Abraham Lake, a well kept secret

Yesterday we returned from a beautiful 3-day trip to Abraham Lake. What a special place this is.
Photography wise it was ok. I am still getting acquainted with the new camera. The main problem I am struggling with is focus. You should think with the live preview function on the 5DmkII that should be a breeze. Adding to the fact that there is no real depth scale on the 24-105 ƒ4L.  I find it rather difficult.

We had a great time at the Aurum Lodge. Before we left I hoped that I would NOT bump into other photographers at the lodge. I was there to enjoy myself not to, you know, talk technical with each other about cameras and stuff.
One guy we had to pleasure to meet was Paul Wakefield. A photographer from the UK who shoots his personal landscape work on 4x5. Check out his website. He has done some beautiful stuff in the past.Awesome guy to talk to and he can tell stories like no other.

So we were there for 3 days. Unfortunately 2 of those 3 days were 'cloudless blue sky days'. Unfortunately?! Well photographically that means boring skies.
Luckily the last morning (I had to drag myself out of bed by now) I got lucky. The sky was on fire for about 5 minutes. It makes for quite a sight together with the coolness of the ice.
It was cold and windy in the mornings. By cold I mean temperatures between -30C (the first morning) and -19C (the last morning). But it warmed up pretty good during the day. We did manage to do some hikes as well. What a stunning place this is and so no developed like Banff or Jasper. It's like a well kept secret nobody really knows about.

I am slowly working my way through the images I took. Of course I had to start with the most spectacular ones. Here's a little sneak preview.

I'm still alive!

Weather has been awful for the last two weeks. With temperatures ranging from -30C to +10C it's been wild to say the least. I have not been doing lots of photography lately. Because, well, there is nothing to photograph (unless you are heavily into photographing sludgy brown snow). There where a few good sunsets but I was always in the car driving home from work.

Last time I took the camera out was two weeks ago. Has it been two weeks already? Wow time moves fast. Anyway, it was a beautiful winter day with cold temperatures and clear, dark blue skies. I was driving around the range roads around Cochrane and I came across this wall (about 3-4 meters high) of snow. It was an unbelievable sight. I threw the car on the side of the road and 2 minutes later I was swimming in snow (so to speak). I found this cool overhanging ledge. The colours where beautiful. It was like a mini glacier.

When I was taking the photograph I was keeping a close eye on my histogram. But the 5DmkII did a remarkable job on rendering this scene. No clipped highlights or shadows. Pretty amazing dynamic range if you ask me.

After some post processing I was happy with this result.

On a side note. Last week I did a quick check on some pinhole cameras I hung a few weeks ago and everything is still in place. It's been almost a month now. I am excited!