Leading Lines Assignment Winner Long Nguyen

Congratulations to Long Nguyen for winning the recent Leading Lines Assignment with his image, “Blue Carpet.”

"This image was taken at Abraham Lake, a man-made lake on the North Saskatchewan River of Western Alberta in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies," writes Nguyen. "The lake is about 20 miles long and gets its beautiful greenish-blue color from the rock floor. Throughout the winter, the lake undergoes multiple periods of thawing and refreezing. This natural phenomenon creates otherworldly ice formations that are so awe-inspiring and unique that they draw photographers from the world over. I spent three days at this lake in the cold of winter in an attempt to capture the fascinating cracks on ice. It was seven degrees below zero—some of the coldest weather I’ve ever been in. I was fortunate to have incredible light in the last evening of my trip after two consecutive cloudy days.

“As a photographer, my hope was to create an image that would give the viewer the sense that they were right there with me at this lake. Therefore. I used perspective, lens and filters to translate my own feeling of awe and wonder into a single photograph. I set up my tripod super low. This perspective and wide-angle lens make the cracks appear much larger, leading the viewer's eyes to the mountains in the background. A polarizing filter makes the blue color of the lake more vibrant and lets the viewer see deeper into the lake.”

See more of Long Nguyen’s photography at https://500px.com/longhnphoto.

Equipment & Settings: Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 16-35mm, Singh Ray polarizer, 3-stop Grad ND filter, 1/8 sec. ƒ/22, ISO 100. This image was a single exposure for the sky/mountain and multiple exposures for focus stacking the cracks.