In July 2024, my friends and fellow photographers invited me to discover Eco Laurentides Park, located in Mont Blanc, an hour and a half north of Montreal.

For such a situation, I carried two camera bodies ready to shoot, one with a 16 to 36 mm lens and the other with a 24 to 200 mm lens (35 mm eq.). The lightweight and small size of my Olympus Micro 4/3 gear is ideal.

Along an easy hiking trail, I reached the Lac du Cordon shoreline. This scene amazed me: the mountains in the background, beautiful green trees pointing to the lovely blue sky and big, lovely, low clouds dancing over a calm lake—a real summer beauty!

I had to seize this magic moment.

At 16 mm, the lens was unable to capture the whole scene. So, handheld, I took 3 shots to do a panorama, knowing Lightroom is very good for stitching photos. I wanted to have the elegant long trees frame each side of the scene. To achieve (ETTR), I overexposed each shot by 1 stop.

Later, during postproduction in Lightroom, I created a sky mask and performed a dehaze set at +20. I inverted this mask and set the shadows to +100. Then, I pressed the AUTO button in LR to let the software perform all the other adjustments automatically!

Thirty-four minutes later, I seized another beauty that was published in my portfolio.

That day, I captured many beautiful images. I will certainly go back!