Sydney has put on a spectacular weekend with 36-degree cloudless days and crystal clear waters. I’m sitting on the lounge recovering from a big weekend with good friends, good weather and, a good sunburn but I cannot help dreaming back to the white cold.
Here’s a shot to help cool down this hot summers day and remember what it feels like to be truly lost amongst the splendour of the Canadian Rockies.
Deep in the Canadian Rockies is the majestic Pyramid Mountain overlooking the town of Jasper (in the bottom left third of this image) belittled by the enormity of the natural world around it.
Shortly after taking off from Vancouver I was playing with the in flight entertainment and realised that our plane was en-route to Eastern Russia from our current position over the Yukon – that suggested to me that our flight path would likely take us close to or over the Denali National Park in Alaska and, if so, we would possibly be flying past the southern face of the stunning Mount McKinley.
My geography is acceptable but by no means exceptional but, on this occasion, I surprised myself because about an hour later I was eagerly trying to peer out of the right side windows at the highest mountain peak in North America – exactly as I had hoped.
I’m back in Australia watching India bat against Australia in the summer cricket series and reading about the Bass and Messner lists for the seven summits club – one of the worlds most respected challenges for the brave of heart and thinking back to the sharp cold of the Canadian Rockies and what it is that I truly miss.
I am a humble Australian with little experience in and indeed no desire to peruse such a challenge as the seven summits but the pursuit to seek out the best of what this amazing world has to offer is certainly what interests me. All I need to do is find a way to achieve this before my only chance passes me by.
Life, apparently, only gives us one chance.
Now, back to the cricket.. 😦
Lately, I’ve been using my wide angle in many cases and completely neglecting my 70-200L. So I bought a filter attachment for this lens to use my filters. This shot was using my 10 stop filter to give the lake a nice, icy feel. The cut on the water is actually from passing geese. There were quite a few! The first shot ended up blurry because I moved around a little too much (and I was using a new tripod, so I’m still learning that). This one came out much clearer. The filter (and maybe along with the light) added a bluish tone to the photo, so I ended up keeping that as well
I hope to use this lens more for landscapes in the future. Gives for quite a unique perspective from the usual ultra-wide.
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