Description
Artist notes:
It was winter time in Northern Canada, and I had flown there from Hawaii to shoot some of the epic winter wonderland landscapes I had heard so much about. I flew out in January and I had heard it was going to be cold, but as I had traveled to other cold weather locations in winter, I was confident in the gear I had. Everything was going pretty well until I found this location.
When I saw it I knew I was in for a long night. It was probably around 2pm when I stumbled upon a frozen waterfall way out in the middle of nowhere. Seriously I was probably closer to a pack of wild mountain lions (do they run in packs?) than I was to the next closest human being. But, the location was too good to pass up. I knew right away I wanted to photograph it, and I knew I wanted to catch a night shot from that location.
So I waited. And waited. The good thing is the sun goes down pretty early in the far North in the winter time. The bad thing is that it is brutally cold. Especially when the sun goes down. The time seemed to last forever as I waited for the light to fade enough so that I could get some stars. When it did, I had to wait even longer because I saw the beginning of the milky way starting to come into view. Finally, as the night slowly crept on I got the shot I wanted.
As soon as I checked my viewfinder and saw the image I knew I was good to go. I packed up my gear (though I left the tripod out so as to warn the would-be predator mountain lions to stay away) and I bolted back towards my rental 4×4. Perhaps most impressively, I didn’t get lost on my way out. I wasn’t really on any kind of trail and the darkness was intense (even with my headlamp).
It took a few hours to get back to where I was staying, and I was exhausted, but I couldn’t wait. I had to download the images from this photoshoot. When I pulled them up on the computer, this one stood out. I knew I had a really stunning photo and I was excited to process it.
At the 2016 annual International Photographic Competition, photographers are allowed to enter up to four images. This was one of the four I chose to enter. Thankfully, the judges appreciated it as much as I did and it was merited and entered into the General Collection of top images of the year.
