Mt Rundle Moonrise

I have been very busy recently (which is always a good thing) but it's a double edged sword which leaves little time for posting to the site. In truth, late winter always provides the opportunity to catch up on such things, and knowing that tends to make me lazy until that time arrives. So with winter snow howling past the window as I write, I'm determined to stay indoors today and catch up on the backlog. 

The first post of my 'catch up series'  comes from a one to one instructional session in Banff National Park. I had set out to Vermillion Lakes which is a well known sunset location to the west of this little mountain town. After checking all of my sources everything pointed to a good sunset but with very little cloud. (High cloud is great for sunsets as the sun dips and illuminates it from below bouncing that wonderful golden light back down to us) though even without high cloud Vermillion Lakes is always worth a visit. 

As it transpired, the absence of any high cloud at all meant the sunset was weak in colour,  but as the shadows crept up the western flanks of Mt Rundle the moon rose from behind that spectacular monolith to provide a 'shot saver' for the day.  I quickly switched from my wide angle lens to the canon 100-400mm and zoomed in on the summit to make the shot you can see below. 

Whilst the sunset lacks great colour there is sufficient to bring warmth to the image and the subtle tones work well with the grey/blue sky overhead.  The real learning point here is; even if you are sure of the equipment you need, always take additional gear because it might just rescue the day.