This week’s photo of the week is another shot from the cool morning I spent at Spray Lakes in Kananaskis Country just over a week ago. After first making the wide scenic shot from last week’s post along with a few other poor attempts (which I won’t be showing you!), I honed in on a couple of details from within the larger scene. I had to move pretty quickly to get these last few images because the falling snow was coming down very thick and heavy by this point. I had spotted this little scene earlier and had the image in mind that I was going for so thankfully, it was pretty quick to set up. The biggest challenge of the morning was probably the task of changing lenses in the heavy snowfall. I’d been shooting the wider images with my 14-24 and needed to switch up to some longer glass for the detail image. It was quite a trick to remove one lens from the camera and then uncover the rear element of the other and make the switch without getting any snow on the elements or inside the camera body. I was very close to not even attempting the switch and abandoning the image altogether, but my better judgement (which might be debatable) kicked in and I went for the shot.

Technically and compositionally this is a pretty simple image, and that’s exactly what I was going for. I used a longer exposure to smooth out the rough water and reduce the falling snow to more of a fog, (in this case 10 seconds did the trick) and set the white balance to daylight to retain the blue colour of the scene. The composition was intentionally kept very minimal with the stumps on the lower left, placed using the rule of thirds, pointing up and into the scene. The horizon line was also placed at roughly a third of the way up the frame. I tried a couple variations on this one, first without including the horizon line, but then as I noticed the fog had totally obscured the opposite shoreline, I decided to include it as another layer of tonality. Looking back at them now, I much prefer this composition to the others. I didn’t use any filters and the processing was also very minimal with the final result looking very close the the raw capture from the camera.

I really like being able to say something about a scene using as little as possible in the frame. Simplifying a grand scene down to just a few elements is quite a challenge but I find this process very rewarding. I realize it may not be for everyone, and it certainly doesn’t deliver much of a “wow” factor, but more and more I’m coming to appreciate the space and simplicity in this type of image. As it is in so many creative fields (I can certainly relate to this in my musical background), less really is more.

Thanks for looking, I hope you enjoy this one!

This week’s photo of the week is the first of my images from a trip up to Jasper last week with my good friend Wayne Simpson. We ended up spending most of our time shooting at various places along the Athabasca River along the Icefields Parkway. The views of the peaks along this stretch are particularly impressive and the rushing river combined with the ice formations on the shore provided plenty of potential for images. This image was taken on the very last morning of the trip and after 4 overcast days, we were pumped to see a clear sky and some sunlight for a change!

This shot was taken with my Nikon 14-24 lens with a Lee 2 stop hard edge grad filter and a 3 stop solid ND filter. Using the solid ND filter allowed me to get a 6 second exposure which smoothed out the water as you see it here. Because I was so close to the foreground ice and achieving enough depth of field to render the entire scene in sharp focus was nearly impossible, I blended two exposures together after focusing on the foreground and background separately.

I have lots more to share from the trip so stay tuned over the next few days to see more.

Thanks for stopping in and having a look, I hope you enjoy this one.

This week’s photo of the week is another image taken on my trip up to Jasper a couple weeks ago. I’ve been sharing a lot of wide angle landscape scenes from the trip since I got back, so I thought I should show something a little different for this week. When the mid day light get harsh and less conducive to capturing the big scenes, I often switch up to my macro or telephoto lens and start looking around on the ground for details like this one. In this case, I was using my 105mm f2.8 macro lens and got down pretty close to the ground to frame up this leaf within the lines in the ice. The leaf is maybe only about an inch long, to give you an idea of how small this little scene was. The biggest challenge was probably just not wrecking the shot by breaking the thin fragile ice with my tripod legs while getting into position!

It’s a pretty simple one really, just a leaf on some ice, and I liked the way it looked. Hope you do too.

This week’s photo of the week is a chilly winter image I took just over a week ago while out in the mountains looking for photos. This one is from Numa Falls in Kootenay National Park. I really liked the look of the cool blue water and the way the falls tumbled down between the snow covered rocks. The compositional choices are a little limited here in that the only vantage point of the falls is from the footbridge that crosses over the river. Despite that, I experimented as much as possible and made images that included the trees, stream, and the rest of the scene above the falls as well as more isolated images like this one. In the end I decided on this one because I felt like the falling snow and featureless sky in the wider compositions just didn’t add enough to the image. The obviously interesting draw of the scene is the waterfall so I felt like focusing in on that would make for a more effective photo. The overcast conditions that day were perfect for easily capturing the entire dynamic range of the scene in a single exposure which was great. With the dark rocks, flowing water, and bright white snow this would have been quite a challenging exposure in brighter conditions. I used a polarizing filter to remove the reflections in the water and bring out the colour as well as solid neutral density filter to lengthen my exposure enough (1.3 seconds) to get the effect I was looking for in the water.

Thanks for stopping in, I hope you enjoy this one.

Well, this week marks the final instalment in my 2012 weekly photo series. For this final post, I’m sharing a simple image I made while out shooting on a cold snowy day in the mountains last week. It was a beautiful winter morning with fresh snow having fallen over night and even more gently falling throughout the day. The low clouds and overcast conditions made for somewhat of a photographic challenge though in that the main attraction of the Rockies, the mountains themselves, were practically invisible. Not that I’m complaining or anything, it’s always a great exercise when the conditions force you to look past the obvious images and see more creatively. I often find some of my favourite images come from days like this.
I saw this view across the valley near Lake Louise and was really drawn to the repeated patterns of the lines of trees and the way the fog created a kind of layered effect. Using my telephoto lens I extracted this little scene and took advantage of the compression effect of using a longer focal length.
While simple and maybe not all that exciting, this image really captured the peaceful, quiet mood of that beautiful winter morning for me. If you haven’t experienced the stillness and quiet of a crisp winter morning in the mountains, I would highly recommend it. I hope this photo at least gives you a taste.