Xmas in Banff

I spend Xmas every year in Alberta, Canada. I first started going there after my brother moved there in 1988 (or there abouts) to visit my brother and get some good snowboarding in, and now all my immediate family live there (my parents, brothers, their wives and my sister, both my brothers wives sisters and their families, my brothers in-laws and soon to be my other brothers in-laws), it has become both a tradition and usually the only chance I get to see my family. Its also the only chance I get to go snowboarding since I moved to the big smoke.

This year my friend Yannick, who was born in Madagascar, he moved to Paris when he was 14 and to London when he was 23, came along with me - never thought I would live to see a Madagascan on skis! Isn't life whacky!? He was pretty good though, and after two or three days on snowblades he was onto full sized skis and ripping up the slopes!

The above picture is of my sister (Nonny) and Yannick acting the tit on a drive up the bow valley parkway on our way to Lake Louise in Banff National Park. The drive is known for its wildlife and I saw my first wild moose on this trip (I havent posted any images of the moose as I only had a wide angle zoom lens with me, meaning the only pics I have are of the moose as a dot in the distance).

The whole of the Canadian Rockies are picture postcard views which make for great backdrops for photos, summer or winter. For this photo the sun was streaming in from camera left and I had a flash on manual, to camera right (via a radio trigger). I like the way the exposure adjustment and the mix of sunlight and flash on the foreground makes the background look like a painted back drop. At -18C there wasnt much time to hang around, especially as my legs were soaking wet from wading through the snow chasing the moose a short while beforehand. You can see just how cold I was in the pic of me below, me begging my sister to hurry up and press the shutter so we can get back in the truck!