Abraham Lake, Alberta Canada
Abraham Lake, in Alberta Canada, is a spot I’ve wanted to shoot for a few years now. In this blog, I’ll take you through an evening shoot as well as a shoot the next morning. Enjoy!
When Ben and I got to the lake, we jumped into some warm gear, threw our crampons on, and were off to the lake’s edge. Stepping out onto the lake was a bit creepy. It just felt all wrong.
Take a short walk with me across Abraham Lake.
We spent a bit of time walking the lake before settling on an area to shoot. In the below image, the ice has a dramatic color change due to it slightly buckling and the light hitting the pieces of ice a bit differently.
The ice beginning to buckle
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Take a Behind-The-Scenes look at what I see
I didn’t quite get the skies I was hoping for but the bubbles were great! Here, in the image below, I liked the stacked bubbles. Regardless of the poor lighting, Mt. Michener made a decent background!
The bubbles at Abraham Lake were stacked!
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As evening approached, the greenish tint to the water began to take on a more blue color.
Ben and I on the lake
I wanted to search out a set of bubbles that were a bit more alone than the ones I’d shot up to this point. In the image below, I like how the solo stack of bubbles dominated the composition.
It looks as if these bubbles came from way down deep!
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Each composition comes with its own challenges no matter where you are shooting. Getting your subject to line up with your background can be difficult. On this shoot, I wasn’t always able to get things to line up exactly how I liked. Many times this was due to the reflection of my tripod in the image. Often, since I wanted to shoot low and wide, I had to shoot at an angle that I’d rather not in order to keep it out.
Reflections were both a blessing and a curse
Havening shot a few bubble shots, now I wanted to find something a bit cleaner if you will. This next image is of a crack in the ice leading off toward the mountains.
Cracks in the ice made for great leading lines
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That wrapped up my evening shooting. I did try to light up the bubbles and shoot them, but I wasn’t impressed with how the images turned out. Plus, I didn’t bring my Low Lovel Lighting with me and was only using a headlamp which isn’t ideal. Now, on to sunrise. My first sunrise image caught a lot of color in the bubbles.
The Colors of Bubbles During Sunrise at Abraham Lake
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The intensity of the sunrise really poured in in this next image.
Fire & Ice
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I ran across this next set of bubbles; they were begging to be photographed. They looked like an island out on the lake.
Sunrise and bubbles and everything nice
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I turned around and shot with the sun at my back. This lake is surrounded by mountains. You could shoot in any direction.
The warm colors reflecting off of the peaks and the cool colors off the lake are quite complimentary.
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The only thing I found on the lake that wasn’t ice was this leaf seen below. An interesting thought came to my mind. On a warmer day, the leaf and the bubbles are working to get where each other sorta started. The bubbles started from the bottom and want to come to the top. The leaf started at the top and would end up at the bottom. Eventually, the leaf getting to the bottom creates more bubbles.
What an amazing opportunity Abraham Lake was! It is not every day that I get to shoot in Canada and I truly appreciate being able to do so. Ben, thanks for helping make the trip a reality!
Thanks for reading!
