Falling Snow on the Sawbill Trail

 

A couple of forest scenes today from a drive along the Sawbill Trail in Northeast Minnesota. It was snowing beautifully all afternoon!

A nice drive and a Great Gray Owl sighting!

 

Today was a surprisingly nice day!  We had glorious sunshine, which has been a rarity this winter. January has (seemingly, at least) been much warmer than usual which means we've had a LOT of cloudy days. We just had to get out and enjoy the sunshine today. We decided to take a drive up into the woods on a local logging road.  Luckily for us no one else had driven on the road since it was last plowed. An unplowed road is a joy to drive as you can easily see all the signs of animal activity since the last time a vehicle passed by.  We found a fun rodent trail that was running right down the middle of the road and were fascinated by its tracks. The highlight of the day by far, however, was spotting a Great Gray Owl on our way home. He was nice enough to stop and perch where the light of the setting sun was shining on him.  It was the perfect end to a fun afternoon of exploring!

Lake Superior Icicles

 

Long, slender icicles work their way down the side of a rock on the Lake Superior shoreline in Grand Portage, MN. 

Ice Abstracts, Part 2

 

A couple more abstract ice images for your viewing enjoyment!

Ice Abstracts

 

We found a lot more frozen Lake Superior shoreline puddles this weekend!  The patterns in these puddles were very well preserved. It's so easy to lose track of time when photographing ice. Before you know it you've been hunched over looking for compositions for an hour or more!  

Orion on a hazy winter night

 

We had rare clear skies yesterday so we decided to head up into the woods after dark to try and do some stargazing.  Of course, as soon as we arrived at our first location the clouds had already started to move in.  At first it wasn't really clouds but more of a haze and at times we could still see the stars through the haze. Orion kept playing peekaboo with us.  We would see it for a minute then the haze would get so thick that the stars would disappear from view.  A minute or two later they would be visible again.  

Another notable quality of last night was the quietness. The air was so incredibly calm that when we stood still and just listened it seemed like if an ant was walking across the snow a hundred yards away we would have been able to hear it. Nights like this are one of the main reasons why I love living where I do!

Ice Galaxies

 

Coming across these frozen bubbles was such an intriguing find.  It's actually kind of comical how much time I will spend photographing something like this.  I spent probably close to 30 minutes getting these two photos.  One reason is the composition... it takes a while to find a pleasing composition within so much chaos.  Another reason, in this case, was the focus.  I literally had my camera sitting on the surface of the ice, pointed straight down, resting on the lens hood.  This normally easily allows the camera to focus.  This time, however, it was very tricky.  

I was starting to get really frustrated when finally I realized the surface of the ice had a very slight layer of frost on it.  After about 10 seconds of rubbing the frost off with my gloved hand, the camera easily focused.  Out of about 30 images that I made, these two were my favorite.  Each one represents an area of only about 3 or 4 inches across.  So these bubbles were pretty small!