Last light of 2007

This afternoon I headed into Grand Marais to run some errands, and while I was there I saw one of the most spectacular sunsets that I've ever seen over the Grand Marais harbor. The sun passed directly behind the lighthouse as it dipped towards the horizon. The clouds were rather unique as well..... there was almost sort of a haze in the sky..... not unlike how the sky looks when there is smoke from a forest fire. This haze held back a lot of the intense light from the sun, allowing me to shoot directly towards the sun with my telephoto lens (something that normally you should not do, unless you want to damage your eyes!).

It was really something to watch the sun pass behind the lighthouse, and as it started to dip below the horizon the color of the clouds started to shift from mostly orange to some deep reds and pinks. What a glorious way to say good bye to a great year! I have a lot to be thankful for this year, and I hope all of you had a good year as well.

Orion over the Spirit Tree

Shooting the night sky is one of my favorite things to do..... I think the reason I enjoy it so much is because its so different from shooting during the day, where a lot of times you can just "point and shoot" with the camera. Shooting at night takes a lot more preparation..... you need to make sure your shot is composed just the way you want it, and that the focus is spot-on..... not always easy to do in the dark! There was a little bit of moonlight on this evening, but not enough to see what I was shooting through the viewfinder of the camera. I brought along a flashlight to shine on the trees so I could see and make sure I had the shots composed the way I wanted.... and to help the camera focus on what I wanted it to focus on. Then, click the shutter..... and wait! The exposure time on the above image was 12 minutes in length, and the time on the image below was 14.5 minutes in length. If you are at all familiar with the night sky, you can easily recognize the constellation Orion just above the Spirit Tree in the above image. Its also visible in the image below (which was taken in my yard), but not as clearly. The light that you can see on the trees in the image below was from the moon. I hope you enjoy viewing these images as much as I enjoyed capturing them!

Steamy sunrise over the Susie Islands

Brrrrrrr! It was -8 this morning (and rather windy.... probably close to -30 with the wind chill) as I drove up to the overlook along the highway to watch the sunrise over Lake Superior and the Susie Islands. It was one of those spur of the moment things..... I was awake at 6:00 am and as the sky started to get lighter I looked out over the lake from my living room and saw that there was a lot of steam floating over the surface of the water, and the sky was relatively clear. I wondered what all that steam would look like illuminated by the first rays of the sun, and that was all it took.....next thing I knew, I was bundling up and heading outside to warm up the car.

As I drove down the highway towards my destination, I realized that a lot of people would probably think I am a bit crazy to be heading out on a morning such as this to take pictures. While it would certainly be warmer to have stayed in bed, I would have missed out on the wonderful light show that I was soon to witness. There was a low bank of clouds along the horizon, and as the sun slowly got closer and closer to the top edge of that cloud bank, the steam on the lake started to go from a rather flat gray color to a pink-ish glow, than to a blaze orange as the sun finally broke free from the clouds. All of a sudden the surface of the lake looked as if it were on fire. Simply amazing!!!!! And definitely worth braving the cold to see it!

A winter wonderland of white

Over this past weekend we had a major winter storm that dropped roughly a foot of snow on Grand Portage. I don't know about everyone else, but I am very excited about all the snow as the past two winters have been very much drought winters in terms of snowfall. We already have more snow on the ground right now than we did at any one point during last winter. To celebrate all the new snow (and my birthday, which is also today.....32 years old!) I went for a snowshoe hike at Grand Portage State Park. I can't tell you how good it felt to strap on the snowshoes after such a long absence. I hadn't used them at all in the past two winters, as they weren't needed....you could hike anywhere you wanted without them because there just wasn't enough snow to warrant the use of snowshoes.








(Above: Shadows on snow)


I love snowshoeing. Not just because they allow you to go places in the winter that would otherwise be difficult to go, but because its a rather slow mode of transport. Traveling on snowshoes helps you see things that you would otherwise miss simply by virtue of moving too quickly. Snowshoe travel helps one to appreciate the outdoors, and using them to get around helps you feel more connected with nature.....much more so than you could ever feel by zipping through the woods on a snowmobile (which I also enjoy, but if I could only have one or the other, I'd take a simple pair of wooden snowshoes over a snowmobile any day). With new snowfall comes the new-found ability of being able to see all of the activity of the critters that live in the forest. All along the trail in the park I could see tracks from squirrels, rabbits and mice. A fresh layer of snow makes for a tracker's paradise. Have I mentioned that I love living here? Of course I have...... over and over again. Today is another one of those reasons why.




(Above: The Pigeon River gorge just below High Falls)




(Above: High Falls)




(Above: Snow and ice on the cliffs of the Pigeon River gorge at High Falls)