Several years ago, in June, I went fishing for walleye at Bark Lake. That day, I had in mind going fishing and capturing the sunset. After a little ride on the lake, 45 minutes before sunset, I anchored my boat near an island shoreline facing the expected sunset. I started fishing! Later, the scenery amazed me: the setting sun, the colours, the textured clouds, the reflection on the lake and the 2 small ducks. Finally, I dropped my fishing rod and grabbed my camera with the 24-120 mm lens ready to shoot.

Handheld, I composed and framed the image using a 34 mm focal length and an F11 aperture (35 mm equivalent) to achieve perfect exposure (ETTR). I overexposed the scene by 1/3 stop.

Half an hour later, the outfitter called me on my CB and asked if I was OK. I told him that I fished 2 walleyes and 1 pike and captured an unbelievable scene with my camera.

Later, in postproduction in Lightroom, I created a sky mask and performed a dehaze set at +15. I duplicated and inverted this mask and put the shadows to +100. Then, I pressed the AUTO button in LR to let the software perform all the other adjustments automatically. I did not manipulate the colours or the saturation.

When I showed this beauty to the outfitter, he laughed at me. He said, “Jacques, you live in a big city; you are not familiar with such beauty. For us, it is a casual scene during summertime!” Honestly, it paid off to get out of town!

Have a look at an unbelievable blue-hour scene taken on the same lake.

These isolated locations in nature offer great opportunities to seize magic moments.