lake effect

This is a view of the north shore of Lake Superior looking southwest from the top of Day Hill in Split Rock Lighthouse State Park. It has been a while since I posted for a number of reasons. I have been caught in a vortex of shooting championship hockey for the past month. This is exhausting work that takes quite a bit of time. There also has been a fair share of sickness in our house which has tapped a lot of energy. Most of all, I think that I hit a low point on the creative side of things. It has been quite drab, gray, monochromatic and just plain ugly outside. Now that things are starting to thaw, the sun is getting warmer by the hour, and the water of the lake and its tributaries is slowly reverting back to a liquid state, I am getting excited to document the awaking of the lake and the surrounding land from the cold, frozen slumber of winter.

I am sick with a cold, lots of congestion and a sore throat. Yuk! I was sifting through photo files when I came across this image of the Superior Entry. I thought that this image was a winter image but when I look at the date it is actually a spring image. This was shot in the last week of April in 2007. It is amazing how long the lake can hold ice. There are other photos from this shoot that show grass starting to turn green. . .gosh those days seem so far away. It was -26˚F air temperature when I woke up this morning I don’t even know what it was with the wind factored in. I hope there are warmer days in our future. . .

The ice is finally in at the head of the lake. Some of the earlier ice of the season was blown in to the sand beaches of Park Point and is stacked and piled like broken pieces of glass. This really reminds me of the glass sculptures created by my friend Mike Tonder. Feel free to check out his work here.  This is his web address: http://www.blueskiesglassworks.com/mtonder.htm

The sun finally came out today. It was relatively warm with a temperature of 28˚F this afternoon. It was great to be outside in the warm sunny air.

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.

It was surprising to me how similar the lake was at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day. A few small fish jumped, a pair of ducks swam across the glassy surface of the lake, and a snowshoe hare watched the close of the day from a grassy area overlooking the lake. I choose only to take my wide angle leaving the telephoto in the car. I made a photo of the hare, but it was much too small in the frame. Instead I was captivated by how the sky was reflecting into the water of the lake leaving a rather pastel palette and making it difficult to discern where the sky ended and the surface of the water began. It turned out to be a summer day at the end of October.

The beach near the Knife River Marina was a busy place this morning. A beaver swimming past, fishermen returning to the marina after checking nets, and a laker in the distance departing from Two Harbors to make another trip across the lake. The season is definitely changing, there was the hint of a light frost, and my hands were freezing by the time I returned to the car. It is hard to believe that November is only a few days away.

Here is the west side of Stoney Point pressing out into Lake Superior in the last sunlight of the day. I saw it nicely glowing as I drove up the North Shore Drive Friday evening, stopped got a lens on the camera and walked to the shore to see that the light had left. I felt like it was going to be a frustrating end to a frustrating day.  It is amazing how quickly the light can shift. I trained my lens on some other interesting things and when I thought I was finished a nice warm glow hit the point once again. It was nice to have something work out.

Had a good walk along the lake from the mouth of the Split Rock River northeast along the shore to Split Rock Point to Crazy Bay to the top of Corundum Point and then to the top of Day Hill and then back again. These pilings caught my eye on the way out but I waited until we got back to shoot them. It was rather dark and I had difficulty holding the camera steady because I did not bring a tripod. There is a sign near the area that says the pilings were a part of a structure used by early loggers in the area. I wonder if the loggers removed the decking when they were done in the area, or did the power of the lake batter the structure so now the pilings are the only things that remain. They are like ancient guardians to mouth of the river.