One of my favourite activities is a photographic field trip with fellow photographers. Through the auspices of the Foothills Camera Club, about a dozen of us headed to the frozen Ghost Lake Reservoir, about 40 km west of Calgary.

What may look like a frozen wasteland to the uninitiated (those without the photographer's/artist's eye), becomes a magical place of light, shapes, colours, textures and unique photographs. This year, the ice on the lake has frozen crystal clear. The myriad of cracks, faults and encapsulated air bubbles make for the most interesting abstract images.

The afternoon sun was mostly hidden behind a chinook arch of clouds over the Rocky Mountains, so most of the first daylight only photos have a deep blue tone. However the fun really started at dusk when Dave, a good friend and fellow photographer, brought out the big guns (light, that is). Two 3 million candlepower and two 20 million candlepower battery operated lights changed everything. The colours, textures and patterns become surreal.

For those of us that stuck around, it was quite the scene to see a pack of grown men and women crawling on hands and knees on the ice, laughing and whooping out loud, as we scoped out the perfect ice formation and called everyone over to photograph them, lying flat out on the ice with ice boats and windsurfers on skates scooting by. Add some darkness and a bunch of high powered lights glowing into the ice, the scene became just plain weird ... I can't imagine what passerby folks on the shore were thinking.

There are some tonemapped (single shot HDR) shots at the end.

Enjoy.