Last sunrise of 2012 in Grand Portage on the Lake Superior shoreline. I had to scramble to get to this spot, mostly because I didn't give myself enough time to get there to scope it out before the sun rose. Luckily, I am quite familiar with this shoreline and know that there are some nice rocks there. What I wasn't expecting was this really neat cap of ice covering this rock, with icicles hanging down on the side facing the lake. It made for a really nice foreground.
I hope everyone has a wonderful, fun (and safe!) time ringing in the new year!
We've got ice! I'm in heaven once again :-) Ice in all its infinite variations is by far my favorite thing to photograph in the winter season. This morning I got out along the shoreline to photograph some cool ice formations on some small cliffs just a few miles from my home. The ice in this particular location is formed from the Lake Superior waves as they splash against these rocks. The water drips down the rock, freezing as it runs down the surface of the cliff. Another interesting thing about ice is that it is constantly changing. It never looks the same from one day to the next!
We finally have some ice along the shoreline! This winter in Grand Portage has been pretty mild thus far, so several days ago when it started to cool off I got excited about the possibility of having ice along the shoreline again. All it took was a few days of colder weather and "voila!" there is once again ice forming! This photo was made along Grand Portage Bay just about a half-mile from my home.
Here is another "oldie"... lately it seems I've been more interested in digging through old photos rather than shooting new ones. However, the weather recently has been bringing us cooler temperatures so hopefully there will be some NEW ice to photograph soon :-)
In the meantime, I bring you this shot from March of 2007. We had a lot of ice that year, and some rather unique things happened. We had ice extending out from shore quite a ways and a big wind storm came up, crushing up the surface ice. As the ice rolled around in the waves it was shaped into these round-ish "boulders". Then, the waves flung the ice boulders up onto the shoreline. Most of the beaches in Grand Portage were covered with ice similar to what you see in this photo. It was pretty surreal... and FUN walking along the shoreline and taking in this winter wonderland! This post comes to you on Christmas Eve, so I'd like to wish you all a wonderful and very Merry Christmas!
Lake Superior is an amazing subject, one that I never tire of photographing. The Big Lake has a seemingly infinite number of moods, but one of my favorites is when the waves are kicking up like they were last night. Shooting the waves as they break over the near-shore rocks is endless fun. I made about 60 exposures of the waves in order to get this one shot that I really like. All the others, while nice, just didn't have the right amount of whitewater surrounding the rocks. This one was the best of the bunch, at least for what I was looking for.
From today's walk in the woods. I love winter for many reasons, and one of those reasons is the snow makes it easier for us to see what the animals have been up to. Today I found these raven tracks... they were in the middle of an opening in the woods, beginning with the two tracks in the lower right. Apparently this raven landed, then hopped on both feet a few times before beginning to walk. It sure was a fun find :-)
Today felt more like a spring day than a December day, with temperatures approaching 40 degrees and rain falling all afternoon. The mild day made for a pleasant walk in the woods (well, before the rain started it was pleasant). I decided to take advantage of the warm weather and took a walk to High Falls on the Pigeon River in Grand Portage State Park. Along the walk to the falls there were tracks everywhere... from squirrels, birds, rabbits and mink to dogs (accompanying their human companions on their own walks to the falls). The cliff that High Falls drops over was amazing, with incredible ice formations everywhere along the rocks that make up the face of the cliff. This particular composition was just to the right of the main flow of water as it drops over the falls. This was taken with my 100-400mm lens fully extended at 400mm.
