Morning at Saskatchewan Crossing

From my archives ... one of my most favorite places ...

looking NW from just off the Ice Fields Parkway where it crosses over the North Saskatchewan River in Banff National Park, Alberta Canada ...

the prominent peak on the left is Mt. Forbes (11,847 ft.) and the distant one on the right is Mt. Erasmus (10,709 ft.) ...

hard to believe there are two huge glacial ice fields hidden just behind those mountains.

I like it! Nice composition, but the saturation looks a bit strong on my monitor. You might consider cutting out the fragment of tree in the lower right corner.

So do I.
Real fine composition, and I like the color pallette here (interesting atmospherics at play here) . I agree with Amy's suggestion.

Love the composition and the light quality is superb. Great stuff.

All comments and suggestions cheerfully accepted. I went back to the original and started over. I really haven't done much to the saturation level ... just a touch of curves and some spot color adjustment. Crop suggestions were spot on.

Thanks, everyone.

#2 looks much better with the crop. I can now focus on the mountains rather than the distracting trees in the corners! Color is still funky on my screen, but it might just be my monitor. Maybe boost the red and/or reduce the green?

Amy, I think it must be your monitor. When I tried your color change suggestion, the result was really funky. FWIW, my monitor is color balanced and high quality.

Nice comp. I like the second version. I was up there last summer, and the color seems a good match from my memory. I love the water color up there, amazing part of the world.

There's an interesting explanation for the color of the water ... that milky pale blue. In fact, during the winter and the first days of Spring, the water in the Canadian Rockies will turn into a much more crystalline blue (See my other post ... Blue Pool). But as temperatures move well into the 50s and 60s, the water starts turning milky.

The reason is the almost talc-like ground rock under the glaciers, called "glacial flour." During the winter, melting atop the glaciers stops and there's nothing to wash that glacial flour down the streams and rivers and into the lakes. Once the snow atop the glaciers melts, it washes the down the crevasses and carries the glacial flour into the streams and rivers. Because it is so fine and lightweight, the glacial flour remains suspended in the water much longer before it sinks ... and is replaced by more as the melting continues. Once freezing begins, the melting stops, and all the glacial flour in the water settles out without being replaced into the following summer.