Emerald Lake

Yesterday’s photo outing was to Emerald Lake, near Field, B.C. about 1-1/4 hours west of Canmore. Emerald Lake is named for its colour, a brilliant green and it is the site of the Emerald Lake Lodge, a beautiful place to spend a holiday, winter or summer. Accompanied by Bob Bear, I arrived by mid-morning and set about capturing some scenes from a variety of locations, beginning with a lake level view taken from the canoe launch. This panorama is composed of 4 shots, stitched together to create this expansive view of the lake looking northward. On the very left is Emerald Peak and prominent in the background are three of the mountains of the President Range, The President, the Vice President and Michael Peak.

From a few feet further back, I framed this next shot to take in some colourful canoes, arrayed on the dock.

Moving on from the canoe launch, we ventured to the area of the lodge. Emerald Lake Lodge has a history dating from a grand era when transcontinental railroad pioneers brought the first trains west. Built in 1902 the lodge today lies in Yoho National Park amidst a gentle wilderness setting surrounded by mountains. The next shots show the Lodge and one of its views of the lake and the surrounding mountains.

As we started back toward the parking lot, we encountered this last view of the lake through the trees. It’s typical of the many great views that guests enjoy from their cabins.

Today’s last picture is an unusual one, taken from the canoe launch.  I thought the lake bed looked interesting and as I approached the edge to have a look, I noticed that the dock moved, creating ripples on the very calm surface of the water. Those ripples radiated outward and caught the sunlight with the effect of casting refracted light on the lake bottom. So, I bounced a little bit to generate some more ripples and then photographed the result. You can see the moving, curved bands of sunlight on the bottom, as well as the prismatic colours and some distortion, both created by the ripples bending the sunlight.

Over the years I’ve been taking photographs, I have become keenly aware of light, how it affects a scene and how to use it to advantage. After all, photography is about capturing light cast upon a subject. Refracted Ripples is an exceptional example of light at work on a subject, the lake bottom. We see the ripples affecting the way the light strikes the bottom and their influence on the light, acting as a prism to bend the light and display the colours of the light spectrum. This may be a little difficult to see on this small image, so here’s an enlargement of the upper left hand corner just above where the two sticks are crossed. Hope that’s more visible.

I hope to share some pictures of the autumn colours on an upcoming post. Stay tuned if you like autumn colours.