Niño 2026 promises to be “interesting”. I guess I should be grateful I haven’t had to break out the heavy clothes yet, but…they are so cozy!
Anyway, we’ve had a series of years with very long autumns, which has completely transformed my Manitoba autumn experience. Previously it might have lasted a week or two at most. Lately it has lasted well over a month, and this year is no exception to that trend:
A couple days later, I was treated to the rosiest of dawns:
Then the sun rose with a brooding sky:
Facing the other direction is “Pope’s Hill”, where Pope John Paul II came and gave mass in 1984 to around 200,000 people, on what is essentially open prairie. Impressive to imagine, at that time it would have been equal to about 1/3rd of the city of Winnipeg. In any case, the way the rising sun struck the hill, with its “ziggurat” layers, surrounding vegetation, and long shadows, was a treat. B&W seemed the best way to capture it:
Let’s shake up the big vistas for a bit and go small, it always impresses me how ladybugs survive the winter just clinging to any blade of grass. This one seemed exposed, but decisively settled, with a bit of dew as an accent:
Again I chose B&W, because the textures seemed most important, and get lost in the colour. On a technical note, this is a focus stack of 15 images, I think I’m finally figuring out the decisions to be made about depth of field vs stack interval. f5.6 (on an M43 sensor) and 15-30 images seems to be a sweet spot.
The autumn colours continued to deepen, with the cattails and Virginia Creeper slowly stewing and saturating, even enhancing the urban landscapes. The rich bloody red was almost made to order for Spirit Halloween:
Eventually the leaves began to fall for real, leaving the woods with (to quote Tolkien) “a dishevelled dryad loveliness”. My favourite of these was one morning in Assiniboine Park:
It was only after I got home that, looking closely on the right side, I noticed there was someone else taking a picture in my direction! I had a good laugh, and part of me wonders if I’m now somewhere on Instagram or whatever.
Cityscape intermission:
It was a fabulous sunrise, full of scattered gorgeous colour, but finding balance in the Winnipeg skyline is tricky. It comes down to juggling the “weight” of various elements: buildings shadowed or lit; which street lights in the shadows to include or cut; the relative size of glowing rooftops; and other features like cloud shape or jet streamers. In the end I chose B&W to accentuate the light streaming around the building and spilling into the streets while most of the city was still waking up.
Then we finally had our first frost, which built the first icy filaments across pools, and curled the dogwood leaves:
Technical note: the two colour images above are focus stacks of 30 images. The curled leaves were shot at f5.6, while the frosty one above was shot at f11.
After the frost it warmed up again, and we had a morning with one of the heaviest fogs I’ve ever seen here. I just walked out my front door to the local soccer field and nearby streets. Someone just arrived to park, which added to the mood:
Finally, a couple of pictures from our annual hiking trip to Spruce Woods, a couple hours drive west of Winnipeg. Past years we’ve had everything from snow and temperatures well below freezing, but of course this year was mild as can be. Again I chose B&W for the structures and textures:
Ok…
Just to be cute, one more shot. This was taken while I was framing up the cityscape above. In the other direction I noticed a little graffiti which made me go “Awww!” 😊 , then the sky seemed to agree and popped off with intense pinks and purples:
And with that I’ll sign off. Hug your loved ones, and take care!
Cheers!