At first glance, the photo of the Aurora Borealis spreading across the Milky Way is eye-catching. But on closer inspection, the light show turns into a stunning bird radiating blue-green light from its body and wings.
Jason Marino’s The Hummingbird helped the St. Albert photographer receive the 2024 Photographic Artist of the Year title awarded by the prestigious Professional Photographers of Canada – Alberta Region.
“I felt pretty good. It’s a great feeling to have image recognition by my professional peers. It was really a good feeling,” said Marino, a landscape photographer.
Competing photographers are required to send in four images in various categories. Marino chose to enter two images in the pictorial florals category, one in fine art and one in animal.
The Hummingbird, rated at the top of the grid, was captured May 10 in southeast of Edmonton in an area with little light pollution.
“I have a few locations where the composition faces north. On this occasion, the aurora was so strong, it started swinging south. As I observed the sky, I realized I had to swing south. I had to scramble. It was exploding in reds and greens. I pulled over on a secondary highway and set up a tripod. The strongest aurora was straight up, and I stared shooting. I had no idea I got this shot until the next day when I put in my memory card,” Marino said.
Another photo he entered was Calm Before the Storm, a black and white image of the Maligne Lake boathouse shot on a long exposure.
“The water is smooth and calm, yet there’s a storm approaching as clouds are building.”
A second black and white image Marino entered was Born to Soar, an eagle flying over Medicine Lake in Jasper National Park. And the final entry was Gem of the Dolomites, a photo of a picturesque little church on a grassy valley.
“Behind the church is a beautiful range of mountains. It’s taken at sunset with golden lights on the clouds creating a soft, silky effect.”
Marino was born and raised in Edmonton. Enbridge currently employs him as an in-house lawyer, and he leads a team supporting the company’s wind and solar business.
Photography is a side passion he developed while living in Bermuda.
“We moved to Bermuda as a life adventure. Our kids were two and four at the time, and it was the time to do it.”
The family lived in Bermuda for three years. In 2005, when they planned to return, Marino wanted to preserve his memories of the island nation and purchased a used SLR camera.
“I rode a moped for two days around the island and took pictures of beautiful places we went to. I wanted to capture them to remember them. In two days, I took 1,500 photos. They took several memory cards, but it was what I wanted to capture.”
Back in Alberta, Marino realized how much he loved the process, but photography took a backseat to establishing a career. In 2018 he was back in the game and has won more than 150 international, national and regional photography awards.
Although the Rocky Mountains are a place of natural beauty he visits as often as possible, he has also photographed Death Valley in Nevada, Joshua Tree National Park in California, Arizona’s Grand Canyon, Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park and the Oregon coast.
On his website, Marino writes, “We are all fortunate to live in a world with endless natural beauty, where photographic opportunities are limited only by the imagination, so I embrace every chance I get to explore and capture that natural beauty.”
His next projects include capturing a solar cycle, visiting Iceland and possibly photographing a volcano, and photographing a total solar eclipse on the path of totality.
