Great Grey Owl in the Meadow

Yesterday there was a Great Grey Owl hanging out in the meadow at Grand Portage National Monument for most of the day.  I had been gone out of town for most of the day photographing other things and when I got home there were messages from Jessica waiting for me throughout the village.  Luckily the first place I stopped was the post office where our local postmaster conveyed the message from Jessica about the owl.  So, I headed over to where the bird had been seen and there he was, sitting on the ground out in the meadow.  At first I thought he must have been hurt, because I was told that he had been sitting there all day long.  Eventually, though, he did fly away and seemed to be perfectly fine.  Seeing this owl was the highlight of my day for sure!

February Sunrise, Horseshoe Bay

When I woke this morning the sky did not look very promising for a photogenic sunrise.  The cloud cover was pretty heavy and I almost decided not to venture out.  I'm glad I decided to go, because the morning turned out to be very beautiful.  As I drove from my house to Horseshoe Bay in Hovland, the clouds were starting to break up and things started to look promising for a good sky show.  By the time I arrived at Horseshoe Bay it looked very promising indeed.  I strapped my ice spikes onto my boots and headed down to the shore.  A fresh 4" blanket of snow that had fallen that night coated the rocks along the shore.  The sun actually didn't come out from behind the clouds for quite a while, but I'm glad that it didn't because the sky that you see here lasted for about 20 minutes, which allowed me to shoot several different compositions before the light changed too drastically.  A couple of days ago this shoreline had a small pile of sheet ice lining the rocks at the water's edge.  I was hoping the sheet ice would still be there.  Even though it wasn't, it still was very much a scene worth photographing and enjoying!  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did :-)

Ice Land

Here is another wildly cool ice formation that we found on Artist's Point on Saturday.  I loved the lines here and could not resist pointing my camera in their direction!

Icy Paradise - Grand Marais Lighthouse

A favorite shot from this weekend's ice exploration adventure between Grand Marais and Grand Portage.  Artist's Point was a winter wonderland of ice!  We had great fun crawling around on our bellies taking macro shots of all the frozen pools of water on the lakeside of the point, then we discovered that the harbor side of the point was even more amazing, with every shrub in sight coated in a thick layer of ice!  We spent a good hour exploring all the different compositions we could find within this little frozen forest.  This shot, framed with the lighthouse in the background, was one of my favorites from this area.  

Sun Rays and Ice Clusters

This morning's  awe-inspiring sunrise over Lake Superior.  This shot was much trickier to obtain than it may seem by looking at it.  The entire shoreline here was covered in ice, which necessitated the use of ice spikes on my boots just to even get anywhere close to the water's edge.  I had to sit/lay down in this groove in the ice and set up my tripod over my lap in order to get this angle on the scene.  Every now and then a wave would wash up in between these two clusters of ice and splash my butt.  Good thing I was wearing water-resistant snow pants!  I sat in this position on the ice for a good 10 minutes waiting for the sun to peek out from behind the clouds.  When it finally did, it was glorious.  Beautiful rays of light shone into the sky above the clouds, and by shooting with my lens aperture set at f22 I was able to obtain a nice starburst on the sun.  It was definitely worth the cold and uncomfortable seating position on the ice (and the wet butt!) to get this shot.  

Icy Sunset over Whitecaps Bay

Yesterday my friend Roger and I spent pretty much the entire day outside photographing as much ice as we possibly could.  We found countless awesome ice features throughout the day.  Unfortunately at sunrise, my "big" camera (a Canon 5D Mark II, the one I take all my landscape shots with) froze up and absolutely would not work, before I was able to take a single picture!  As a result, I ended up shooting most of the day with my "little" camera, a Canon G11.  I had a ton of fun shooting with the G11 and came away with plenty of really neat shots taken with it.  

Late in the afternoon we brought our gear inside and I tried warming up my big camera and putting a fresh charge on the battery.  After a while I put the battery back in the camera and it worked!  So, we headed out to shoot sunset.  When we got to our planned sunset location I pulled out my camera, took 4 pictures then it froze up again and was totally unresponsive!  I sure am glad I was able to get this shot before the camera froze up.  We went back out this morning to shoot sunrise, and after being in the warm house all night and again putting a fresh charge on the batteries, the camera worked fine all morning.  Go figure.  

Curious Deer

On our way to Duluth the other day we stopped in Two Harbors to look for some owls that had reportedly been hanging around.  We didn't have any luck finding the owls, but we did find several very curious deer alongside the roadways.  This particular deer was very curious about us and stared at us for quite a while as I snapped picture after picture.  So, we didn't see any owls but the deer encounter sure was fun!