Despite living in a land-locked state, there are plenty of lakes and rivers in the area. This is one of my favorite destinations during the dog days of summer when the temperature is in the upper 90’s and I’m stuck indoors because of my skin condition. This is Mirror Lake, where it’s a good 15-degrees cooler being at an elevation of 10,000 feet. You can certainly see why it’s called “Mirror Lake”, right?

It’s about 40 miles from Evanston, Wyoming, and about 100 miles from me but I don’t mind. The challenging part is finding a spot to park on the hottest days.

I love to experiment with water when I get the chance, such as when I’m traveling alone. I feel I am more creative when it’s just me and my camera. I think it’s because I’m on my own time, not someone else’s.

Long exposure photography was one of the things that catapulted my interest in photography. Long exposure photos feels like one of those things that differentiates seeing with human eyes and seeing with camera lens. I’m always curious to see how long it will take for the camera to freeze water into this silky stream. Some take longer than others and I always take multiple at different exposure lengths so I can later choose which I like best.

The last time we gathered as a family was on this lake shore 2 years ago. This is Strawberry Lake, somewhere in Eastern Utah. It was my mom’s idea to gather at this lake because she discovered from her co-worker that there were crawfish in the lake.

If you imagine a team of people carrying trays of food, a tent, chairs, a table, and a camp stove in a single-file line like ants, yeah, that was the family. The only thing I carried was my camera because being the clumsy one in the family, no one trusted me enough to let me help. After satiating everybody’s hunger, my uncle went to work catching crawfish while I went for a walk.

Although I don’t see any of this kind of family gathering anytime soon, it’s still nice to reflect on some happy memories once in a while.

For #SundayStill