Directions

Take Highway 1 from Calgary and turn right at the first Banff exit. From here follow the signs for Lake Minnewanka.

Background

For the best results when doing astrophotography you want to ensure the following things:

• Clear night.
• As cold as possible.
• No moon.
• Drive as far away from any sort of city or town to avoid light pollution.
• Shutter speed no longer than 600/focal length. This will ensure the stars do not trail.
• If you have liveview, try zooming in 10x and manual focusing on the brightest star.
• Aperture of at least F2.8 will help in keeping the iso low enough to avoid too much noise.

This particular night was nearly -20 Celsius. I parked half way across the dam and began to setup. Spent the next 40 minutes trying different compositions and exposures before the cold was too much and I decided to call it a night.

Directions

Take the road out of Canmore towards the Nordic centre. Continue past the Grassi Lakes and the Goat Creek day use parking. Follow the unpaved Spray lakes road for about 27-28km until you see the Sparrowhawk Picnic sign. The lake is on your right.

Background

I arrived at the lakes about 1.5 hours before sunrise in the hopes to get some astrophotography shots. I had the extraordinary luck of seeing the northern lights that morning as well.

With heavy clouds rolling in, the sunrise I was hoping for didn’t quite happen. I ended up walking down the rocky beach and taking some long exposures of the low lying clouds instead.

On the way back a curious happy young moose wandered by.