Happy New Year 2008

I wish everyone a Happy, Healthy, and Prosperous New Year 2008. I hope everyone enjoyed their festivities last night and arrived home safe and sound.

As those who regularly read my blog know, I usually comment on business and finance. I expect 2008 to be rather interesting. While there are a lot of economic headwinds as we enter 2008, I expect that the housing crisis will dominate the investment landscape for at least the first half the year. For the latter half, I am not sure. From an investment perspective, the year 2008 promises to be more volatile and exciting than recent prior years.

Earlier this last year on Saturday, 15 September 2007, I photographed the picture above of Lake Louise in Banff National Park, which is located in Alberta near the Alberta and British Columbia provincial border. I believe the top of the mountain in the picture is on the continental divide, which is also the border between Alberta and British Columbia. In Banff National Park, the rivers on the British Columbia side flow west to the Pacific Ocean, and the rivers on the Alberta side flow east to the Atlantic Ocean. There might be some rivers from Banff that flow north to the Arctic Ocean, though I am not sure. The Athabasca River begins in Jasper National Park, which is to the North and shares a border with Banff National Park, and does flow to the Arctic Ocean.

This picture itself is a composite of two pictures. When I originally photographed this scene, I bracketed my exposures. I took one photograph one ƒ stop below exposure, one at proper exposure, and one photograph at one ƒ stop over exposure. I did not use the overexposed photograph. I used the sky from the underexposed photograph and used the remainder from the properly exposed photograph. Out of the camera, the photograph had a slight bluish cast, which I have tried to remove. In more technical speak, the original white balance had too much blue. The sky has been darkened, and the rest of the scene has been slightly manipulated as well, mostly contrast adjustments to bring out the detail better. Lake Louise itself has a magical color in that the fine silt from the glacier runoff produces this amazing bluish turquoise color.

In making these adjustments on the photograph, I used some of the techniques that I learned from Chromasia Photoshop Tutorials. I tremendously enjoy his photoblog and his tutorials, so I am happy to promote his site.

On a somewhat related note, I am still working my way through my Flickr challenges. I will have more to say in a few days. For now, I have restored some of my photographs on Flickr and my weblog. I still have much more work to do, however.

The above picture is hosted on Flickr. If you click on the picture, you will be taken to my Lake Louise picture on Flickr. Almost all of my Banff and Jasper National Park pictures are missing, because I have not had an opportunity to reload them yet.