You may recognise this image from a recent webinar held by onOne software – Thank you onOne for featuring my image!

Lake Minnewanka (pronounced minn-e-won-ka) is a large lake outside of Banff, AB in Canada. As far as landscapes go, Banff has some of the most pristine, diverse countrysides that you’ll see in such close quarters. Huge mountain peaks jump up out of the ground, encircling gorgeoues blue-green lakes and rivers. The weather comes and goes every five minutes or so, giving it that wonderful 4-seasons-in-one-day feeling.

Minnewanka translates to mean “Water of the Spirits”. It’s an impressively large lake that Banff uses for hydro-electricity to power the surrounding town. I knew I wanted to shoot this dock as soon as I saw it. I found a somewhat sturdy place on the shore, set up my tripod, and with my ND filter kicked off a couple of exposures. It was a fairly magical place to be and to take photographs. I was completely taken back by the entire scene. It’s not every day that you’re standing in front of such sheer, unmistakable beauty.

The two images below are straight out of the camera. The first image was exposed at 30 seconds with a 10-stop ND filter, to give the beautiful silky water and the movement in the clouds. It was a really windy day so the clouds were coming right at me. The wide angle lens helps to give some distortion to the clouds in the top right to make it seem like they’re really flying over from a central point behind the mountain.

Upon reviewing the top image, I noticed the boats weren’t clear in the picture like I thought they would be. I knew I had to get them tack sharp otherwise the image just wouldn’t work. So, before moving onto another photograph, I removed the 10 stop ND filter and took another image that exposed for the boats with a much shorter shutter speed. This locked them in place nicely. I knew that I could use Perfect Layers later to mask in the boats from my second exposure, again straight out camera, below.

I think they key to this shot wasn’t knowing what software I have to help create the shot, but reviewing my image to make sure I captured what I wanted to actually capture. If I hadn’t looked at that first long exposure, this image wouldn’t have worked and possibly wouldn’t be usable.

That said, this shot was made possible through the use of a plug-in I use inside of Aperture called Perfect Layers, by onOne software. Essentially providing layering ability for images in Aperture, the plug-in allowed me to “snap in place” the boats and the dock that were rolling around in the small tide of the lake. Without the use of this plug-in, the boats would be a blurry and unidentifiable mess. You can try the plug-in yourself free for 30 days by clicking on the banner below. If you decide that you love it so much you can’t live without it, you can use coupon code “JFLPHOTO” for an extra 10% off their discounted summer sale price.