Oh Leo. How can I work under these conditions? Eh? Eh?

Oh it's Brent

Ayup mate. How's it goin?

Hardcastle you salty bastard!

It is snowing so much in Banff right now. You gotta get over here!

Oooh really? What are we talkin, how deep is it?

oh man it's up to your armpits at least you're gonna need a snorkel over here

oh so you've had a massive dump then?

oh we've had a massive dump, gargantuan dump.

oh I do like a gargantuan dump.

Yeah I know you do.

So if I got there tomorrow would that be alright?

The sooner the better, it's snowing right. Do it.

Alright mate, I'll get packed up. I'll head out first thing tomorrow morning.

okay see you later. See ya!

mmm looking good.

Aww Banff National Park, here I come.

I bet Heaton will be up for this. I'll give him a call...

Hello, how's it goin?

Ayup Thom, how are ya mate?

Yeah good, good, good.

Yeah? What are you up to?

I'm just living life large at home in my hot tub.

oh nice mate nice listen Brent just called me and he's just told me that

there's been a massive dump of snow out in Banff National Park, conditions are

absolutely epic. You gotta get your arse over to Canada right now!

CANADA?

I know it's far but there's frozen waterfalls ice caves massive dump of

snow, trees bending over with it, it's spectacular!

Mate... you've said enough. I'm in. I'm gonna book my flight, I'll fly out and I'll be there first thing in the morning.

Aawww right mate! Brilliant I'll see you soon..

Alright. I'll see ya then. Bye, bye, bye,bye,bye,bye,bye,bye,

Oh. I Ben Nicholas would love to join this. Let's give him a call.

Hello?

Ayup mate! How're you doing?

Hey Gavin how are you?

Oh I'm good mate yeah, good.. What are you up to?

Oh just grooming the beard a bit.

Nice nice, listen Brent just called me and he's

told me that the conditions in Banff National Park are absolutely brilliant right now you've got to get your arse up

across the border and come shooting with me. Ah man I can't if that's a long drive

I got stuff to do

Well, what if I told you that Heaton was in?

Ooooooaaaaahhh.... I don't know man.

Well what if I told you there were frozen waterfalls, ice caves and trees full of snow?

Alright. I'm in!

Alright mate. I'll see ya there. Bye.

Now .....should I invite uncle grumpy?

he does this thing where he makes me wait

Helloooooo?

Ayup Uncle Grumpy how you doing mate?

I told you not to call me any more. And don't call me 'Uncle Grumpy'!

Well what do you want me to call ya?

How bout 'Master Photographer........of the Year'!

Oh God alright, geez master photographer of the year. Listen Brent called me he's told me that Banff is perfect right now.

I've got Thomas Heaton, I've got Nick page and I've got Brent are you in?

Ugh I dunno. You still owe me $5.. and you still owe me my lens cloth back.

Have you cleaned it yet?

Yeah I told you I'd clean it. I've cleaned your bloody lens cloth!!!

Well...... alright. I guess if I have to....

Listen. If I bring your lens cloth, will you come?

Alright. I'll come.

Alright Uncle Grumpy. I'll be on the first ferry tomorrow.

I'll see you on the road. Alright!

Alright mate Bye bye.

Uncle Grumpy is in. We're off to Banff!

well it's 4:30 a.m. here in Nanaimo BC and I do have a face like a well slap -

I am knackered but I'm happy and I'm excited because I'm going to Banff

National Park the only thing I'm a little bit sketched out by I've done

this trip many many times but today there's a winter storm warning it's

gonna be snow lots of snow

so after gagging down a very overpriced and under flavored fairy breakfast I

finally escaped the boat and hit the highway just before the rush hour

traffic the winter storm warning predicted two snowstorms one just after

the town of Hope BC which I was just about to reach now the snow was

beginning to stick but I'll admit I was feeling pretty smug with my trusty snow

tires well that wasn't too bad about the first snow storm behind me and I've got

one more to go but I'm almost in Kamloops now and even though there's

snow on the ground it's actually a lovely sunny day so if the second snow

storms not too bad I should be in the Rockies in about four or five hours haha

Gavin famous last words met as I entered the

second snow stop it became obvious that this was a different beast entirely the

snow plows were out in force scraping off the ice from the highway and even

with snow tires and all-wheel drive it's best to drive by the time we reached

Revelstoke the news came in that the highway was now closed so it's time to

pack up and take a nap well well the snow storm was so bad that they actually

closed the highway from Revelstoke to golden so we've had to just stop

overnight in Revelstoke and hope that the Avalanche control stuff gets done by

the morning so we're spending the night in our vehicles huddled up to this

lovely spare tire Adams in his passion wagon over there Hey

so I'm really hoping that in the morning the Avalanche control stuff is done and

we can finally get to Banff to meet up with Brent Tom and Nick so do you know

anything about that I got a text from my wonderful partner Karen and she said

I hope this is of you and then there's been an incident near Yoho so I think

the roads closed after golden but I'm not sure I haven't I haven't checked for

an update yet but they're close yeah from the Avalanche control last night is

now open I believe it is because this seems to be trucks moving so I think

we're good to go I wonder what's the survival rate for

truck drivers who drive like this most have a head full of broken biscuits as

dangerous as the highway was though I was definitely falling in love with this

spectacular winter wonderland this massive dump of snow made

everything look magical and I couldn't wait to get to bounce to start shooting

my favorite scenes in these ever-changing conditions

I know I've got my post-christmas Paulinus to deal with but I think after

all of this stress and calamity I think I deserve this Mars bar king size so I

just spoke to the gang brent is on his way to Emerald Lake Adams just a little

bit ahead of me on his way to Emerald Lake so we're gonna go there first scoop

that out for Eaton and Paige Eaton is in the air on its way to Calgary a page is

just crossing the border from Idaho into Alberta and on the way to Emerald we

fancied a quick stop at Natural Bridge in your Hall

so we're finally here we made it through two snowstorms all the way through to

your pope so we finally made it through two snowstorms all the way through to

your National Park here in British Columbia the Canadian Rockies and what

we're going to try and do now is get down there to this place called Natural

Bridge which is this Natural Bridge so we're gonna try and get into this this

place called Natural Bridge which is basically a waterfall under these rocks

and in the winter it freezes up and I've shot it before but it's been completely

for us and I got this shot before

but I've never quite shot it when it's semi-frozen and right now the conditions

look absolutely perfect so we're going to get in there are you going to go in

first yeah all right

there's a little bit sketch in here I just went over there and my foot went

through the ice so it's definitely not cold enough for this kind of stuff it's

what zero Celsius yeah I mean the last time I was here was minus 25 Celsius so

this is a bit sketchy McGavin you know if you go down there

and pull in I'm not going up here what wife I'm just into me waist well am I

trying I'll just wait for you to come out of the opening of the end oh that's

Jeremy you know he's still bitter about that lens white but it's still gorgeous

I mean look at this business by the way if you fancy coming out and shooting on

location with me I'm leading a workshop in the Faroe Islands we'll be shooting

spectacular waterfalls of par off of dramatic cliffs into the ocean coastal

seascapes they're just gonna blow your mind

cultural historic landmarks endless mountain vistas surreal Island

landscapes with lots and lots of green hope to see you there okay back to the

video oh and like and subscribe if you would so I like this shot but I really

want to get closer I mean I love all of this

this background this this frame from these rocks this frost that you see on

these walls it's absolutely stunning but I think what most interests me about

this shot is this ice that you see with the water that's partially frozen and as

beautiful as these are I've got photos of those in the past and I want to try

something a bit different today so I want to capture this movement of the

water these lovely ice ships and the rocks behind so I'm gonna actually

change lenses and put on the 24 to 105 and see if I can get in a bit tighter

so this is my first shot and this was shot at 55 millimeters and I'd like to

know what you prefer do you prefer this more intimate tighter seen how do you

prefer this wider shot now this was shot at 33 millimeters so please post a

comment let me know which one you prefer and the reasons why you prefer it you

have to be very careful not to startle it whilst shooting it can be lured out

with the option T called baked beans which he will eat from the tin and we

can also be lured out with any chance of saving money

I don't what you're gonna do with this shot then all I'm going to do is a

really nice hole Roxette yeah that I use that program what's it called

Scylla yeah there's some really great beams of light moving through there so

we just finished at Natural Bridge in your home and we're gonna go back now

to Emerald Lake where Brent he's already there and we can have to hike in

apparently because they've only plowed the road up to a certain point and

display lots of people came in today in the snow in like two wheel drive

vehicles are not equipped they don't have snow tires so there's all kinds of

stranded vehicles out there but we should be okay fingers crossed

if you're thinking they're coming to the Rockies and you only have a two wheel

drive with without snow tires don't even bother don't because you just

wreck you for everybody else will be target practice right so I'm here at

Emerald Lake just before blue hour and that's the plan with this shot is I

wanna get a gorgeous blue hour shot but the restaurant there because you get

this nice reflection and what I like is that difference of color between the

orange warm blue and the blue coldness of blue hour a shot here many times

before at Emerald Lake and there I think the best shot I ever got was called moon

blue and that was on a full moon evening and that's got a very nice blue hue to

it but we don't have those conditions tonight but we're still gonna get I

would think a nice blue hour it's not socked in and you can just see the

mountains in the distance so the composition that I've got features the

reflection some of this beautiful snow in the foreground there and of course

those snow-capped mountains in the distance about to get high because I

want to feature more of that reflection so the higher you get the more of that

reflection opens up cause otherwise it's obscured by all of these foreground

objects so I've had to rise up my central stem which I am loathe to do

because I don't like the wobble whoa right into the snow then I don't like

the wobble that you get but my my tripod legs have already sunk quite low so I've

got to get as much high as I can get so whenever you're desperate you've got you

extend that central column desperate times desperate measures but I would

never recommend doing that unless you have to so I said it's a good idea to

compose your shot and dial in all your settings and get comfortable before blue

hour hits because you've only got a certain amount of time so I've composed

this fairly tight it's a bit it's a bit closer in then I usually shoot when I

come here because I want to feature as much of that reflection as a count now

focused on if you look at that very very tall tree they're just kind of jutting

out from the from the edge of the restaurant that's what I focused on and

pretty much everything is in focus and sharp with an aperture of f/8 their fate

is very sharp on this lens well the moment has arrived finally it's even so

good that Adam Gibbs has decided to get his camera out that's how you know it's

a good shot so I've got this lovely orange glue now and this is what I've

been waiting for it's it's not quite dark I reckon in about 40 minutes it'll

be complete dark but this is what blue hours all about that lovely blue color

and then if you've got a nice warm light soft and your subject that's the perfect

combination so I'm now shooting f/8 that's my aperture and I'm an exposure

of 25 seconds loving that little bit of low I missed is it mister is it

low-lying cloud a little bit oh that's beautiful so let's do now in order to

make that orange glow pop a little bit more I'm gonna crank the I saw up to

let's go up to 4 now let's try 160 and maybe take the exposure down now the

cosmedix super-bright we'll try 15 seconds let's have a look

is rather juicy so now I've got that exposure that's got the bright light I'm

gonna take some darker exposures for the for the sky there so I'm gonna put my

ISO back down to 50 and let's go to about 20 seconds see how that shows up

hey are you getting all this Adam yeah no charge this is worth at least two

beers oh yeah that is glorious what you're looking at here is the cropped

version of a square composition and I didn't see this crop until I loaded it

into the video as a sixteen by nine so tell me what you prefer this is the full

size square composition which it did in camera but let me know do you prefer the

cropped one for the video Audie prefer the full sized square

so despite getting trapped in Revelstoke we still managed to squeeze in two

shoots before nightfall the next stop was Lake Louise to meet up with Tom and

Nick so that we can make plans for tomorrow's sunrise shoot at abraham lake

where this special moment was to take place but that my friends is another

story