I read in more than one of my photography books that the best light for landscape is during sunrise and in the early morning, and I've been itching to test this theory. On Tuesday, the 17th, I was finally able to rise early enough (around 5:00) to get out somewhere interesting for sunrise. I decided to go to Rennie Road in Pitt Meadows. Rennie Road is the road that leads to Grant Narrows Park and Pitt Lake, and I planned to head on up to the park once the sun was firmly up.

Well, due to some unexpected detours (I couldn't quite find my way to Rennie Road in the dark), I didn't get set up until almost 6:00. But that was okay, because the sun had not yet peeked over Golden Ears (the mountains to the east of where I was). As the mosquitos swarmed me, I pulled down my sleeves and hit my exposed areas with bug spray. Then I set up my tripod and started shooting.

To the east of my location was a ditch, a field, and the sunrise.

There were a few bolts of lightning behind the mountains to my north. That was neat, because lightning is pretty rare here. I tried to catch a lightning bolt with my camera, but wasn't able to. I just couldn't guess when the bolts were going to strike--they were too sporadic.

Here are the mountains to the north, sans lightning. On the left is Rennie Road.

I was quite happy with the colors that I got. I was using my wide lens with minimum apeture (for sharpness throughout) and long exposures. For example, the photo above used a 2-second exposure. This sort of exposure often gives very saturated colors.

Here's another photo over the fields to the east.

At about 6:30 I called it quits on the location I was at and went further up the road to see if anywhere else looked promising. I didn't find any other landscape spots and ended up at the entrance to Grant Narrows Park fairly quickly. There I got out of the car and looked around for birds, as the area around the gate has proven to be a good birding location. There were a couple of small flitty birds, maybe warblers or goldfinches, in the bushes, but there wasn't enough light to get photos of them.

Not finding anything else of note there, I headed on into the park and did what one would expect me to do in a park--I parked. I got my gear and went north along the dyke between Pitt Lake and the Pitt-Addington Marsh. To the west, on the lake side, is a prominent Osprey nest that I knew about. I saw three Ospreys at the nest, and watched two of them take off to go hunting. Here's the one that stayed behind.

I walked a bit further north, to a viewing platform that looks out over the marsh. From the base of the platform I took some photos of Pitt Lake and the mountains behind it.

The marsh is fairly expansive. It's hard to do it justice with a photo. Maybe I should take a panorama of it.

The next bird to come visit was this one, who I think is a Willow Flycatcher. He didn't stick around for long.

After him, a couple of fluffy little warblers appeared. They were juvenile Yellow Warblers.

After the birds lost interest in me, I got up and walked south, back towards the parking lot.

At the nest, the lone Osprey was making some noise.

A young gull flew past. I tend to think of gulls as being found only by the ocean, but that, as this guy is pointing out, is a misconception.

A tugboat was coming up the river towards the lake, towing a barge. I caught a picture of an Osprey pausing to watch the tug pass.

It was a little after 9:00 and I had to get to work sometime in the morning to prepare for an afternoon meeting. So I proceeded to my car and started heading back towards Burnaby. On the way back, I stopped beside Swan-e-Set golf course to take pictures of the cattle that were grazing in the deep rough along the road.

Here's #307, who didn't seem to happy to see me.

I breezed through my work day, having had such an interesting morning. However, by the time work was over, I was getting very sleepy and had to go home and take a long nap.

My next installment will be about an expedition to the wilds of Vancouver.

Your envoy to the warblers,
Tom