What an awesome winter we are having! Everywhere you go along the shoreline there are cool ice formations to find, although some areas are definitely better than others. Like this area I found earlier this week, which is a treasure trove of photographic opportunities! When I came across this field of ice boulders, the first thing it reminded me of were the shapes in a pile of concrete rubble when a large building is demolished. So, I decided to call this "Blue Ice Rubble". I can't wait to go back to this location for a sunrise... it should be awesome!
I don't know that this picture is all that interesting photographically, but I wanted to share it anyway because it shows how fascinating the Lake Superior ice can get. The slab on the right was about a foot thick and about four feet wide by six feet long. The slab on the left that it broke off from was even bigger. It was a tremendously interesting find, but a difficult one to photograph because of its location. I really couldn't make it work as a wide angle composition that showed the surrounding terrain, so I decided to just zoom in on it and take more of a documentary-type shot. In case you're wondering, yes it really was that blue! I saw fascinating shades of blue all around this slab of ice. I'm sure you'll find it as interesting as I did :-)
It feels like an abstract ice kind of a day :-) I have two photos I want to share with you today. This first one is a piece of plate ice that was jutting up into the sky with the rising sun behind it. I loved the patterns and shapes within the piece of ice and the way the sunlight was interacting with it. Definitely very abstract!
Well, it's not really a pyramid, but that's the first thing I thought of when I found this particular piece of ice. I spent a lot of time yesterday crawling around on the ice on my hands and knees looking for low-angle perspectives of the ice formations on Lake Superior. The photo you see here is my favorite of the many that I shot at ground level. The tilt-angle screen on my Sony RX100 III camera sure comes in handy for shots like this. The camera was only about an inch or two off the surface of the snow-covered ice when I made this photo. I was looking for ways to accent the beautiful fan-shaped clouds that were streaking through the sky, and I think I found the perfect subject to do just that.
Here is another take on yesterday morning's sunrise. As I mentioned yesterday, it sure was an awesome morning! I can't imagine a winter morning being much more beautiful than this. And to think so many people hate winter and want nothing but warm weather all the time. I couldn't imagine life without winter. I love it :-)
This morning's sunrise was a jaw-dropper! One of the best of this winter for sure. I had a fantastic morning exploring the ice on the Lake Superior shoreline. I started about a half hour before sunrise and spend the entire morning walking along the shore and photographing the countless amazing ice formations that I came across. Almost 5 hours later, I was back at the truck and done with the camera for the day. The temp was about minus 10 just before sunrise, but the air was pretty calm so once the sun came up I could really feel it's warmth. The sky at sunrise was amazing, as you can see from this photo. This is one of the first few images that I made today. Believe it or not, this photo was made with my Sony RX100 III camera, a very compact "point and shoot" model. This little camera has amazing image quality which I think is very evident in this photo. I still can't believe that I made this shot with that little camera!
Yesterday Jessica and I went for a 15 kilometer ski on the Central Gunflint Ski Trail System. We started off from Bearskin Lodge and skied all the way around Flour Lake. Bearskin and Golden Eagle Lodges maintain one heck of a nice trail system! Today was my first time skiing the west side of Flour Lake on the Old Logging Camp Trail. Man, what a fun trail! Great rolling hills that traverse beautiful ridges make for a wonderful ski experience. The conditions were less than perfect for a ski day, but we still had a blast.
Last night we had some of the most intense winds I've ever experienced in my lifetime of living along the shores of Lake Superior, and those winds persisted into today along with dropping temperatures. It was 6 degrees when we started skiing and so windy that snow was being picked up off the surface of the frozen lakes and whipped up into the air. As we skied the shoreline of Flour Lake I wanted to make a photograph of the blowing snow (I always carry my little Sony RX100 III camera with me). We found a nice opening in the trees and I skied out onto the lake to make this picture of a tree and its shadow with the blowing snow in the background. We always have a lot of fun on our ski adventures, and today was no exception!
