On Tuesday, October 19, I took a day off to go to Lake Tahoe with my husband. I packed light, just my camera, a 24-70 mm lens, and my circular polarizer from Lee. I use a square filter system (the movie on this link shows how it works), and I had the polarizer attached to the filter holder.
The day was beautiful. Our first stop was at the Taylor Creek in South Lake Tahoe, where I had been many times. There was some snow on the ground, and beautiful yellows provided by the aspen trees and willow bushes. Tourists who had never seen snow before were having snowball fights and making tiny snow men. We walked slowly and I took some snapshots. When we stopped at the creek for a photo, and after I aimed at a seemingly dull scene I could well live without, my Lee filter holder fell in the creek, dragging my circular polarizer along with it. My husband and I contemplated about 350 U$ worth of equipment slowly submerging underneath a thin layer of ice. Without any hope to access that part of the creek, we left the Lee filter for the bears.
The photo above expresses how I felt walking back to the car! I should have substituted my square filter holder a long time ago. Landscape photographers had been aware of the problem with the holder for a while: sometimes when you angle the camera, the old holder detaches from the adaptor and the whole thing falls off. The new holder fixes the problem. I knew that I could lose my old model holder anytime, but I made the choice to do nothing about it.
The rest of the day was very nice and went well. I had the opportunity to collect some different leaves for my project “Folhas Secas”. The water level of the lake, creeks and waterfalls was very low. The photo below shows the Truckee River almost dry where it meets Lake Tahoe (below), leaving the rocky shore of the lake exposed. I got a little creative with it and processed it in Topaz Black and White, using one of their presets from the Platinum collection, added film grain and a vignette. This is a fun, free to use program that works well with Photoshop.
It is all about the light 
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