As I’m sure you’ve noticed, this site is pretty quiet! I simply haven’t had time to add new posts. I’m still shooting full time, but I’ve been concentrating on my Calgary Portrait Photography business over at http://riverwoodphotography.com. I specialize in family and children’s portraiture and I do lots of headshots (business portraits) for small businesses. If you are in the Calgary area and need a Portrait Photographer I hope you will please consider using my services.

My stock photography collection is still alive and well at my Photoshelter website, and I also have a small Fine Art Prints gallery in the Client Area at Riverwood Photography. Please check one of those sites if you are interested in purchasing some of my nature and landscape photography.

Feel free to contact me at any time if you have questions or are looking for a specific image.

Thanks, Sean

I was wandering around downtown Ottawa waiting to photograph the lunar eclipse. It was a very cloudy night and it gradually became more and more obvious that the eclipse was not in the cards for me. On the way out of town I stopped by Parliament Hill to create a few images of the Hill with all the Christmas Lights in full display. It’s a beautiful scene and obviously very photogenic!!

Dramatic skies over the Calgary cityscape in the morning, including the new Bow building towering over the surrounding highrises.

I’m always on the lookout for new locations to photograph the Calgary Skyline from and so I went for a drive the other day. I tried a whole bunch of spots but this was definitely my favorite. I found a few more places that I’m going to try soon…

We went for a walk around the Kelowna Farmers & Crafters Market. The pure abundance of beautiful fresh fruits and vegetables was amazing to see. Everythind was bright and colorful and mouth wateringly fresh. Of course we had to try and buy some of the fresh produce… The apples were direct from the orchard (picked the night before) and they were crisp and delicious!

The trees in the Calgary area are at the peak of the fall colors right now and they are very beautiful. I’ve been spending lots of time at the park lately doing family and children’s portraits so I’ve had plenty of time to watch in awe as the colors have changed. The ponds at the park have been completely still every morning and I’ve wanted to capture it for awhile. I finally had a chance to create some beautiful landscape images this morning!

I have many gopher images available for sale on my site and this one was picked up for use on a poster for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. The original image of the gopher has been fairly heavily modified, but it was a pretty cute image to begin with!

Here are a few more of my gopher images for your reference!

While hiking to Lake Helen and Cirque Peak in Banff National Park we came across dozens of these interesting critters. They are very large ground squirrels that are not even remotely shy. We were able to approach very closely before they even bothered to look up. they are very fat, and very cute!

To see some other, and very different images from this trip, please check out my post about it at my other website…

For many years we’ve been taking our summer vacation at my wife’s family cottage west of Ottawa. It’s one of those places that is absolutely magical for me and I feel completely at home there. The cottage is situated alongside a shallow river and the area is home to a massive variety of birds, animals, and insects, and the gardens at the cottage are full of beautiful flowers. It’s a little bit of paradise and I’ve created some of my favorite images while there over the years.

This year was another very productive trip for me. The weather seemed to work out perfectly and I had a great collection of subjects to work with. Here is a gallery of some of my current favorites.

We went hiking up to Rawson Lake in Kananaskis Provincial Park. It’s a beautiful hike to an even more beautiful lake! The highlight of the trip actually came just as we were about to start back down the trail to return home. I was picking my way across the rocks in the scree slopes hoping for one last chance to photograph some Pica when I realized that I had just scared off a pretty little Long-tailed Weasel. The weasel bounded off and disappeared into the rocks. I slowly followed in the direction that it had gone, and quickly found it. It wasn’t shy at all and for the next 10 minutes or so we played a fun game of hide and seek. The Weasel kept running off into the rocks, and then creeping slowly back to investigate me. It was lots of fun and I made a few great images!

Animals – Weasels – Images by Sean Phillips

I was at Carburn Park for Paddlefest and had the opportunity to take my family for a trip around the pond in a canoe. The funny thing about being on the water is that swimming birds tend to think you’re one of them and they ignore you. Maybe not completely, but they certainly allow you to get much closer than if you were shore. I find this phenomenon all the time and I’ve made some of my best images of birds from a canoe.

Here are a couple of images of waterfowl that I made while toodling around the lake with my family in the Canoe with me. The first is a beautiful Red-necked Grebe. I’ve made lots of images of Grebes in the past, but I’ve rarely been as close as I got to this one. It’s so much easier to make great images when you get close! The second image below is a pair of American Wigeons launching out of the pond. They were pretty comfortable with us as we got closer and closer, but I guess we went a little bit too far and the they took off! I love the water droplets falling down off them as the fly.

American Wigeons Launch into Flight