My friend, Wesley Chen, challenged me on facebook to present my top ten travel photograph favorites. Since I am sharing these on facebook, one per day, I decided to share them here as well. So, here they are, continuing on my top ten, in no particular order.
Number Three.
Lake MacDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, USA, 2015. My family and I took a road trip to Glacier National Park in Montana. While my family was still sleeping, I carried my camera gear and arrived at Lake MacDonald, at least an hour before sunrise. I sat along the banks and observed the light change. I enjoyed the dawn break, making several photographs along the way. I kept changing lenses and trying new compositions as light kept changing. I waited there and made photographs for over 90 minutes after first light. Towards the end of that session, I made this one and remains one of my all time favorites.
Compositionally, I used a few standard formulas, reflection of the hills in the horizon, place the horizon at a 1/3 of the frame, interesting foreground at the other 1/3 of the frame. Precise placement of the camera/lens near the foreground rocks and the precise adjustment of the tripod height were key. The camera/lens and ball-head assembly were just inches from the water. As you can imagine, the tripod was in the water and the hardest part for me was working on the camera placement adjustment, in icy cold water. My shoes were waterproof – so my legs didn’t get cold. However, my hands almost froze from getting wet and the tripod legs were cold as well. I usually deal with this by using gloves, but couldn’t adjust any of my camera settings with thick gloves on. When I made this shot, there were waves and the water was not as still as perceived in this photo. The effect is one of long exposure averaging over the 4 minutes of exposure. Long exposure created using a 10 stop neutral density filter. This image was shot at f22 for depth of field.
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