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harrison hot springs

Harrison Lake Sunset

A vivid Harrison Lake sunset near Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia, Canada. The distant mountains are Sasin Peak and Deroche Mountain.

harrison lake sunset near harrison hot springs

A vivid Harrison Lake sunset near Harrison Hot Springs (Purchase)

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   A few days before I made these photos of a sunset at Harrison Lake I talked online about not making very many sunset photographs and generally avoiding them. Most often at sunset I am photographing what that light is reflecting off of, not the sky itself. I find the majority of sunset photos out there to be rather banal unless they have an actual subject of interest other than the sunset itself. That said, I had to pull over to the side of Rockwell Drive on the shore of Harrison Lake when I saw this light starting to develop (somewhere between Sasquatch Park’s Green Point and Harrison Hot Springs). The challenge then was to find something to do with it, and there was no time to get in position somewhere I knew to be favourable. The first photo here shows Sasin Peak, Deroche Mountain, and some fortuitous rocks and old dock pilings in Harrison Lake. I also made a square version of this Harrison Sunset.

   Before the colours to the west really exploded, I made this exposure looking north towards Mount Breakenridge. The colour here is much more subtle, but it works regardless. When the sky to the west became really vibrant this last scene here had very little color, even less than when I made this photo. Strange how that sometimes works out.

harrison lake sunset

Harrison Lake and Mount Breakenridge after Sunset (Purchase)

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   As you know I occasionally work with black and white for some of my photos, and so here is one last photo of the same scene with a different composition.

black and white photo harrison lake sunset

Harrison Lake and Mount Breakenridge in B&W (Purchase)

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For more photographs of Harrison and other lakes visit my Lakes & Rivers Gallery.

Mount Cheam Sunset from Harrison Hot Springs

Harrison Hot Springs Resort and sunset light on the Mount Cheam Range. Photographed from Harrison Lake at Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia, Canada

harrison hot springs resort with mount cheam in the background at sunset

Harrison Hot Springs Resort and the Cheam Range at Sunset (Purchase)

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   A few weeks ago I posted a blue hour photo of Mount Cheam and the town of Harrison Hotsprings. While that photograph may well turn out to be my favourite from the day, it was not really what I was after when I set out. Pre-trip research using Google earth and other photographs on the internet can only get you so far – sometimes you just have to go somewhere to see what is there. This was certainly one of those days.

   Through my trip planning and time spent in Google Earth and a few other applications, I had thought I would be able to make a photograph that is somewhere in between the one above, and the one posted earlier. The grand plan was to photograph the Mount Cheam Range above (directly above) the Harrison Hot Springs Resort with some night sunset light. A few things would have had to occur for this to happen. 1) A place to stand where those two things line up and 2) nice light at sunset. So I set out up the Whippoorwill Point Trail along the western side of Harrison Lake in the hopes that the point near the outflow of the Harrison River from the lake would provide this angle. I had climbed about 200 feet or so up the hill before I realized that this was not a place I would want to climb down in the dark, alone, and with some ice on the trail. It also seemed completely possible that I would be able to walk along the lake shore and get to the same area with less actual effort. The water in the lake seemed fairly low, and water along the shore itself was frozen (though I didn’t really test how much so with my body weight). So I walked on the “beach” past Whippoorwill Point to Sandy Cove. I then walked further along the water and rocky shore towards the Harrison River. I wasn’t able to make it to the river, but it was clear that this would have been a moot point anyway. The way the shore curved, I was losing more and more of my view of Cheam Peak. The best spot turned out to be just south of Sandy Cove. It was from there that I made the photograph above.

   The photograph I had hoped for (I try to avoid the term “previsualized”) turned out to not actually be possible without a boat. I would not want to try to photograph in early February on a boat on Harrison Lake anyway, even without the high winds and cold I faced. There are plenty of other angles on Mount Cheam I have on my list of places to check out. Stay tuned for those!

 

Harrison Hot Springs and the Mount Cheam Range

Late evening light on the Mount Cheam Range and the beachfront condominiums at Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia, Canada.

harrison hot springs beachfront condos with mount cheam in the background

Mount Cheam Range and the beachfront condominiums at Harrison Hot Springs (Purchase)

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This past week I drove out to Harrison Hot Springs area to photograph sunset light on Mount Cheam. I had a number of locations in mind, and did some hiking, but it turned out my favourite photo from the day was this one. Photographed from Harrison Lagoon, these are some beachfront condominiums with the Cheam Range behind. The peaks visible in this photo are (from left to right) Stewart, Baby Munday, Knight, Lady and Cheam Peaks. Mount Archibald is the peak on the far right, but is not part of the Cheam Range. I have photographed Mount Cheam many different times of the year, but I think winter is my favourite. Cheam just takes on a different personality in the winter when there is a lot of snow.

You can view more photographs from this area in my Fraser Valley Gallery.