Gosau Lake

Gosau Lake (in German 'Gosausee') in central Austria is, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful small lakes in the world. The surrounding mountains with near vertical cliffs were carved by glaciers 25,000 years ago. That left a landscape that is truly breathtaking. When there is no wind, the reflections in the water are like mirrors, creating double the visual impact. For this shot, I used a Canon 16-35mm zoom set to the widest focal length, and the settings were 1/200, f/5.0, and 100 ISO. In post-processing using Adobe Camera RAW, I lightened the shadows and toned down the highlights to reduce the contrast as much as I could given the direct sunlight I was dealing with.