Bow Lake revisited
What goes up must come down, or so they say. Even if that’s not always true, it was true for us with regard to Alberta’s scenic Icefields Parkway. On September 4th last year we drove up it and on September 6th we came back down. You’ve already seen a conventional view and two abstract views of Bow Lake from the northbound trip. Now add a couple of looks at the lake from our southbound trip, which gave us smoky haze rather than the clarity of two days earlier. Nevertheless, you can still see the beautiful color imparted to the lake’s water by what’s known as rock flour or glacial flour. You can also confirm that some patches of snow and ice remained in the adjacent mountains even at the warmest time of the year.
© 2018 Steven Schwartzman
Portraits of Wildflowers 
So pretty
ksbeth
February 3, 2018 at 7:05 AM
And we got to see it twice, with lighting that had changed a lot from the first time to the second.
Steve Schwartzman
February 3, 2018 at 8:34 AM
There is some serious depth of field showing in that top photo.
Jim R
February 3, 2018 at 7:14 AM
Right: f/13 with a wide-angle lens put practically everything in focus from fore to aft, if we can speak paradoxically of the distant haze being in focus.
Steve Schwartzman
February 3, 2018 at 8:32 AM
I’m good with haze being in focus.
Jim R
February 3, 2018 at 1:27 PM
And it’s good to hear the haze doesn’t faze you.
Steve Schwartzman
February 3, 2018 at 4:38 PM
Happy sigh.
melissabluefineart
February 3, 2018 at 8:05 AM
Happy sight, happy sigh; not “out of sight, out of mind,” as the memory lingers, and of course the photograph comes to the aid of memory.
Steve Schwartzman
February 3, 2018 at 8:36 AM
Lovely examples of abstraction in nature!
lensandpensbysally
February 3, 2018 at 9:35 AM
Thanks, Sally. I followed the old dictum of “Make haze while the sun shines.”
Steve Schwartzman
February 3, 2018 at 10:57 AM
If that second blue could be recreated for a box of crayons, it would have to be named “Ineffable Blue.”
Apart from color, the contrast between the jagged peaks and the smooth foreground hills in the first photo is really effective. And I like the way the almost-vertical sweep of snow (or rock?) crosses the horizontal banding of the rock in the second.
shoreacres
February 3, 2018 at 10:24 AM
Ooh: ineffable blue. The name creates an interesting paradox. “Ineffable” means the color can’t be put into words, yet you’ve put it into the word “ineffable.”
There being no mountains near Austin, I relished the chance to show receding bands of hills/mountains, each of a distinctive shade.
As for the second picture: strike up the bands.
Steve Schwartzman
February 3, 2018 at 11:02 AM
These scenes are so engaging, ethereal beauty and the colours talk the geology. The Monet inspired versions are also enchanting. Love Shoreacres suggested ineffable blue.
Nature on the Edge
February 3, 2018 at 11:33 PM
You put it well when you say that “the colours talk the [lake’s] geology”. I understand the scene’s appeal to someone in drought-stricken Cape Town.
Steve Schwartzman
February 4, 2018 at 6:47 AM
Captivating…especially the first one, Steve!
I am with a new post after ages 🙂
Indira
February 4, 2018 at 4:13 AM
Your colors of the water in your post provide quite a contrast to these.
Steve Schwartzman
February 4, 2018 at 6:52 AM
[…] been lacking in a conventional exposure. While that degree of underexposure robbed the water of its pretty blue, it partly compensated by allowing the sun to reflect some of its favored colors off the […]
The difference that comes from underexposing by three f/stops | Portraits of Wildflowers
February 4, 2018 at 4:51 AM
Gorgeous! What a color!
bluebrightly
February 11, 2018 at 8:40 PM
And get a load of nearby Peyto Lake:
https://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com/2017/11/26/peyto-lake/
Steve Schwartzman
February 11, 2018 at 9:40 PM