Zizka says that seeing this Banff National Park wildlife overpass from the sky made the difficulties wildlife face obvious. “You can see the scars that impede animal traffic. You can see the Bow River, you can see the railway, you can see the Trans Canada Highway in the background. You see this sort of beautiful mountain, Mount Isabelle and the flat iron geography up at the top, which is very typical of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies,” he says. The wildlife overpasses have become a staple of the stretch of highway through Banff National Park, and Zizka says he was surprised by how vegetated they have become. “They’re becoming a sort of a seamless continuation of what’s on either side of them.”

Capturing Mount Robson and the Robson Glacier from a helicopter on what Zizka called a “pretty turbulent morning” is not easy. The process of photographing ice and snow in the Canadian Rockies relies on technical skills and good communication to work with the conditions. “We flew over the summit and got bounced around quite a bit,” he says. “It was very exhilarating.” Zizka loves the possibilities that aerial photography in the Canadian Rockies brings. “There’s always part of me that’s just marvelling at it, in absolute awe of the different angle and what it looks like from higher up.”

What Zizka calls “Lake Louise’s equivalent to Mount Rundle,” Mount Temple is a mountain he knows well. While Zizka has ascended it several times, he enjoyed seeing it from above. “To be able to see it from a different vantage point was really eye-opening. That hanging glacier looks so small … and when you get up close, you realize how much ice still lingers there. Despite, of course, the fact that it’s going away fairly quickly,” says Zizka.

While Zizka sees Mount Rundle from his house every day, he says the winter sun rising on its summit is a fresh perspective, and he appreciates the effort it took to capture it on camera. He details how he was strapped to a doorless helicopter to get the shot. “You’re quite exposed to the elements, and … you’re shooting nonstop, there’s no breaks, it’s always good. There are no lulls. You’re constantly taking photos and operating that shutter, so just watching the digits becomes very, very important in the winter,” he says.