Canadian Rockies

So we just got off the chopper, went into the lodge, checked in, got our room reserved, geared up, put the packs on, and away we go. We are hiking up to the viewpoint where there's a clear unobstructed view of Mount Assiniboine and Starburst Peak. It is literally, in my opinion, the most beautiful mountain to photograph in all of Canada. I really love this place. So we've got a fair bit more hiking to do. So far we've hiked through beautiful meadows full of wildflowers. It's gorgeous here. So we just broke through the trees and we're seeing the mountain for the very first time now. It's right behind me and yeah, it does not disappoint. Like so incredibly majestic, so big, and so close. That's what makes this viewpoint so unique. It's really up close and personal to these two mountains. So we arrived at the viewpoint. It's nowhere near sunset yet, like it's probably like five hours till sunset. So it's so windy and it makes for a really great time lapse because the clouds are moving so fast. The problem is that it's actually so windy that it's buffeting the tripod and I was getting concerned about the tripod actually blowing over. So I forgot to bring a bungee cord that hooks to the bottom of the tripod so that I could weigh it down. So the alternative, the workaround, is to just hook my pack on it and just have that weight pulling everything down. But I've done one time lapse so far. It looks amazing because the clouds are just ripping through and I'm doing a second time lapse that's zoomed with just the Mount Assiniboine peak as the main subject. We were way down there and that's where we were shooting the time lapses from. And we want to get above that so we're hiking up the hill up into the open rocky area and that should give us a better view that looks down on the lakes even more. Just being here is a phenomenal experience. There's no one else around. There are no other photographers. You never can have an experience like this in other places especially in national parks. It's just so unique and when I stand here and look at those mountains there it is so beautiful it honestly looks fake. It looks like it's been photoshopped right in front of my eyes. So we only have maybe 10 more minutes of sun before the sun goes down behind a mountain over there and then we're going to lose our sun down on the bottom of the valley. So it's definitely game time. Take the pictures now but one of the things that I really have to watch for when I'm this type of a backpacking trip is to not use live view on this camera because it sucks the battery dry. And I got a lot of questions asking me hey is the Nikon D850 the way to go or what about the Z7 or the Z6. Well battery life. When you're on a hiking trip you don't have anywhere to charge your batteries up and unless you want to be bringing along 10 batteries then this is where having the good old single lens reflex viewfinder it's optical analog old school no batteries to die quickly and yeah so that's why I'm using the viewfinder and not the back screen on this one. At a time like this where it's almost one of those once in a lifetime type of photography opportunities I am checking and rechecking and rechecking again all of the settings especially the ISO and do I have enough depth of field do I have the right aperture and what's the shutter speed is this wind going to make the tripod vibrate and is my shutter speed fast enough for that and then of course checking to make sure that everything is correctly exposed with the histogram so it's like check and recheck and recheck is what I'm doing right here because if I get home and I find out that some of these photos are not sharp or they have blown out highlights or whatever the problems can be all the pitfalls of landscape photography it would just be I would cry so I'm going to avoid that from happening by just making sure that all the settings are bang on we packed up because the sun is no longer hitting the bottom of the valley and we have a long hike to get back and sunrise is really early tomorrow we're going to be on the edge of the lake hoping for reflections with sunrise warm light so tomorrow sun up beautiful light it's going to be a beautiful day we're going to get beautiful photos so we made it back to the lodge way past dark and the lodge staff they are so nice they had a full dinner waiting for us with salad with even my little name on the salad bowl and dessert and a glass of red wine like just so so nice so now we're going to sit down and enjoy this amazing dinner and then go to sleep what a view and we're only a one minute walk from the front door of the lodge so anywhere you go here has just caught stunning views but we need to hurry up before we miss out on the really good light getting out of for these kinds of super early morning shoots after a long hike the night before it is not easy i did not want to get out of bed this morning but you know when there's so much time and effort involved in coming to a place like this you just have to put out that extra effort and make it happen punish the body so that you'll get what you really came for a year from now i will not remember the pain of getting out of bed this morning but i will remember the photos that i've got okay we're here there's a river emptying into this lake and my goal is to see if i can find an area of really still water hopefully an area where there are no ripples on the lake and oftentimes there are a little a little bay or something where there are no ripples so we'll see if we can find that we're in luck there is one little bay that has some really nice smooth water on it so i'm heading straight for that and that's what is going to get us our reflections it's looking so nice i'm super pumped these kind of morning shoots with reflections i always feel like they're a bit of a race against time before the breeze comes up and kills your reflection wind is the enemy of reflections in photography but i'm getting the camera nice and low to the water because that's where the better reflection of the mountain is off the water and the water is so clear i'm getting um nice foreground by looking through the clear water to see the rocks underneath so looking really great so far and considering we just only had to walk about six minutes from the front door of the lodge this is a really unusual photo opportunity i love it so check that out that's the first shot and um just really nice balance between the top and the bottom equal amount of mountain above and below and it's maybe a little on the dark side yes it is so i'll warm up that shutter speed to 1.3 click again check it out check the histogram perfect histogram it's beautiful ready to go i love that now it's time for a panel okay so this is the moment we've been waiting for it the warm morning sun is just hitting the top of the peak and we're capturing that in the reflection like you can't get better it just absolutely is stunning and let's try this out check it looking good check the histogram perfect histogram we have ourselves a really nice photo there this is what landscape photography is all about being at a place like this at just the perfect time getting the perfect conditions and getting beautiful photos which turn into fine art photography i absolutely love it it's 7 30 in the morning and i think this is a wrap we are going to head back to the lodge have coffee and breakfast and relax for a little bit and maybe even go back to sleep because we're both pretty tired but what an incredible morning it's just been everything that i had hoped for both last night and this morning to get these kind of reflections is rare and to be able to it's unspeakably gorgeous let's go eat so we recharged our batteries so to speak actually literally on our batteries and also had a little bit of a nap after breakfast now we are off and we'll start in the direction of three lower lakes and just see what we can find there and then head up back to the big viewpoint at the nublet for sunset should be good so we came to the second alpine lake and it's i'd say even more gorgeous than the first one there is the most stunning composition that i am looking at right now and it is actually tempting me to forego climbing up to the big viewpoint that we were at last night at sunset and instead getting this in the composition we've got the sunburst peak as the main subject up at the top and then we've got this really interesting leading line of of the shoreline along the lake and these beautiful green and aqua tones inside the water and the water is just crystal clear and then there's even some green foreground that would be close to the camera on the shoreline that is right in front of me yeah so it's really tempting to be here for sunset instead of hiking up to the top to where the viewpoint is it would be maybe nice to mix it and get a different composition here we'll see it looks like the gamble has paid off this is really the dream shot what has just happened is that we thought it was all over um clouds went in front of the sun and there was wind on the water so we had no reflections we had no good light suddenly there's warm light on the mountain and the uh the lake has smoothed over so i've got an eight second exposure right now with a six stop filter creating a pano i am super excited it's it's perfect it's absolutely perfect i can't actually believe it it's stunning nice histogram looking really good what an incredible composition incredible light so it's really been a photo trip of my dreams here and there are four photos and i'm kind of going to leave it up to you to tell me which one you like the best so we've got the photo number one the big panorama that had sort of the colder light it wasn't quite the warm light yet then there's panorama number two also from the same vantage point but it's in that warmer golden hour type of light then we have photo number three which was taken at sunrise this morning and that's the water reflections of mount assiniboine and then finally photo number four of sunburst peak that we just shot right here with the reflections which one is your favorite please leave a comment let me know i'm curious about what you think and which one you think is the best and please do me the favor of giving this video a thumbs up i would appreciate it and i will see you in the next video and please be sure to subscribe and hit the little bell if you like adventure landscape photography videos just like this one what a trip this was so fun