British Columbia Painting Pictures

Ok - so as promised here are some some photos I took of British Columbia that I have touched up and painted. I really think some of them are pretty good and I am considering having prints made of them, because I think people will pay good money on Ebay for some fancy, but inexpensive home deorations. I just need to come up with the money to have one printed off to see how it looks real big! I can say that they look great when Iprinted them out and stuck them on the fridge in 8x11.5. Amanda was blown away! (or maybe she is being nice) Regardless I love it! I encourage everyone who reads this to send me pictures to mess aroud with as I am having a ball and I am excited to share some of the fun and funny things I can do with them - especially phot touch ups on old time photos. I even got rid of Amanda and her sisters freckles from an old photo! It's a blast.

Why did I get caught up in this. I saw this thing on the web that was a promotional video for this guy who does this for a living. I was amazed with the results he could get, so I set around to see if I could do it myself. Well I am not as good as he is, but I am getting there.

-Spence

P.S. For those who were wondering, all of the above photos are mine (I took them) The mountains with the sunset above them are from some late night ice-fishing on jackson lake. I was freezing my butt off, but I saw some spectacular sites. The fishing didn't pan out, but I have never seen anything like the clouds that night.

The night scene is of the fabulous new Trail, BC bridge in downtown Trail. When I say new, I mean newer than the old one that i believe is close to 100 years old if not older - but still open. It can be scary sometimes to cross it because it still has a wood bottom (newly remodeled in the 60s or something like that). ITs of course not as scary as the "one way car - other side is railroad track" wooden bridge you have to cross to get to the boundary/waneta border crossing when you want to get cheap gas in the states. You drive across this bridge which crosses the blasting outlet of the "7-mile" pend'o'reille river dam. Of course it's right where the Pend'O'Reille and the columbia rivers meet - so it's no lauging matter in size. You cross across this creaking hulk and you look out the window to see this magnificent splash of spray and a cataclysm of water poundin against a large cliff face. One can say you feel like you are seeing your doom when you cross this beauty - needless to say it's always green in that area with all the moisture!

The fish ladder picture is in Kokanee Creek provincial park between Salmo and Nelson British Columbia. Every year the river used to run red with Salmon - now it's dwindled down to a scant few thousand - but none the less the area is spectacular. When I took this picture three years ago I had just barely caught the park after the run had stopped and fall was setting in. The colors were spectacular!

The picture of the mountain with the fall colors is from the top of Mt. Revelstoke in the Purcell Mountain range 5-6 hours north of the border. This area is home to the farthest in land temperate rain forest in the world. What causes this? Well the mountains you see here don't look very big because I am standing on the top of a fire lookout tower on the top of a big mountain! The landscape goes from a valley at the most 600 feet above sea level (conincidentally it is warm and rains all year and they grow marvelous apples here) to mountains above the 12,000 foot range in the course of 30 miles! It is awesome! Up there they have year round glaciers and on average accumulate rouhly 75 feet of snow a year (This is another National park called Glacier National park - but not related or evenclose to our Glacier National park - which does extend into Canada, but is called Waterton (due to all the glacial carved lakes) National park up there). Mt. Revelstoke national park covers some pretty incredible territory - which brings me to my last picture of this group.

This one is from the giant cedars walkway in that rain forest I told you about. Here the trees are enormous and so are the ferns. You are a full nine hours away from the coast - at least, and only 15 to twenty hours by car to the arctic circle! Yet this place is over run with plant life and trees so large it would take dozens of us to encircle some of them. Who knew there were sleeping giants this far north! Anyway - I hope you enjoy the pictures. Feel free to print them off if you like family.

For those of you outside of family this pictures are copyrighted and any reuse or republishing of them in part or in whole can and will be punished to the utmost extent by law, and blah blah blah. j/k! Have fun people....

Love,

Spence and Amanda