The endless beauty of Moraine Lake

We spent some time here last summer, and it was amazing.

This glacially-fed lake outside of Banff in the Canadian Rockies is just magnificent. Those are the real colors, by the way. All the minerals in the lake make it just so amazingly blue. We arrived so that I could shoot the sunset here, and in this photo I went with my 10-stop filter to get a really long exposure. That's why the clouds are streaking across the sky - I kept the shutter open a long time (I can't remember the exposure time, but it was something like 3 minutes).

Taking really long exposures is one of my favorite shooting techniques. It works really well at sunset over a beautiful landscape, but works just as well with cityscapes, too. I did some in London back in January, and particularly when there is a river in the scene, the water just gets so smooth. In this photo the wind was moving the water a bit - and there was a few canoes out on the lake, too - but all that disappears when you have the shutter open that long.

Previous
Previous

So I took my Lensbaby to Chicago...

Next
Next

Blue hour at The Anchor