In January 2025, my good friend and fellow photographer Wendy invited me to join her in the gorgeous St-Adolphe-d’Howard region for a couple of days to perform winter photography. This region is an hour and a half North of Montreal.

Before departure, with the destination address, I checked the country house location on the map. Using my favourite apps, Google Maps and Photographer’s Ephemeris, I knew before my arrival that the gorgeous country house was close to a shoreline and it would be a prime spot to capture sunsets, sunrises and the lovely moon.

On January 15th, 45 minutes before sunset, I reached the lake shoreline. Again, I planned to use my magic Leica DG lens, which produces beautiful star effects when set at a very small aperture.

You can see this beauty here.

Four hours later, in the opposite direction, the moon was expected to be part of the show.

Later, I reached the lake shoreline. I set up my tripod, camera, and magic lens that creates beautiful star effects and cable release. I composed the image with the moon in the shorelines corner using a 16 mm focal length and an F/16 aperture I raised the ISO to 1600. Once again, I used the live-time feature on my Olympus m4/3 camera to perform a perfect exposure (ETTR). It took 120 seconds. During that period, I was amazed to see the developing image on my camera’s back screen.

The long exposure process has created beautiful white spots in the blue sky—in fact, star trails!

Once again, planning and gear familiarity are fundamental photographic elements.