Banff National Park is one of the most incredible National Parks I have ever visited. 

The forest ripples into the horizon in every direction and is only ever disrupted by walls of towering, glacier-capped mountains.

This place has a certain magic to it.  It humbles you and reminds you of just how big the planet really is.  I've only ever had a few places give me this feeling so easily.

Driving around Banff National Park, there seem to be endless photography possibilities.  Around every curve, there is a new scene that makes you stop.

I usually don't even bother pulling my camera out for landscapes during the middle of the day because the light isn't very good like at sunrise or sunset.

This scene just captured my attention though, and I figured I would see what I could get.

I kept trying to get different exposures and played with various focal length to see how I wanted to compose the shot. 

I wanted the glacier to be the main focus of the shot but I also wanted to make sure that it was presented in scale with the rest of the landscape. 

I kept running into a problem though, the glacier was being blown out in my exposures. 

This was happening because the glacier is very reflective and because the sun was high in the sky, casting harsh light.

I wasn't going to be able to do anything about the glacier, the light just wasn't right for a good photo. As a few minutes passed though, I started to see a cloud going in the direction of the sun. 

If the cloud covered the sun just right, I thought I might be able to get the glacier in shadow and hopefully get some shadows on the back set of pine trees.

I waited as the cloud slowly drifted over the sun and I got lucky.  The clouds covered the sun and put the glacier in shadow and put some shadows in the trees. 

This made the photo get more depth and drastically reduced the midday harshness because the sunlight was being diffused by the sun. 

I took a few shots and then the cloud passed and the harsh scene from before was back.

That is how I found this place.  My friend and I were driving to another location and this just popped up around a curve in the road.

This was a pretty challenging shot to get and a few things aligned that made it possible to capture. 

This was photo was taken during the middle of the day, one of my least favorite times to shoot because of how harsh the light is.

The main challenges were figuring out a way to make the exposure not get blown out by the harsh light and how to create some depth because the light wasn't doing me any favors.

Date & Location

• September 2nd, 2017 @ 11:55 A.M.

• Banff National Park

Camera Settings

• Focal Length: 53mm

• Aperture: F5.6

• ISO: 100

• Shutter Speed: 1/800th

Gear

• Camera: Sony A7Rii

• Lens: Zeiss 24-70 F4 Planar T*