Tree Farts – 2021

In the winter of 2021, Bryce Mironuck and I visited the Canadian Rockies to practice some landscape photography. There was no location we frequented more than Lake Minnewanka. In the days before arriving, the weather was unseasonably warm. The lake had barely begun to freeze over, and during our first trip there, the ice was only an inch or two thick: unsafe to walk on. But after a couple of days, when temperatures dipped below -20° Celsius, the ice thickened up enough to be safe to walk on. The ice was in incredible shape this year. It was eerily transparent and, because there was little to no wind when it froze, it was as smooth as I have ever experienced.

One evening, we explored the different bubble patterns on the lake, looking for something that would work out nicely for that day’s sunset shoot. I came across this beautiful set of freshly formed bubbles and spent some time framing up this intimate photograph of ice bubbles on Lake Minnewanka. Ice bubbles like this are formed when dead plants on the lake bed release methane gas, which creates bubbles trapped in the ice, just below the surface of the lake begin to freeze.

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