lake effect

It is the morning after Thanksgiving and I had my annual duty of shooting crazy holiday shoppers trying to get the early morning deals at Best Buy. I was up at 3 A.M. and at the store by 4:30. It was snowing lightly and I thought that it was going to be a gray day as I returned over the hill I stepped out in the flurries to capture the sun peaking through the clouds to greet this salty waiting to enter the harbor. The sun left as quickly as it appeared.

This is a shot from when I was flying over the Duluth Superior Harbor today. I do not know how to fly, I was in a Cessna 172 with a pilot from the Bong Airport in Superior, Wis. The American Century is one of the 1000 foot cargo ships that travels the Great Lakes and it is loading low-sulfur coal at the Midwest Energy Terminal to haul to the Detroit area. I think it is amazing how everything looks like model toys from the air. This ship is probably one of the largest man-made things I have seen, yet it looks like I could pick it up and put it anywhere I want to.

I was out shooting the last Wednesday night sailing race of the year. It was so cloudy over the area of the lake they were racing on but I could see the clouds breaking to the west. I hoped the sun would poke out and light the boats up. It briefly found its way through the clouds for about a minute. These were the only boats in the path of the sunbeam.