Author: John Hickey

This is the classic view often see on the web of this landmark hotel. I am shooting from a road on the other side of the Bow River. I chose not to include the river because I did not like that composition. You can see the Mont Sulphur gondola faintly in the background if you click on the image to make it bigger. I would like to return in the Winter someday because I think this shot would be great with fresh snow on the trees and the hotel.

 

I went back to the motel room to get my camera to try to take a photo of alpenglow on a spectacular snow-capped mountain.  However, some clouds blocked the alpenglow blocked the illumination of the top of the mountain.  I saw colors in the sky and kept walking to get a clear shot of the sky without motel signs, overhead wires, etc.  I ended up on top of a small hill.  There were two Japanese guys who found the same spot.  We kept shooting (and swatting mosquitos) until the light faded.

 

Tips for shooting skies:

• There is no Photoshop substitute for  a dramatic sky.
• The best skies appear after the sun has set, sometimes quite a while after.
• You usually need to underexpose the shot by 1.5 to 3 stops to keep the detail from washing out.
• You can then tweak the image to bring up the shadows with Photoshop. (Blocked up highlights can’t be fixed.)
• You need an anchor on the ground for your composition.  Just a sky doesn’t look right, but if the anchor is silhouetted, you can make it small as I did here.

This is Lake Minnewanka.  I included some people on the dock for scale. Click the image to see a larger version.

The glaciers grind the mountain rock into “flour”, which gives the glacial lakes their distinctive blue and green colors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_flour