This is the first photo journal and email update I have sent this year, and therefore, I have amassed a number of new photographs (19 in all) to share with you. So sit back and enjoy the scroll to the bottom of this e-mail. If you'd like to receive more frequent updates, please follow me on Facebook here:
"Brown-Eyed Dream" - Superior National Forest, Minnesota
In keeping with the fall theme, here is another new image from last
October. I found this patch of Brown-eyed Susan (also known as
Black-eyed Susan or Gloriosa) daisies near the Oberg Mountain trail head
in the Superior N
ational Forest.
Fall-blooming wildflowers tend to bear more warm-hued blossoms, in
contrast to their spring and early summer counterparts...at least that's
what I've noticed.
I used a very narrow depth-of-field here to
isolate a few of the blossoms while giving the image an overall sense
of dreaminess.
"Rush Hour" - Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, Arizona
Seventeen miles of rugged, unpaved road wind through Monument Valley
Navajo Tribal Park in northern Arizona. As visitors exit the park at
dusk, an interesting contrast is created between the fleeting and the
seemingly eternal.
"Anasazi Art" - Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, Arizona
Petroglyphs, such as these carvings of bighorn sheep, were a lasting
means of artistic expression for various ancient peoples worldwide. The
Anasazi resided in the region in and around Monument Valley, in the
southwestern United States, leaving
behind dwellings and petroglyphs. These artifacts have provided an
understanding of what life may have been like for these people who
roamed this land many centuries ago.
"Extraterrestrial Communication" - Stud Horse Point, near Page, Arizona
The American Southwest is filled with incredible landscapes and strange
rock formations. This location, near Page, Arizona, feels quite
literally out of this world! I had the good
fortune of spending an evening here last April with local Page
photographer Jackson Bridges. The color exploded at sunset, which made
for exciting and productive photography. The hoodoos (balanced rock
formations) in this image make me think of (petrified) satellite dishes
pointed toward outer space, hence the title.
"Fire & Ice" - Lighthouse Point, Two Harbors, Minnesota
Lake Superior's
surface was up to 95% covered in ice this past winter, which is the most ice seen on
the lake in at least five years. The local ice conditions changed daily,
fluctuating between ice cover and open water. These fluctuations were largely driven by the wind which pushed sheets of ice onto the shore,
where they broke into the beautiful shards that you see in this image.
I'm admittedly not much of a cold weather guy, but somehow I managed to
drag myself out of the warm bed and out to Lighthouse Point in Two
Harbors for a few minutes on a Saturday morning in February to capture this frozen
spectacle. The ice took on a blue glow from the gentle morning light
which contrasted nicely with the warm sunrise light entering through the
break in the clouds.
"Magic of the North" - near Royalton, Minnesota
There was some chatter on social media on the night of February 18th about an aurora event
that was starting to materialize, but I hesitated to go out, thinking
it wouldn't amount to much. Then, at about 1:00 AM and after further
reports, I stepped out to my backyard (in town) and could easily see the
telltale green glow along with beams in the northern sky, a sign that I
knew the aurora would be magical once I drove away from the city
lights.
Being the relatively mild evening it was for February, I grabbed by
camera equipment and drove to a few locations east of Royalton,
about 20 miles from my home, and made a few photographs. The bright
landscape was created by the nearly full moon, which rather surprisingly
did not drown out the auroral display much. I could only imagine what
this display would have looked like without the bright moon!
"The Fire Within" - Mesa Arch, Canyonlands National Park, Utah
Mesa Arch is a true icon of the American Southwest, one of the top
bucket list locations of many landscape photographers. And for good
reason. The view of the distant canyons and
natural monuments from this location is simply majestic, and the arch
provides a nice window into that view. Sunrise provides an amazing warm
glow of light on the underside of the arch thanks to reflection from the
canyon below.
After capturing a classic sunrise shot through
the arch (which I look forward to sharing soon) and waiting for most of
the other two dozen or so photographers to pack up and depart, I found
this composition. I like how the shrub in the right foreground anchors
the composition and adds to the sense of depth.
"Pothole Pond" - Temperance River State Park, Minnesota
The ancient basalt lava flows along the Temperance River bed are home to many potholes carved by sediment from the moving water over millennia. Many of these potholes lie directly within the river's channel while others, like the one pictured here, formed when the river followed a slightly different course and now only collect water during rain or high water.
"Winter Breakup" - Stoney Point, near Knife River, Minnesota
This was the scene at Stoney Point on Lake Superior's North Shore on a beautiful early March morning.
Strong onshore winds can send large sheets of ice ashore, where they
break into hundreds of pieces, like the shards in this image. Offshore
winds can just as easily send most of this piled-up ice back out to sea
(or lake), with open water taking its place. What's really amazing is
that these transformations of ice/no ice on the shoreline can happen
within hours, creating a new experience each time one visits the big
lake in winter.
"Winter Breakup II" - Stoney Point, near Knife River, Minnesota
Here's another
ice shot from later in the morning at Stoney Point.
Even though the sunrise was well short of epic, the sky that morning
did not disappoint. Just a few days after I shot this image, most of this ice was carried away by the lake.
"Seven Bunchberry Blooms" - Cascade River State Park, Minnesota
Winter has been long and cold here in Minnesota, but it won't be long until flowers and vegetation grace the landscape that was covered in snow until very recently.
It will take some rain and a couple of months before we see bunchberry
blossoms like those in this image I captured last summer. This is one of
the most photogenic groupings of the plant that I have seen.
Encountering these blooms on the forest floor is one of the many joys of
hiking through the woods of northeastern Minnesota in early summer.
