Canadian Landscape Photography Tour, Quarry Lake, Alberta
Over the past few years, I have spent 10 days on a photo trip every Autumn, these trips have always been in the UK, normally in the Lakes, Exmoor, Wales or The Peak District.
Last year I made the decision to visit the American Rocky Mountains in the Autumn of 2022, I first tried for Colorado Rockies but in the end moving this trip to the Canadian Rockies.
This blog is a record of this trip on a day to day basis with descriptions and images from each of the locations visited including notes on compositions thoughts and processing methods.
All the images were taken of a Fujifilm GFX 100S with a basic set of zoom lens consisting of 32-64, 45-100, 100-200mm including an X1.4 Teleconverter.
I flew from Heathrow to Calgary International on a cold and windy London morning in September and landed 9hours later in a bright and sunny Calgary.
Now, one small fly in the ointment on landing in Calgary was the fact that the Canadian Government at that time insisted that around 6 out of every hundred passengers on International flights were randomly tested for Covid 19 and if positive you were immediately whisked off for a lovely 10 day quarantine holiday.
This process worked by texting the selected passengers as they left the airport informing them they had to report to a near by Calgary Covid testing facility, as you can imagine as I left the airport terminal I was to say the lest apprehensive.
But as luck would have it no texted appeared and so I was spared Mr Trudeau’s draconian Covid 19 dictates and headed off care free into the Canadian Rockies.
I would point out however that at the time of writing this blog random test of visitors to Canada has ceased mainly because what tourist would want to go to a country only to be tested and spend 10 days of his or her vacation in quarantine.
My base for the first few days of the trip was the small town of Canmore which is located in the Bow Valley deep in the Canadian Rockies, Alberta
I decided to slowly work myself into this trip mainly because I was not sure if I would suffer any effects of jet lag. My first location was Quarry Lake which originally was part of a mining operation but was then turned into a recreational lake.
At this point I need to mention BEAR’S, the grizzlyist animals I had ever come up against in the UK was some upperty goats in Snowdonia, so the thought of confronting a 12 foot Grizzly Bear left my backside shall we say a little bit loose.
As this was my first outing in Canada and Quarry Lake is in some parts surrounded by trees I was at first a bit jumpy looking round at every sound and imagining the mother of all Grizzlies sizing me up from behind every tree.
This feeling however soon passed and I was able to concentrate on my photography, this first composition was driven by the sun rising through the line of trees on my left, the mountains off in the distance and the line of rocks set in the lake.
Quarry Lake at Dawn
Fujifilm GFX100S, 32-64mm Zoom @ 32mm , F20, ISO 100, 16 x 9 Format
Mist At Quarry Lake
Fujifilm GFX100S, 100-200mm Zoom @ 120mm , F18, ISO 100, 1 x1 Format
As the sun rose the mist seem to become more prominent picking up the sunlight with a hazy glow and rolling toward the shore. This also seem to be the time the lake swimmers came out and play putting an end to the first location shoot in Canada.
But it was a great morning and i felt well satisfied with my first day in Canada.