A Parting Shot - Across Canada, Day 10 of 92

A colourful scene in Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba, where I spent a day exploring through the fall colours. As much as I liked Riding Mountain, I wasn't "feeling it" photographically, and had a tough time making interesting photos - this was possibly the best of the day, a simple composition based on colors and curves, with a crow cameo.

One of the primary objectives on this trip was to take a calendar-worthy photo in a National Park in each of the ten provinces and two of the territories. This put a lot of pressure on myself in Manitoba, where I struggled in the only easily accessible National Park: Riding Mountain. Having this goal in mind made me more focused and determined, but it lead to frustration when failing to find decent compositions, knowing I would have to stay longer or else come back another time. It was hard to decide whether I should spend another few days here and wait out the weather, or heed the call of the road.

My thoughts were filled with decisions like these every day of the trip - should I stay or should I go? WHERE should I go next? The flipside of having the freedom to plot my own course without being tied to a strict schedule is that it puts the responsibility on myself to be in the right place at the right time to take the best pictures possible. It's stressful, when I'm tired and have poor cell service, to sort through the endless variables (weather, distance, routes, location potential, direction of the sun, moon, etc) and make a decision, over and over again, all day, every day.

In this case I decided to leave, head West, and return to Riding Mountain much later (I didn't know it then, but there would be snow on the ground). I would miss the fall colours here, but at least I wouldn't waste time I could spend somewhere else. because there were fall colours in the Rockies, too, and I didn't want to miss that...