Ice Eggs

The Lake Superior winter ice eggs have been laid!  Hopefully this means that they will hatch into wonderful, giant and amazingly mind-blowing ice formations later in the winter :-)  Seriously, though, these are rocks on the Lake Superior shoreline that are coated in ice from a combination of waves washing over them and steam settling on them.  They are one of the things I look forward to every winter on the big lake.  Sometimes they don't occur, though.  At least, not as prominently as they are this year.  It all depends on the weather conditions.  Sometimes it's not cold enough, sometimes the waves aren't big enough, sometimes there isn't enough steam (which is usually associated with it not being cold enough).  At any rate, they are here now and they are beautiful!  I captured this particular patch of eggs a couple of nights ago right at sunset, just as the last bit of warm light for the day was washing over these eggs.  I held the camera very close to the ground to get the angle I wanted and to give a nice, shallow depth of field.  Ice comes in an infinite variety of forms and I urge you to get out and explore all the amazing things there are to see along the shoreline right now!