Every Picture Tells a Story?

They all have a story they say, but in this case it’s true. Moraine Lake has been a bit of a bucket list shot for me and when I knew I was going to Alberta, I immediately thought of this surreal place. The thing is, I already knew that you have to arrive very early in the morning before they close the road which happens when the lot fills up. We wandered up there one day while in Lake Louise but the lot was full. I briefly spoke to the people tending the gates and a man informed me that the magic time was about 4am, three full hours before sunrise.

We talked more about it that afternoon and my wife was actually pretty gung ho to go! We planned to get up at 2am to strike out on our very own epic photography adventure. Total darkness for the whole drive on unfamiliar mountain roads and the possibility of various animals on the road too. We arrived to the road to Moraine Lake at 3:45am, there was a guard posted but he payed no attention to us so we headed down the road…….we were in! Arriving to the parking lot about 30 minutes later, we found it to be maybe half full already. We picked our spot and settled in for a bit of a snooze ahead of sunrise.

Things started to get a bit more active about 6am as people began moving around heading to the washroom and getting ready for their various hiking treks they were doing. As the darkness began to lift, it revealed our surroundings, we hadn’t seen them as we arrived. We were totally surrounded by extremely large peaks. One of the most beautiful sights I’ve seen. There were people with camping stoves or jet-boils making full breakfast complete with hot coffee or tea while getting ready for their day.

We got sorted out and I located the rock pile and began to look for my spot but found that others had beaten me to the top and staked out all the best positions already. I looked around and scoped out a new location that was almost halfway down the pile on the front face. As I was standing there waiting for the light, I decided to go back down to lake level and shoot from there where I wouldn’t have trees in my frame. I found my wife sitting in the rocks almost directly under where I had previously been. I set up and got to shooting as the light began to dance across the peaks in front of us. Success!

It was a wonderful day, an adventure, something that we would normally not take on but this time, it was just what you had to do to get the picture. We left the lake at about 9:30am having captured many shots, shots of a lifetime really for me. We discussed our morning as we drove home to Canmore to have a shower, a bite and just maybe a nap before heading out to wherever we were to be for our evening shoot. By this time, we had been up so long that we really had a day under our belts already and we had a big sense of satisfaction. We won.

Photo of the Week #203

We just got back from a few days in the beautiful Rocky Mountains in Alberta Canada. Our base there was Canmore so how can you not take advantage of “The Three Sisters”, likely Canmore’s most iconic subject. I hear lots of talk about the value of shooting these “iconic” subjects, the ones that have been shot so many times by just as many photographers. Lots of people think those shots are of little value. I, personally think you should shoot what makes you happy, after all, I do this for my enjoyment, right?

Photo of the Week #201

This photo was made awhile back, 8 years ago in fact. I’ve always loved this image because it depicts a slice of maritime history. This old shack resided beside the road leading from Tantallon to Peggy’s Cove, can’t remember what that road is called, been awhile. This wonderful piece of fishing heritage is now gone, if you didn’t know where it once stood, you would never know it ever existed.

This is another of my re-edits using some more modern technologies for editing that I now have available to me. Lightroom has come a long way in that time! The new masking tools in Lightroom are a life changer for me, love the versatility we have now.

Years In The Making

I’ve found myself frustrated many times because I was in an amazing location at the worst possible time of the day. To get good travel shots, you would like a nice light, yet we don’t necessarily have the time to wait. This location looks best late day light, in the morning it’s in shade. For me, that meant a lot of driving as our house was about 2 1/2 hours from here. This time round, according to the metadata, it was around 4:30pm (I usually forget to set the time when I go into a different time zone so who knows?). This day, everything seemed to align for me and I got this.

Photo of the Week #199

The Limestone City Blues Festival has long been a favourite of mine. Not only because it’s local for me, but it is also a great festival. Over the years, they have brought us some of the greatest names in blues music and this year was no exception. This was their 25th Anniversary edition and I have the shirt too. The festival takes place each year on the last weekend of August and I look forward to it all summer. This year, the main stage saw two great shows, not to mention Confederation Park stage and all the local bars featuring the greatest music in the world!