Hello Everyone,

Wish you a very happy new year! I hope that the first week has been enjoyable and as good as you hoped.

I am starting this new year with some different ideas and approach towards 'Lenses of I'. With your help and some dedication on my part we can make the new plans a success. As all businesses need plans to move forward and keep working towards learning, I am going to post an image of the week on every Monday of 2019. It will include a story behind the image and how I captured it. This will also be a fun way to document how I progress as a creative individual.

Lets begin this journey with my first image.

Snowy owl east of Calgary

I had attended a workshop on photographing snowy owls at the end of last year. Honestly, till 2017 I was just daydreaming of capturing owl images. So I decided to venture out with my partner to find more owls, we left home in afternoon and for 3 hours we just drove around the country roads without success. As the sun was almost setting, we stopped for a sunset shot and as I got out of the car, we were given a golden opportunity to take picture with this white beauty. This image was taken with a canon at ISO: 1250 ,F: 8.0, Shutter speed: 1/500 sec and focal length: 562 mm. Slightly edited in Lightroom.

The owl was out ready for hunting and dinner and it stayed on this wire for few minutes. It was amazing to see it swoop down and move to a post closer to ground.

Snowy owl on a post enjoying sunset

These amazing birds are just visiting us for winter, however they are decreasing in numbers so we must be respectful of their territories and hunting grounds. I look forward to exploring more snowy owls around Alberta in next few months.

Let me know what you think and if you have interesting stories of finding animals and birds in the wild from your bucket list, please share in comments. Thanks for spending time here.

If you live in Calgary, the word Chinook clouds would bring a warm happy feeling. Some people associate it with migraines and headaches too, but mostly it is a relief from the freezing arctic chills. The temperatures fell to the 0s and +5s in the last week and all the hibernating (hiding) humans got to hang outside.

This was exciting as I got my Canon T5 Rebel and the new 75-300mm lens to photograph some action. I noticed lots of birds out and about just like us, enjoying the sunshine. So I decided to take pictures of the birds in the city. The Pigeons are always easy to spot along the river.

The Mallard Ducks

It was quite the challenge to zoom-in the huge lens, especially when birds are flying. It is very heavy to handle for a newbie like me. But I enjoyed the process nonetheless. We spent about 2 hours walking around the Bow river near Kensington and saw few happy chirpers.

Finally, we also managed to spot the Hairy Woodpecker. It is very swift in its movement, but the bright day helped to spot the red feathers on its hood.

Flicker is a kind of woodpecker.

I am glad to have wandered around the river side to see and enjoy the beauty of nature.

I hope to indulge in more bird watching and walking around town for photography and share some more of the pictures in the future. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Feel free to comment and offer your feedback so that I can improve.