This week’s photo was taken late last week on a quick (and early!) trip up to the Graveyard Flats area on the Icefields Parkway. It’s just about a 3 hour drive from Calgary so getting there for sunrise makes for a pretty early start this time of year. As in hitting the road at 2:00 am kind of early… yawn…
The weather on the drive out was pretty sketchy with heavy clouds and a lot of rain and for a while it really wasn’t looking good for me. I’d checked the forecast and radar the night before and it looked like the worst of the rain should have been moving off close to sunrise, especially towards the north end of the park where I was headed, so that’s what I was hoping to find. It was looking pretty bad though and I was almost convinced to turn around and just cut my losses for the morning when I noticed, thanks to the light of a nearly full moon, a few breaks in the clouds showing up with some clear sky behind. With my hopes renewed, I continued on made my way to the flats and got ready to shoot.
While the cloud was still too heavy to really let the sun in and light things up, there were some nice patterns of clouds moving through and plenty of fog in the valley bottom near the water to keep things interesting. Normally there is lots of room to walk out onto the flats and many choices for foregrounds but this time I wasn’t able to get very far from the road at all due to the high water level. I did find this little spot though and kind of liked the curve in the shoreline along with the shape of the rapids in the water. I spent a nice amount of time here just working this little spot as the clouds and fog moved through before the sun was fully up for the day. This was one of my favourites from the morning, I hope you enjoy it too.