Lake Louise in Banff is over of popular destinations, there is big Las Veags style hotel at the edge of the lake with many shops inside. I’m guessing it’s open year around providing some great skiing in winter. Many trails begins from these shores and there few tea houses where hikers for hikers which is great idea. Lake is open for boat and kayaks which also can be rented but water is very, very cold. I was told there used to be glacier at the far edge around 10-15 years ago but it now long gone.

There is another shot made by someone else almost exactly from the same place but in different conditions.

Among many new features is build-in Flickr publish service, it’s plain and simple but works great with one huge exception – more on that below. Still I switched to use it instead Jeffrey’s Flickr export plugin which by the way was too rewritten as more sophisticated “Publishing service”.

The problem both services suffer is they way, way eager to republish photos which aren’t really changed. Simply viewing photo in Developer module, touching metadata or even showing as part of slideshow (in some case) marks it for republishing.

I was researchinge this issue and found solution, albeit an engineering one for build-in service (that is what I’m using now). Note that this is for MacOSX and requires basic knowledge of the Terminal:

• Quit LR3 and backup your catalog
• Open Terminal, located in /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app, then type following commands (without ‘>’):
• >sqlite3 <path to your catalog’s .lrcat file>
• >select * from AgRemotePhoto where photoNeedsUpdating=1;

this will show all photos marked for republishing, including their remote URL on respective host server.

To clear specific photo(s):

• >UPDATE AgRemotePhoto
• …>set photoNeedsUpdating=0 where url=”<url from the list above>”;
• >.exit

To clear all photos marked for republish:

• >UPDATE AgRemotePhoto
• >set photoNeedsUpdating=0;
• >.exit

Open LR3 and if all was done right the photo(s) will be moved back to “Published” category where they belong. Note, those commands ignore new photos scheduled for publishing (ones that were never published before).

About the shot, this is classical HDR made from 3 shots using heavy ND filter and whole sequence was lighten by 0.7 stop. Light post processing in CS5.

If you are thinking whether you should stop and take a photograp – stop and take it!

Highlights of the trips:

• It rains a lot in nothern regions in June
• Road contruction is national passtime, we drove trough construction zones more times then I can count in both USA and Canada
• It reminded me of Ireland because it was raining much
• Parks in Canada are more expensive then we were anticipating
• Wildlife, especially bears are far more prominent part of the life up there
• Did I mention that it rains a lot there in June?

more to come…

On Memorial weekend I did get break from work and was able to actually go somewhere which coincided with opening of Glacier point road. We hiked Sentinel Dome to visit sad remains of Jeffrey’s Pine there and then spent evening watching shadows grow over the valley floor below and sproadic flashlights of late hikers.

There also was guy with 12 inch reflector there showing planets and galaxies to those few people who remained after dark. Kids were very excited to see rings of Saturn, we stayed till 11 PM and then drove home.

That is not blind collection of every puzzle or headbreaker I came across but rather selected conundrums that picked my interest for various reasons. The idea that it will serve as online note pad for me and other people. The collection will grow with time but expect large number of posts initially as I move over most of the existing content.

Second, this site is also long due for re-design, if you come here for photos I encourage you to find me on Flickr, as all new photos are posted there. Eventually I plan on making photo dedicated mini site much like I made one for puzzles but that in future.

Lastly, I want to return this blog towards more general topic and not only photography. I will still post about particular photos especially if there is a story attached.

In the meanwhile here is shot of El Capitan made earlier in the day as shot of Half Dome in porevious post.

That time I really wasn’t prepared for night photogrpahy in the winter’s valley but this is something to consider for future.