Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Ice Arch Sunrise



This winter has been quite productive when it comes to having interesting ice formations to photograph, much more so than last winter. December and January had plenty of very cold days which meant that there was quite a bit of ice both along the shore and floating around in various places on Lake Superior. Near the end of January we had a wind storm that came up and blew a lot of this ice onto the Minnesota shoreline of the lake. Just north of Grand Marais was one area in particular where the ice had been jammed into many fascinating forms along the beaches. The wave action not only resulted in the packing of the ice along the shoreline, but also contributed to the hollowing out of the ice from underneath in several places. Several ice arches were formed as the waves continued to work at the ice from below.

The arch shown in this image was the most photogenic arch that I found. On the morning I made this image I was photographing the shoreline with my friend Paul. It was a very calm morning which was a stark contrast to the previous days which had made all these ice formations possible. Paul and I set up our tripods and started making images of the arch. We had only taken about 5 or 6 images each when we heard a cracking sound. Both of us were in the process of moving our tripods to set up a different shot when we heard the cracking. We both looked up just as the arch collapsed into the water. Needless to say, this scene was a lot less interesting to photograph after the arch fell. Thankfully we each got a few images before it was gone! This image was made at 8:03 AM using my Canon EF 17-40mm lens. Shutter speed was 1/15, aperture f16, ISO 100.

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