Elements of nature

Fall is upon us and the nature that surrounds us is revealing its most magnificent splendor. As a photographer this is my favorite time of year and today I am sharing the collection of photographs I’ve taken while walking Pink Lake in the Gatineau Park.

I call this collection Elements of nature.

Alain G. Pratte

A walk in the Gatineau Park.

The forecast was rain for the whole weekend but I guess the Weatherman missed the 5 to 6 hours of variable cloudiness Saturday afternoon.  We decided to take advantage and went for a 3 hour hike in Gatineau Park to admire the fall colours and of course to capture some of those special moments.  The picture above was taken from the Pink Lake observatory, although I did not think of using a polarizing filter the blues and the particular greenish tint of Pink Lake turned out pretty nice.  If you wish to read and learn more about Pink Lake you can visit the National Capital Commission Website.

Pink Lake parking was full so we had to drive on deeper into the park to find ourselves another trail to go hiking on.

We found parking at the Lauriault Trail and decided to cross the street to check out Mulvihill lake,  where on the lake shore I spotted this frog sunbathing on some pine needles.  I start taking some pictures of the little amphibian with my 18 – 105 mm lens but I was not getting the results I wanted so I swapped to my 70 – 300mm lens and was able to compose and capture this great image.

I must have shot about about a hundred pictures during the hour we spent on the shores of Mulvihill lake, yet in post production I was only content with one image of the lake.  I had to crop some of the lower part of this landscape image to remove the sky’s reflection in the water foreground which I found to cause a distraction to the tree reflections that I intended to portrait.

After walking the Mulvihill lake trail  I suggested we head home but Anne’s son, Zak was not ready yet, he wanted to continue walking so we crossed back to the Lauriault trail and set out to try and see the falls which was about 1.5km from the parking.  When I came to the maple tree pictured above I started taking pictures from a distance trying to capture the beautiful saturation of red and orange but none of them satisfied me until I explored various angles and eventually walked up to the tree and looked up, composing my image from a single branch against the green foliage of another tree.

This picture is for the love of my life, Anne whom I convinced to take advantage of the day even though she was recovering from an awful cold.   She pointed out the mushroom on the dead log, suggesting to me that this would make for a great picture.

We never made it to the falls and had to turn around because I had my suspicion that the return hike would have it`s toll on my little four and a half year old friend, Zak.   Although we did not get to see the falls I did capture this Maple leaf semi floating in a stream.   It was a great walk with quality time spent together, enjoying the fabulous Autumn colours nature has to offer us.

Enjoy the pictures.
Alain Pratte