Life on a lake in photographs

My favourite boathouse, rebuilt since I took this.

For the last 17 years I have been taking photographs of our lake here in the Laurentian Mountains, less than an hour North of Montreal. Like real Canadians we spend much of our summers in wet swimsuits and with bare feet. I have been known to go down to the lake at 5.30am to capture the light but usually only when I'm showing off to guests. A lot of my pictures are taken in the evening when any breeze dies down and reflections are at their best. 

Keep rowing, left a bit, right a bit.

Of course this interferes with another great Canadian tradition - drinks on the dock before dinner.  Sometimes without dinner, depending on how drunk the cooks are when they stagger home. So evening photographs are a risky business. I've noticed over the years that my pictures go in phases. There was my boathouse phase, which involved me ordering my husband to canoe me around the lake while I took photos.

One of my first pictures here. Canadian eh?

Then there was my flower phase which involved me lying in the grass and flowers in the foreground of every picture. Then there are just the lucky photographs. We live in the woods and one June night we noticed the light in the sky was quite strange down by the lake. So we set off to have a look and when we emerged at the bottom we were greeted by this sky. When we looked at each other we were bathed in a purple light. It felt very strange.

A lucky picture of the best sunset I've ever seen here.

I thought the picture needed a little human context so I got my husband to sit on the dock and I think the result is quintessentially Canadian. They spend a lot of time gazing at sunsets. I'm so glad we wandered down the hill that night and caught this picture as I'm not sure I'm ever going to better this. I don't give up though.

Night, night heron.

This is a recent shot of our resident Great Blue Heron on his way home from the pub. He often does a fly-by while we are having the previously mentioned drinks and I'm not sure if it's the beer, the sunset or the lake itself but we often say how lucky we are to live here and have all this beauty on our doorstep.

Lying in some leaves this time.

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