Lake Louise and Banff Trip 2011 Part 1

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Well just this passed June I took a three day trip to my old home of five years, Lake Louise, in banff national park. In those three days I was graced with perfect June weather, which rivals September weather in the rockies (in my opinion).  This trip was one of the greatest Ive taken, for the simple reason that I captured in three days, nearly all of the 'iconic' Banff scenes that I failed to capture in my time as a resident. 


With over 1000 photos to process though, I have enough processing to do for months on end. For that reason, I am in no rush to process them all. There are so many, and each has so much potential but I need to give it the attention it deserves.  Of course, there were a few from the 1000 that I was in a rush to process when I returned to Kelowna. There were ones that just stood out vividly in my mind for the entire trip, with a quiet pondering inside... "i cant wait to see what that one is going to look like"





I have to give Mr. Skigon, Eric Frigon, a big thanks for having a spare bedroom and the use of his tripod. Whats the smallest thing you really CAN'T forget for landscape photography? ya thats what I forgot. The baseplate to my camera that locks it to my tripod. So without him, a lot of my shots wouldn't have been possible.  Stay tuned for more about Skigon. He is a landscape photographer who is just getting his website together, and when its online, I'll surely be sharing some links.

I shot lots of wide-angle and lots of telephoto. Since the 70-200f/4L I have has never been in Banff before, I had a great time creating compositions new to me, from my some favorite shooting spots. As for the 10-22, I always had it, and loved using it in banff, but there were a few new tricks I was doing with it. Including polarizers, grad NDs and off camera flash, all for landscapes, and sometimes all at once.

I should always make more panoramas, but like figuring out how to walk in a new set of legs, the loaner tripod was foreign to me. I would rather have no panorama at all, than one that will cause headaches to put together - at least those are my thoughts in the field. Luckily I did do a few, like moraine lake and lake louise, but in retrospect there are always things I should have done differently. Meaning - I gotta go back and do it a second time. :)

Also, there were loads of HDR frames shot during my trip, and sometimes those HDRs were combined with panoramas to make behemoth 32-bit images, and 30+ megapixel images. Try figuring out the file size on one of those, i dare you. Lots of exciting photos on the way, which will slowly trickle onto the world wide web eventually.  Stay tuned for them!  

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