Lake Louise Why When Where

This image is from the famous Lake Louise, better known in the summer for it's hanging glacier above the pristine lake, Iceland Poppies in the foreground and the world's ugliest hotel behind you. Where the Banff Springs is a fairy tale Castle, Chateau Lake Louise is a gray 1960's box. The recent additions are helping but intil the old wing is taken down..

Anyway, back on topic. We were staying at the Chateau (it's nice inside) at the end of April 2003 and I hiked to the far end of the lake. The ice doesn't go out till mid May so I was much surprised when I came to the end of the path by some cliffs to find this small area of open water.

It was a challenge to get a good picture. There were some tall spruce trees immediately to the left and nothing interesting to the right. The view of the open water from the path wasn't ideal so I climbed the scree below the cliffs. This meant a better view of the open water but the trees gradually encroached on the image.

As you can see, it wasn't possible to photograph the whole open area but I tried several framings until I came up with this two image stitch (one above the other, camera horizontal). It's my feeling now that had the first couple of trees magically disappeared, the resulting image wouldn't have been as strong - the water would have filled less of the print and the shapes of the snow around the open water wouldn't have been as interesting.

In fact there has been some cropping here both top and bottom and I still feel this is the strongest way to frame the image. The colour by the way is pretty darn accurate.

It's been suggested that I use Photoshop to remove the footprints on the far side of the lake but I like the little bit of detail in the otherwise blank snow (flat lighting).

This was just before I purchased my 10D. I was still using the very nice Sony 707 with it's marvelous tilting back which meant you could adjust both lcd and viewfinder as desired. Although it makes for a somewhat bulky camera it sure was versatile. By the time the Sony 828 came out, people were more into ultrazooms and dSLR's but this type of camera has a lot going for it.

Since we talked about microscopic viruses last time, let me say this one looks more like an amoeba with a couple of flagellae.