Picture Lake is one of the most iconic, and thus photographed, locations in my home state of Washington. The reflection of Mt Shuksan from the lake on a clear day is postcard perfect. In September, I returned to Picture Lake for the first time in a several years while instructing 2 private photography tour clients from Mexico. They had never been here before, so they were giddy with the perfect shooting conditions. Over the years, I have sold my original medium format film image of this scene numerous times, but I prefer this updated digital photo to the original. I created this image with my Canon 5DmkII, Carl Zeiss 28mm f2 ZE lens, Singh-Ray LB Warming Polarizer and 4-stop Soft GND filter on a tripod with minimal processing in Aperture 3. As always, the secret ingredient of this image was lots of patience waiting for hikers to walk out of the scene and a perfect reflection when the breeze stopped blowing.
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Beautiful colors and composition Jon. It’s always a challenge to find a new take on a familiar subject, but you’ve done it well. Patience is always the final ingredient and for some reason this location seems to require more than the average. Here’s my version in spring after waiting several hours for the storm to clear: http://bit.ly/9M0VCl
Thanks for sharing your link with me, Russ. Man, waiting for fireweed to not move around is an art by itself. I’ve never been up there during the summer, but I like what you accomplished. Thanks for sharing your vision with me.
The reflection is very impressive, but I think the foreground is too heavy. If you have the water face more.
Thanks for sharing image.