The Bowron Lakes 1

Photographer's notes: Camera: Canon EOS 40D; Lens: 28mm-135mm; Shutter Speed: 2sec.; Aperture: f/11; mode: aperture priority; Exposure: -1; ISO: 125

    This June Chris took me and my family around the Bowron Lakes as a graduation trip. I photographed the whole time, and Chris and I looked through each other's lenses many times. I got many shots that I knew were good, but this one I immediately discounted as a failure when I looked at it on my camera. That is the first lesson that I would like to point out with this, never delete something the first time you see it, especially when looking at it on your camera. Chris and I share the same reaction when we first look at our respective images, we always think they are terrible! But after some more review, they start looking better and better.
    Anyway, it was our last night out on the circuit, and we were in a marsh with lots of wildlife, so we decided to go for an evening paddle. I opted to sit in the middle of the canoe and not paddle, specifically so that I could photograph. It was a very calm night, so there were many beautiful reflections that I wanted to capture. I was hand holding my camera, and the canoe was moving as I was shooting, so I started out trying to get my shutter speed as fast as possible. This meant really cranking my ISO, and even then I only got to a 60th of a second, the absolute minimum for hand holding and getting things sharp.As we were heading back to camp I finally got fed up with fighting with my camera, so I set my ISO at a normal level, and ignored the shutter speed. I thought the view of the shore was nice from where I was, so I pointed my camera at it, clicked the shutter and held it as stable as I could for two seconds while I moved with the canoe. As mentioned above I looked at it on my camera, and discounted it as a failure.
    When I got home I realized that it actually didn't look to bad, so I gave it a little tune up in photoshop, and  the above image is the result.

The second lesson: Do something unorthodox!