The Dead Rise

This photo was taken for an assignment for the "Life Thru a Lenz" group. I have been trying for a couple months to take a shot of this location. I find it absolutely fascinating and eerie. Unfortunately, I can only come to this location in the evening, when the sunset usually blows out the sky. Trust me, it was quite the effort to get this shot, and I am quite pleased with the result.

 

This is also one of my first experiments with shooting RAW first. I did some very minor touch ups just to see what it was like. The most significant being a slight change to the white balance to bring out some colour in the sky.

 

As for the story of the photo:

 

This is what happens when you create a hydro electric reservoir without logging the valley first. This is something "dug up from the past." Nowadays, in British Columbia, on the rare occasion that a large reservoir is created, it is logged first. Despite the fact that we seem to have learned from this mistake, it is still extremely eerie everytime I see it.

 

Essentially, the valley trees were left in tact when the reservoir was flooded, and now we have all the dead trees sticking out of the water. Every once in a while, one breaks at the bottom, and floats to the top. These dead trees then collect along the shore. I sometimes imagine what it would be like to kayak through this "graveyard."

 

View on black.

Done