Looking back on 2014...
A few more hours and we will be celebrating the end of 2014 and the beginning of a New Year! I wanted to take a little while and reflect back on where I've been during the last year.
Once again, I was blessed with being able to travel to some pretty amazing places.
The year started off fairly slowly, but I was getting ready for a spring trip to Botswana in April. Roughly two weeks before we were supposed to leave, my good friend and travelling companion was rushed to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy. It was obvious to Sandi's husband and I that we needed to cancel the trip... which we did without any regret, as the safety and well being of Sandi was way more important than a trip... Botswana would wait for us. Thankfully we all had travel insurance (don't leave home without it!) and received full refunds and were able to rebook the trip for November.
Now what was I going to do until then... I had itchy feet and needed to find someplace to travel to and take photos. A friend made the brilliant suggestion that we go to Utah for 10 days in April and photograph the many amazing sites. Yay... tickets booked, camera bag packed... away I went!
Here are some of my favourite photos from that trip..
We managed to be there just when the wildflowers were in bloom.
On my trip to Utah, I discovered that my iPhone was able to take some pretty interesting photos when I didn't have a real camera with me.... this was taken during a spring snowstorm on my way to work...
June found me on my 4th trip to the Palouse, this time taking some great people from the Calgary Camera Club with me. As usual, I relied on Jack Lien to show us around... here are a few of the places he took us to....
In July I repeated the long drive down to Colfax on my own to participate in Jack Lien's Night Photography workshop. Not only did we photograph the Milky Way, but the harvest was starting so we were able to photograph that as well. Jack arranged a trip to his friend's farm so that we could photograph the harvest and ride in the combines, grain trucks and tractors. Photographing the area at night just opens up a whole new world...
Back in Calgary for the summer, I managed to get out and photograph some of the places around here...
My friend Kay and I traveled to Southeast Alberta looking for Burrowing owls... and found them at the exact GPS coordinates that we were given...
I also took a day trip to the Mountains and shot a few of my favourite photos of the year...
November was when we had rebooked our trip to Botswana which we had to cancel in April. Sandi, Tom and I witnessed some pretty amazing things in Africa.... like a Cheetah training her 11 month old cubs to hunt...
We spent 4 days in the Kalahari Desert at Nxai Pan Camp
Then 3 days in the Okavango Delta at the new Kadizora Camp...
Then 4 days in the Linyanti area at Lebala Camp..
and ended our trip on the Ichobezi Safariboat on the Chobe River which is the border between Botswana and Namibia...
While in Botswana, I decided to go out of my comfort zone and start taking photos of birds. Frustrating to say the least....
It was a pretty good year, one that will be hard to top! I am so thankful for being healthy enough to travel, for all of the wonderful people I traveled with and who I met on my travels... and I am especially thankful to be able to witness all of Gods beautiful creations and the beauty that surrounds us. I am now looking forward to 2015 and wonder what it has in store for me.........
