// relics //
Jasper National Park, AB, Canada
This moment of time was captured back in September 2019 while on a road trip through the Canadian Rockies with my girlfriend, Randi. While in Jasper National Park, we hit several famous locations, such as Athabasca Falls, Maligne Lake, and Pyramid Island. The last location listed is where this image was taken. While this isn’t the flashiest or fanciest photo in the world, it holds a special place in my heart for several reasons: I nailed the focus (which is harder than it sounds, believe it or not!), the memories behind the image, and because shooting the photo taught me a valuable lesson about photography and composition.
Starting off with the technical side of things, I captured this image on my old Canon 5D Mk. III (I use a 5DS now), along with my Canon 16-35mm f/4. I’d say the camera body doesn’t matter as much as the lens, especially for this type of photo, and I’ll tell you why! Without a wide angle lens, I wouldn’t have been able to capture this image at all! 16-35mm lenses (or anything wider than 24mm really) are great for landscape photography because it lets you really capture some compelling foreground interest. Now, I could have used that lens with virtually any camera and gotten nearly the same image. The differences from camera to camera aren’t usually immediately noticeable unless you make a giant jump between a $500 body and a $3000 body. But having a slightly better lens than the one that came with your camera could make a world of difference!
After clicking the shutter and waiting for the timer, I was so glad that I took the extra time to perfect the focus, because those rocks in the foreground came out pin sharp! Even a year later as I’m typing this, I still love to zoom in on those rocks and see the details and textures. One of the first things I learned when I started photography was the importance of manual focus, at least in the area of landscape photography while using a tripod. On almost all cameras and lenses, autofocus is rarely completely accurate. Manually dialing in your focus, using the focusing ring on your lens, is usually a safer bet than auto focusing, especially if you are aiming to get that pin sharp focus.
As far as the background of the
photo goes, Pyramid Mountain is also in perfect focus because of a technique I used called focus stacking. I won’t explain that here, but if you’re interested, you can go to YouTube and type in “focus stacking by Thomas Heaton” and you’ll find yourself a plethora of different options, but I think Heaton explains it best!
Now that all of the technical stuff is out of the way, I can walk you through the morning I took this photo! It was a relatively warm night sleeping in the back of my car, but keeping the windows cracked let in enough cool air to keep us asleep throughout the night. We woke up about 30 minutes before sunrise and made our way over to the parking area for Pyramid Lake. There were only a couple other cars there, so I knew we beat the crowds. As we walked down the wooded trail, I inhaled the crisp mountain air along with the familiar scent of evergreens and pine trees. After a few hundred feet, we came to the famous wooden bridge that leads out to Pyramid Island. Once across the bridge, I felt like there were so many spots to explore with barely any time to do so, but it’s always a safe bet to use a beautiful mountain as a backdrop.
I made my way to the western shoreline of the island and the view floored me. A perfectly unobstructed view of Pyramid Mountain greeted me. After staring for a few seconds, I began to scan the dirt and water at my feet for any potential foregrounds. After finding what seemed to be the perfect foreground, there was unfortunately already someone occupying the space (which I’ll touch on in a bit), so I begrudgingly kept searching. I went a bit further down the way and found some beautiful rocks jutting out of the glassy water. I set up my tripod and camera as quickly as I could, because I knew the light would be hitting the top of the mountain soon! After dialing in my focus, I waited for the perfect moment to snap my photo, and when it appeared on the back of my screen, I knew immediately that it would turn out to be one of my favorites from the trip. The textured rocks, the mist on the distant shoreline, the blanket of trees leading up to the rocky peak of Pyramid Mountain...it all blended so well together to form one of my favorite images I’ve ever taken.
After all of this, I was perfectly content. I knew I had captured the best of the light and my work was finished for the morning. Randi and I found a bench overlooking the lake away from the rest of the people and just watched the morning unfold. We saw little critters running around at our feet, doing their morning chores. We saw the sun cut through the chilly morning air, causing more mist to rise up from the still glassy waters. We heard birds singing their songs above our heads. It was a perfect morning to begin a day of adventuring through the Canadian Rockies.
Now, I mentioned earlier that I would touch on the photographer who already occupied the “best” composition. I wanted to take a bit of extra time to expand on what I learned from that small, innocuous situation. While it’s always at least a little annoying to have to share your spot with other people, they also have the right to be there just as much as you or I do. Which also means that many times, another photographer may beat you to the composition you had in mind. But that’s okay, because there is no right or wrong way to take a photo of something. Photography (and art in general) is subjective, and just because you can’t get that image you had your heart set on doesn’t mean you can’t get another image that you may like even more. This is exactly what happened to me on the morning mentioned earlier. A fellow photographer was occupying the small area with the foreground that I really wanted for my photo, but due to the lack of space, there was no way I could set my equipment up next to him. So I continued searching and ended up farther away from the crowds with a composition that I actually liked even more than the first one! That moment taught me that the first, most obvious composition you come across isn’t always the best shot at the location. It’s always worth it to take some extra time to explore the area around you before you decide what you want your shot to be. You never know what you’ll find!
Below, you can find a gallery of other images taken around the time that the photo above was taken in Jasper National Park. Some of them are from the same morning and others are from the night before.
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