Well gents I got a special surprise for you. It's time for strawberry daiquiris... on ICE!
Okay that did happen but it's not how the day began so let me take you to
five hours earlier
we kind of got screwed because the snow came in and it's covered all of
those spectacular methane bubbles so we're not going to get those kinds of
shots however I am really loving the shapes that the snowdrifts are making
because Abraham Lake is such a windy place that it creates these beautiful
snow shapes as these drifts form there's talking to Tom and the thing that we're
trying to be really mindful about is our footprints because once you've walked
into a scene that's it you can't really back out and get another shot so we're
trying to find our compositions but do it in a careful way and now once you
have found it commit and move in and take the shot so I'm just gonna walk
around though I'm hoping to get some alpenglow on that peak there it's
already kind of glowing a little bit orange and I'm just gonna walk around
here and find that perfect foreground and then I'll talk about this shot that
I've got
so found a really tasty composition and it's actually a vertical I just love
this line how it comes in and kind of hits this bit of ice here that's kind of
like a mountain shape in itself it's a perfect leading line into the center to
point at that peak but it also kind of mirrors the the mountain in the distance
so a vertical shot with this is quite juicy so one of the things that you'll
find quite odd about wide-angle landscape photography is if you look at
the peak there and that's a huge mountain where I am and if you look at
it it's just small it's just this tiny little dot in the middle of the frame
and that is that is typical of using super wide lenses it's always going to
make your mountain small but one thing you can do is get it out at the center
of the frame so if you if you look at where I've placed it it's in the top
half of the image and it's it's quite close to the center so if I put it right
in the center that it's very very small but if I move the camera down for angle
it down watch that mountain shape it starts to stretch it starts to distort
and that's the thing about wide-angle wide-angle photography is you can use
that lens distortion to your advantage now there comes a point where you know I
would say I wouldn't have that mountain any higher than this because then it's
really tight to the top of the frame there look you've got I like this a
little bit of space that I've got left but it's definitely taller there if you
if you look how tall the shape of the mountain is compared to when I put it in
the middle of the frame it's much much smaller so use that use that lens
distortion to your advantage and it's also the more I point that down it's
really me emphasizing these lovely curves here in the foreground so that's
a very simple but basic way to especially with mountains to to sort of
capitalize on why it's good to have a wide-angle lens and use that distortion.
so this is the first shot of the morning and I'm quite happy with how it turned
out it wasn't the best light and we were kinda rushed for time because we got
there a little bit late but it's quite happy with the end result now if you're
wondering if I stretched the top of that mountain to make it more pointy you're
right I totally did Tom was enjoying his very
first visit to Abraham lake so I thought I'd go over and join him and maybe get a
shot of Mount Michner there with some nice ice and snow in the foreground now
I was really drawn to those icy snowy formations that you can see in the
foreground there but I bet you've noticed something in the sky
the bloody contrail and BOSH! I got rid of it now let me know what do you prefer
should I have left that in as is or do you prefer this version where I've
removed it and the comp is a bit more pure and I thought I'd just give you a
little bit of a close-up here to have a right good look at those snow drift
shapes, look at what the wind does to the snow that's had a chance to stick to the ice.
uncle grumpy has the best breakfast story. So I said, ''it's rude to stare you know!''
oh is it running? yeah! Is your battery gonna survive? Probably not no no
THANKS SONY!
so once we got full of carbohydrates and caffeine we got back on the ice. there goes our daiquiris!
Now Brent had somehow talked me out of a
trip to Hawaii. So I insisted that he provide us with sunshine, Hawaiian shirts
and those blended cocktails but I never actually believed that he would follow
through on it. Well gents I got a special surprise for you. It's time for strawberry daiquiris..... on ICE!
nice what a beautiful sunny day absolutely fantastic I mean we could
have been in Hawaii right now but who needs Hawaii when you've got this.
Oh no kidding, it's just beautiful. if only we had somebody to sweep away all this snow for us.
Well cheers you guys .
Delightful!
Nice legs there Gavin!
Could you bend a little bit?
Just er... lick your lips?
When the lights too harsh for landscape photography it's
time for shenanigans. My cat Leo is gonna be scoring our performances and it
looks like Leo is giving Nicholas page 3.5 stars out of 5 which is pretty good
then we've got Heaton who has perfect form but just not enough mass to propel
him beyond pages distance so he gets three stars
with only one set of cleats
I hit the ice like a drunken porpoise. Leo is disgusted and has awarded me a score
of minus three Gibbs uses his war-cry which puts him in
the lead with four stars Henderson hits the ice with absolute
confidence and it looks like Leo is awarding him five yes five stars due to
sheer athleticism and so we have a clear winner in Brent Henderson and I'm sure
nobody would question Leo's judgment in this case well I think
that's quite enough shenanigans for now maybe until later but now it's time to
start shooting the light is changing I reckon we've got an hour and a half of
light before it starts to disappear so we're all gonna head out and find our
compositions
I'm not gonna lie I am really struggling to find a composition and the problem is
I'm spoiled because I've been here so many times over the last few years under
the best conditions I've seen this place at its best so I'm just not feeling
inspired to get a composition that's the challenge you don't always get a
composition so I'll tell you what I'm gonna do I'm gonna show you some of my
back catalogue of what did work in the past if you'd like to watch a video
tutorial showing you exactly how I process this image click on the card
link above or in the description below download it right now
well just when I given up all hope I found something
found a lot of piece of foreground I love this piece of prismatic ice that
I've got there and this jagged edge so this is my footprint that's how close I
got to it and that's what you've always got to watch out for is once you've gone
in you can't get rid of that footprint so you have to tread carefully and make
your decisions wisely so I've seen that shot but now looking behind me and
there's this amazing lenticular cloud formation kicking off against those
mountains and I feel like I need to get out there where it's flat to shoot that
direction so decisions decisions look if you would at this business we kind of
give up shooting in that direction it's time to light up over here so we just
reverse that shots now we're composing in this direction lenticular clouds are
one of my absolute favorite things in landscape photography you don't get them
very often but you do tend to get them in mountainous places that are very very
windy so what I'm really hoping is that that lovely contrasted light that you
see on the peaks and that you see in the clouds there actually catches a bit of
color so yeah we'll just play the waiting game again for this one but I'm
a lot more hopeful shooting in this direction because this light has been
good for the last hour whereas shooting in the other direction
earlier it was very very rapidly changing and it faded off real quick so
I think there's a chance we might get something quite special so I've got to
admit I feel like a bit of a tool wearing this Hawaiian shirt but brent
was kind enough to buy this for me just so that we could shoot that little skit
earlier and he he can de did it on the insistence that I wear it for the whole
day so you know I got a shield face and not not take it off what do you think
they look do a lot cool in this
chicks dig Hawaiian shirts right okay we have we have fire our attempts to set
fire to those methane or methane bubbles were really quite pathetic this is not
my idea this was Brent's idea I'm absolutely loving this light that we're
getting right now but this beautiful pink stripe going all the way across
these Peaks here especially like the one at the end that little peak because it's
got that dark gray almost blue contrasting dark cloud behind it which
makes it pop all the more I love this foreground how this rivers just flowing
into the scene lenticular clouds that are lighting up so glad we stuck around
and changed our perspective from shooting in that direction to cheering
in this direction I hope we get another 10-15 minutes of this that just love how
this river is creeping in from the left of the frame into the center and then
flowing off into the distance and it's framed epically by these lenticular
clouds that are coming in and we've got this beautiful it's almost blew our I
would say it's beautiful light on these Peaks loads of snow on those which
contrasts quite well with these on the right which don't have as much snow and
I like the layers I like how I've got in the first layer I've got the river in
the second layer and I've got this mountain here and in the third layer
have got these mountains and I guess if you wanted to say there was a fourth
while that's your lenticular absolutely tremendous
so I've got a major case of lens Envy right now Nick's got this what is it
it's the 100 to 400 G mask oh it's pretty sweet it's nice to be able to
just reach out grab stuff from like 3 miles away
yeah you just showed me some of these shots and it's so juicy
did you see the good one yeah oh it's on the air in a good way is it about to see
there's lens cloth juicy and then there's 100 400 G master juicy and this
is the goodness
well I had a little bit of a disaster as to be expected I fell on my ass for
something like the 8th time because we're prancing about on the snow and the
ice it's very very slippery so I fell I had the 24 to 105 on with the metal ones
adapter on this camera and it smashed and hit the ice and I was thinking oh my
god I've broken my camera or broken my lens anyway luckily I guess it's lucky
all that got smashed was this meta bones adapter which was never the best adapter
and it's kind of old doesn't even translate autofocus so I was always kind
of on the verge of getting a better one but he just means that on this trip I
can't use any of my canon glass now which is a bit of an a bit of an
annoyance because I like that 24 to 1 or 5 zoom however luckily Nick page has all
of the best Sony G master lenses so maybe this is a good excuse to get in to
lend me some of his toys anyway so I've got my zeiss batis back on the camera
and managed to get sort it out and put a new lens on just in time for that bit of
light that kicked off and here's the shot that I just managed to get
very happy with that and yeah so all they know about a
fantastic day good company good pictures lots of adventures my back's a little
bit sore from all the Falls but it was worth it so I think now it's a burger
and a beer time maybe some pizza tomorrow's another day what time we
getting up tomorrow Haffner Creek we don't we can sleep in
tomorrow yeah all we can sleep in tomorrow no sunrise