Scouting is an essential part of photography. It starts on your computer using Google Maps and Photo Ephemeris applications. The big question is: Where are the good spots within a 20-minute drive from home?
For sunset, using Google Maps, I found an isolated park longing the Rivières-des-Prairies called la Coulée Grou.

One day in the afternoon, the sky was full of fine white clouds, reminding me of a picture published on my LPM portfolio showing the gorgeous sunset at the Riviere Des Prairies shoreline. I decided to go scouting there at sunset time.

I was very curious to visit this National Historic Site of Canada where Jean Grou and three farm workers were killed in 1690 during the battle. It was my first visit to this isolated and vacant area.

I walked to reach the river shoreline. I waited a few minutes to let the sun go lower in the scene.
I was amazed to see the layers of fine, curved, and colored clouds pending in the air facing the tall leafless tree.

I felt obliged to capture this gorgeous scene. Handheld, I took my camera with my wide-angle lens. At 16mm, the lens was unable to capture the whole scene. So, I took 3 overlapped shots to perform a panorama. Each shot was overexposed by 1,7 stops to have a perfect histogram (ETTR). Lightroom is very good for stitching photos.

Later in postproduction, after Lightroom had created the panorama, I created a sky mask and performed a dehaze set at +10. 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!

Looking at the final image, it was a magic moment to capture.