The way for a fulfilled dream
With my friend Jan Mlazovsky (www.mlazovsky.cz), I fulfilled my childhood dream and saw with my own eyes the splendor of the Canadian autumn, which until then I knew only with the fascinating documentaries and the colors of the thundering wall calendars. The Canadian Rocky Mountains are the mountains of the mountains. The breadth of this mountainous belt reaches more than two hundred kilometers along the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia. Add glaciers, lakes and rivers with all their waterfalls, and then choose where you want to start shooting all the unreal natural corners within 14 days! It’s like visiting another planet.

I do not think which places are the nicest. Perhaps the best tactic is “do as much as possible!” We were able to visit Yoho, Banff and Jasper National Parks. All three stretch along the road linking Banff and Jasper with the same name. This road (as in other parts of the world) boasts the adventure of “the most beautiful road in the world”. You will see some fabulous panorama along the way and take a picture of it. You will be half a kilometer away and three more spectacular panoramas appear before you than the first. And so it goes from Banff to Jasper, over and over, for a total of 600 km. Seeing nearly 4000 km in less than two weeks – how then photography may look like.

Waiting east or sunset is just a desirable wish. Only changing weather with a lot of clouds, showers and quite frequent rainbows helps us to take quite interesting pictures even at noon. The crowd of Japanese and Chinese tourists, able to cover their entire foreground of the scene, has also been shown to be quite unexpected by the photographer. But the people also indicate a certain photographic advantage. Most of the real jewels of Canadian nature are commonly available by car, so they are not too physically strenuous with all the photographic equipment to walk too far.

Birds? “There are none here. Only bears and cougars, “I learn from our host, the Czech, who has been living here for over twenty years in Canmore at the foot of the Rockies. There is no ornithologist, but knows enough about nature. After all, like everyone who lives here. The wilderness is ubiquitous here. Last year he had taken the bee from the garden. But it is not against the neighbor. In the winter, Puma caught his dog’s puma right here in the house.

Taking pictures of birds and wildlife is not the easiest thing to do. The advantage, on the other hand, is that whatever you photograph is always something new that you will not find in Europe. Over time, I have to say the truth to the local layman. In the heart of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, birds do not care too much. A certain amount of compensation for the small number of birds observed was that if a person saw anything, it was something he would never see at home. In addition to several species, North America and Europe have little to do with bird species.

A visit to touristically busy places, where most bird species are accustomed to the presence of people, has been very successful, and time pressures are a very grateful solution. There are also marked spots in national parks where visitors are driving and without being forced to leave the car, watching and photographing wildlife right next to or directly on the road. These are deers, White-tailed deers, elks, mountain sheep, black bears and grizzly. 100 000 bears lives in Alberta! The biggest photographic experiences were several.

Geese are generally very elegant birds. For Canada geese it is doubled. Having the opportunity to meet them in their natural habitat of Canadian rivers in the number of many tens and hundreds of them is a true ghost for the lens.