While all that separates the United States from Canada is a line drawn on paper, it feels light years away. My very first trip to Canada was wonderful but short. Juggling meeting new family and taking photos proved to be difficult, but fun. Not only am I leaving the country with lots of photographs, I am also leaving with a new family.

What will I remember most from this journey? Apart from the fun family and friends I met, it must be the hike to the Panorama Mountain summit. What I knew was going to be a hard hike, became much more of a challenge when Ryan (other hiker) and I realized the gradient of the trail, almost 45 degrees the whole way. Over a 6000 foot increase in elevation added to that, made for a hell of a time. I am still sore while I am writing this, but as the image below shows, It was totally worth it.

Many photos where taken, many mistakes where made. Landscape photography is a new art for me, a photojournalist at heart. It is very technical, and takes a lot of time and patience to master. I like to think this trip helped me take steps towards mastering it. But landscape was not all I did while traveling, my love for portraits and travel photos also needed to be satiated. So below is a quick example of my beautiful Talia modeling for me.

So in the end this trip taught me a lot, and now I have lots of homework to do based of the hundreds of mistakes I made. So if you are afraid of failing, understand most of this trip was me failing at taking the photos I wanted. To much haze, waking up too late, forgetting to check shutter speed. Small mistakes, to very silly ones but now I am much more aware of them. So fail, and learn. I did and I know you can. Learn to become better, learn to love what you do.