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Lens-Artists Challenge #412—Places Shaped by Water

Inlet to Peggy’s Cove

It’s been a scorcher of a summer, and with September upon us, I think we’ve earned a cool change—shout‑out to Little River Band. This week’s Lens‑Artists Challenge takes a slightly different angle on water, focusing not on the waves or currents themselves but on the landscapes, structures, and stories that unfold around them. Every photographer has images shaped by water—a harbor lined with fishing boats, a wetland alive with reeds and wildlife, a boardwalk skirting a tidal marsh, or a cityscape mirrored in a quiet canal. This week, we’re celebrating waterscapes in all their forms, where places shaped by water serve as subjects in scenes that give them character.

The Challenge: Share up to six waterscapes—images where water shapes the scene. Choose your favorite places, your favorite photos, or a single location that inspires you. Natural or man‑made, peaceful or wild—if water helps tell the story, it’s fair game.

For my opening photo, I revisited a journey to Peggy’s Cove and reprocessed an image captured with my Nikon D500. The small fishing village has drawn photographers and visitors for decades. Peggy’s Cove sits on the edge of St. Margaret’s Bay, where the protected inlet gradually opens to the full reach of the Atlantic Ocean. The weathered buildings clustered along the rugged shoreline capture a classic Atlantic coastal setting and serve as my starting point for this week’s challenge.

Morning Light on Possession Sound
Morning Light on Possession Sound

Crossing the continent to Washington State, Lynn and I took State Route 525, which includes a short ferry crossing between Whidbey Island and Mukilteo. The highway runs down the southern end of the island and ends at the dock, where the road simply becomes the deck of the Clinton–Mukilteo ferry. From the upper deck, a moody morning caught my attention—low clouds drifting over Possession Sound, a distant ferry moving across the horizon, and the muted outlines of the mainland coastline. My “real” camera was tucked away in the car, so my Samsung S20 Ultra stepped in and captured a minimalist waterscape, which I later processed in Luminar 4.

Textures of Sprague Lake
Textures of Sprague Lake

In November, Sprague Lake’s shoreline offers a prelude to winter as the trail curves along the water toward a small bridge tucked into the trees. In black‑and‑white, the textures dominate—the frozen shallows, the rocky bank, the snow‑patched path, and the mountains rising beyond. The changing seasons shape this place, inviting visitors to follow the path and see what lies around the bend. I captured the image with a Nikon D500, processed it from a 3-exposure bracket, and converted it to black-and-white with Nik Efex 2. It’s part of a Colorado monochrome photoset I haven’t published before.

Aguasabon River
Aguasabon River View

In 2022, our annual fall trip brought us along the North Shore of Lake Superior, where we headed toward Thunder Bay and eventually continued through Ontario until we re‑entered the United States in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Along the way, we noticed a sign for the Aguasabon Gorge and Falls, a roadside stop with a short walk to a boardwalk ending at a viewing platform overlooking the river’s plunge. From the high viewpoint, the river looks small, yet the tall cliffs reveal a landscape shaped by water—an environment carved over centuries by the force that created the gorge. I captured this image on my Samsung S20 Ultra and processed it in Lightroom Classic and Luminar Neo.

Lake Devonian at FortWhyte Alive, Winnipeg
Lake Devonian at FortWhyte Alive, Winnipeg

Back in 2019, a quick trip to Winnipeg for Civil Air Patrol business covered Friday’s duties, allowing Lynn and me to stay for the weekend. We caught a RedHawks/Goldeyes baseball game and visited FortWhyte Alive, a serene nature preserve on the city’s edge featuring walking trails, lakes, and prairie wildlife. As we walked along one of the trails, we passed close to Lake Devonian. Seeing a bright orange canoe tied to a dock almost tempted us to rent one from the park office. I settled for capturing the tranquil, tree‑lined scene with the D500, processed in Lightroom Classic and Luminar Neo from a three‑shot bracketed exposure set. The escape to FortWhyte Alive helped ease the sting of our team’s loss to the Goldeyes. >grin<

Coldwater Lake - A Landscape Rewritten
Coldwater Lake – A Landscape Rewritten

In October 2020, we visited Mount St. Helens, the mountain that “blew its top.” On our tour of the park, we found Coldwater Lake, a body of water that didn’t exist before 1980, formed when the eruption blocked Coldwater Creek and created a brand‑new basin. Surrounded by the blast zone’s scars and fresh regrowth, the young lake is barely four decades old. On that windless morning, its smooth surface held a crisp reflection of the surrounding landscape. I’ve shared this image in other challenges, but as one of my favorite waterscapes, I felt it was worth sharing again. Captured with the Samsung S20 Ultra and finished in Luminar 4, the image needed no further adjustments for this theme.

Thanks to Sofia for her “What Is It?” challenge. Next week, Beth will be ready with a new theme. Follow her here so you don’t miss her challenge on Saturday, September 12, at noon Eastern Time. I look forward to seeing your responses. Be sure to link to this post in the comments section and tag your entry with “Lens-Artists” so we can find it.

If you’re sharing a Lens‑Artists Challenge response for the first time, welcome—we’d love to visit your post. To participate, publish your take on this week’s theme, link back to this page, and add the Lens‑Artists tag so others can discover your work. You’ll find more details on how the challenge works here.

John Steiner.

144 comments

  3. […] John from Journeys with Johnbo is this week’s host for the Lens-Artist Photo Challenge. He is asking us to look at water a little differently to focus on the landscapes, structures, and stories that they might tell. John commented on my Cell Pic Sunday photo and suggested I could use it for this challenge. I opted to use it as my header image. It shows the landscape of trees surrounding Lake Haigler at Anne Springs Close Greenway. […]

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  10. […] John leads this week, with a different kind of theme. Interesting, but it really had me thinking… Places shaped by water – in any form. The Challenge: Share up to six waterscapes—images where water shapes the scene. Choose your favorite places, your favorite photos, or a single location that inspires you. Natural or man‑made, peaceful or wild—if water helps tell the story, it’s fair game. […]

    Reply

  11. […] Halong Bay in Vietnam has hundreds of karst rock formations sticking up out of the water. In one case we swam under an arch to arrive at a lagoon inside a wall of rock. Ferries sailing back and forth from Sendai to Matsushima do a tour of the unique landforms, sea stacks, islets and cormorants.Ruby Beach in the Olympic National Park, Washington, US. This sea stack has a hole with a view in it, and there are caves nearby; both these often found accompanying sea stacks.White chalk formations on the Alabaster Coast of Normandy in France were very popular with the artist Monet, who did many interpretations of it. Sea stacks are created when a sea arch collapses.Siwash Rock on the section of the Sea Wall that runs along the perimeter of Stanley Park in Vancouver. South Stacks in Wales.  An old etching showing a romantic interpretation of the South Stack and lighthouse. My watercolour painting of northern California sea stacks; sandstone rock formed by the crazy surf.On the Irish Coast, at the cliffs of Moher you can look straight at the Branaunmore sea stack from the ferry, and see how it has broken apart from the land. More of the Lens-Artists Challenge: Shaped by Water. […]

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  16. I really like the way you framed this challenge. Thinking about places shaped by water rather than simply photographing water opens up a much wider range of stories, because the landscape itself becomes part of the subject.

    Your selection demonstrates that beautifully. Peggy’s Cove has the unmistakable character of a community built beside the Atlantic, while the image from Possession Sound has a much quieter, almost minimalist atmosphere. The Aguasabon River and gorge show the slow geological power of water particularly well.

    For me, though, Coldwater Lake may be the most fascinating example. A lake that did not exist before the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption is an extraordinary reminder that landscapes we often think of as permanent can change dramatically within a human lifetime. The reflection in the calm water makes that history even more striking.

    It is also interesting how the photographs move between natural processes and places where people have adapted their lives and infrastructure around water.

    Excellent theme—there are almost endless ways photographers could interpret it.

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  21. Thanks for the tour of some Washington’s views (of which I haven’t yet seen), John! Water indeed shapes almost everything! Because I was on a break over the weekend, I wasn’t going to participate in L-A, but the WordPress prompt “Cracking open the content time capsule” appeared and I edited the old post and added it to the fun for Wordless Wednesday. Great challenge theme!

    https://secondwindleisure.com/2026/09/09/wordlesswednesday-lake-life-galleries-in-every-season/

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  42. That mention of the Little River Band really took me back. We definitely earned a cool change after the heat we had this summer. Your photo of the inlet to Peggy’s Cove has such a peaceful, grounding quality to it.

    There is something about the way water shapes the land that always makes me want to pause and just breathe. It is a great reminder of how nature finds its own balance over time, smoothing out the rough edges. I do not have a Nikon D500 myself, but I always appreciate seeing how people capture these quiet moments. Thank you for sharing this!

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