<sub><i>"Remember, that you are this universe
and this universe is yourself."</i>

- Creek poet Joy Harjo</sub>



<i>^Anoya! You sneaky devil!!! Thank you SO much! You are too kind. Very happy that you like</i> :)


Everyone: I would answer each comment left here and on all of my photos, but unfortunately I would never get to work or get out to make any more images, let alone process them all! (I have a HUGE backup...) As I have said before, I read them all, and if I have anything to add hopefully I will get back to you in due time. I have recently become very busy, and responding to all of the feedback is difficult all on my own, especially since I like to take my time sometimes...Hehe..

<u>THANK YOU</u> for the support, encouragement, thoughts and kind words. I suppose I could enjoy my images all on my own, but they mean so much more to me because I have you to share with. Thank you for looking! :heart:


ALSO,

To answer a few common requests/questions :)

<b>Can I post a bigger size?</b>

Done. upped to 1000px from 700px

<b>Bigger/Wallpaper?</b>

Sorry, no. I have several reasons. If you want to use the 1000px version as a wallpaper that doesn't fill your whole screen, I couldn't really stop you now could I? And that will have to suffice. It looks good on black anyways ;)

Will be eventually uploading many photos that aren't a part of my main body of work in a folder that will all be in wallpaper resolution.

<b>Is it real?</b>

Yes! The EXIF data is available and unstripped. DSLR, tripod, cable release - all that hehe. This is technically a panorama, by the way. It is 6 images (overlapped by more than 50%) to capture as much sharp detail as possible (my wide angle at wide open is quite soft at the edges, I plan on upgrading someday.

For some strange reason there are two versions of this photo. One that is long - wider than 1:2, and this one. They are both the same photo but I have no idea how I ended up with one that is long and one that is much shorter! Friggen weird! I don't remember scaling either of them. Ah well, a anomaly that works well for me! May release the panoramic version at a later time.

<b>Where is this?</b>

About 40km from a small town called Fort Smith near the Alberta/Northwest Territories border. The waterscape is a bend of the gargantuan Slave River (a mile across on average), which runs from mid Alberta all the way into the Great Slave Lake.

The water empties from the Slave Lake and becomes the Mackenzie River, feeding into more separate lakes and rivers and underground waterways than you might imagine. Most of Canada's water, and a large portion of the worlds fresh water, can be found in this region and Canada's north in general. The Mackenzie continues northward, where it empties out into the Arctic Ocean.

It is not an ocean =P And a few have made the mistake of thinking the shapes near the shore are waves. If you look closely you can see cracks in the "waves." It is just irregular shapes created on the spring ice because our melt takes several months.

<b>Are there really that many (viewable) stars where I live in the night sky?</b>

Technically, for the most part, yes. This photo is by my estimate effectively one stop brighter than visible with the naked eye. In complete darkness (in the absence of light from the blue spectrum), a compound called rhodopsin begins to accumulate in the rods of your eyeball. After about 40 minutes it reaches its peak and is similar to raising the ISO sensitivity of a camera. This process is called dark adapting your eyes.

Combined with fully dilated pupils, the swath of the milky way and thousands of stars are visible. It is absolutely, insanely beautiful. I have been fascinated with it since I was young. I can't wait to buy a deep sky telescope.