Banff - Moraine Lake
When I first saw photos of Moraine Lake online, I immediately fell in love. After an early SF->Calgary flight, meeting my travel buddies, driving the 90 minutes to Canmore, getting groceries and supplies, eating poutine, shooting the Three Sisters, and all too little sleep, we got up at 2:21 AM, grabbed our gear, and drove the 90 minutes to this lake. Thanks to Night Sight on my Pixel 3, I took the first picture at 4:18 AM. Without Night Sight, it was pitch black.
I wanted to be able to shoot the scene from lakeside, so we carefully descended the steep mountain. I was all set up by 4:47 AM.
Here are my two favorite shots of the lake. The first one is on my 9 mm f2.8 Laowa lens, which helped me capture a beautiful foreground with leading lines, the bright canoes docked on the right, and of course the crisp peaks in the background. I kept it at a quick-ish 3 sec exposure to retain the sharpness in the reflection.
Second shot was on the 23 mm f2 Fuji lens with a 60 sec exposure time. It’s cropped in on the mountains with a smoothed out reflection so you can appreciate how deeply turquoise the lake was.
As the sun was rising, you could hear the chatter and laughter from above as the tourists all came pouring in. The parking lot was full when we drove out at 6 AM, but a mere 10 minutes later I had to pull over: there was an absolutely breathtaking view of the icy peaks being graced by sunlight while the fog lazily rolled around the wooded base. I took this shot on my 56 mm f1.2 Fuji lens.