Getting high - shooting from an elevated point.

Kelowna, BC.

As a photographer, I like the fall for shooting landscapes.  Sunny days, early mornings, some water and a polarizer all help to make some very attractive photos.  Often I will look for attractive scenes that are enhanced with fall colours, and on my sojourn this morning I found a number of pleasant spots.  As I was heading home, I noticed a beautiful band of clouds paralleling the mountains behind West Kelowna.  I wanted to capture that scene.

The clouds form because of a phenomenon called the lake effect.  Winds blow across the lake, still warm from the summer heating, and pick up water.  As the moisture-laden air hits the other side and rises with the curves of the land, its temperature and pressure drop cause condensation and produce clouds.  The result is a band of clouds that parallels the rising ridgeline.  It was a beautiful spectacle to behold.

Photographing it from a lower elevation did not produce any heart-moving images.  I had to gain elevation.  Using my GPS maps, I plotted a course up a nearby mountainside.  As I followed the meandering road, the city fell away and the scene became increasingly impressive.  The trick was to find a place where trees, houses, and parking availability would come together in a way that would enable the photo I had in my mind's eye.  It took about 15 minutes of searching before I found it.

I was using a polarizer filter on the camera lens.  They remove unwanted colour casts and remove polarized light to give great sky colour and make the clouds more discernable.  It took only moments for me to find the position and settings I wanted to get the shot.  After I got home, the first thing I did was to upload the image to my computer.  Nice.

I used my Z7ii camera to photograph the scene and was rewarded with a 50 megapixel raw image.  I stored a 10x24 inch photo to print out later and cropped it to produce the photo above.  I am looking forward to seeing it on paper.

I hope you get out to capture some amazing fall images.  I have done so twice now and will try to get out at least one more time before the colour-bearing leaves fall to the ground.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com

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