One Mountain 3 Images

I was out in my favourite place in Canada this week, kananaskis lakes, on a photo walk beside the wonderful part frozen waters.  At the lower lake the squally snow showers added a nice element to the images, and we had a great time in the wild surroundings of the lake shore.  

Often as photographers we hear the phrase, oh there's nothing to shoot where I live.  Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that I do have some spectacular vistas here in the rockies, but after years in the area I'm now shooting the same topics repeatedly.  The trick is to see them differently whenever possible.  

Timing obviously plays a part, you can shoot your locations at sunrise, sunset, blue hour, midday and nighttime for a start. That provides five very different views, then there's weather, cloudy, clear, sunny, overcast, raining, snowing or foggy, that's another seven views. 

Then there's framing, shooting from high, low, straight on or at an angle to show perspective, that's another four ways to bring about a change. Your lens choice will also provide numerous options, and when you start multiplying those options you realise the possibilities are endless.  

Seasons are something we all have in common, winter, spring, summer and fall/autumn all bring their own beautiful changes to any location. 

Your composition provides another almost endless number of opportunities for change.  The three images below from my trip this week, all show the same mountain in the upper third of the frame, but changes to the foreground elements bring a huge change in the overall image. The weather, angle of view and time of day are all roughly the same but the foreground change is enough to make three unique shots (admittedly the third shot has more cloud but it is, in effect the same image) 

My message I guess, is that you never fully exhaust a location and you should always challenge yourself to return again and again, and push to make a new image every time.