Magic of the North – Minnesota, USA (2014)

The tree is trimmed, the cookies are baked, and snow is on the ground (okay, just a tiny little bit). By official standards, we won't have a white Christmas this year where I live in Minnesota (neither did we last year), but at least the days are getting longer!

North Shore Aurora – Palisade Head, Minnesota, USA

Every fall, I make a point of spending several days hiking and camping along Lake Superior's rugged north shore, usually in search of the ephemeral autumn colors that so gracefully adorn the region. Yet, so often it seems, my best photographs result from unplanned moments not related at all to the fall colors.

That was again the case one evening this fall. Around midnight, I was just about ready to crawl into my warm sleeping bag when I saw the telltale glow on the northern horizon...and it was bright! I knew that one of the highest points overlooking Superior happened to be just a few miles away. Minutes later, I found myself at the base of Palisade Head's one-lane winding road that leads to the top—head lamp, tripod, and backpack in tow. The gate was locked, as it usually is after dark, which meant a brisk quarter-mile hike uphill to the top was in order.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you have an opportunity to spend some time with the people in your life for which you are thankful and perhaps also indulge in some turkey (and maybe a tryptophan-induced nap afterward!).

For those of you who'll be in the Twin Cities on Saturday, December 5, there's one more opportunity this year to see my work or pick up a one of my remaining year-end sale display pieces (more on that below).

Art at Ramsey

Art at Ramsey is a high-quality juried art and fine craft event that takes place Saturday, December 5 (from 10am – 5pm) inside Ramsey Middle School at 1700 Summit Avenue in Saint Paul. I will be among 80 artists exhibiting work, so there is plenty to see if you visit.

More info: http://www.artistscircle.org/artfairs2.php

Year-End Display Piece Sale

Near the end of the year, I typically offer a selection of my art fair display pieces at discounted prices. These are pieces that have traveled with me and have been displayed at shows for the past 1-2 years. As a result, they may have minor flaws or may not be quite as squeaky clean as a brand new piece. However, most are in excellent condition. UPDATE: Three of the pieces below, as noted, are either sold or in the process of being sold. All others are still currently available.

If you are interested in the availability or condition of a particular piece, please feel free to contact me (dbarthel@northshoreimages.com or 320-293-1788).

"Cedar's Rest" – 24x36 Premium-Framed Canvas Gallery Wrap — only $545 ($50 off regular price of $595)



"Autumn Rush" – 24x36 Float-Framed Gallery Wrap — only $345 ($150 off regular price of $495)
"Morning & the Mittens" – 24x36 Gallery Wrap — only $225 ($170 off regular price of $395)
PENDING SALE



"Navajo Dawn" – 20x30 Gallery Wrap — only $175 ($100 off regular price of $275)

"Autumn Meander" – 6x9 print, matted and framed to 11x14 — only $50 ($29 off regular price of $79)


"Autumn Meander" – 15x22.5 print, matted and framed to 22x30 — only $145 ($50 off regular price of $195)

(pardon the reflection on the glass)

"Profile of Light" – 11x14 print, matted and framed to 16x20 — only $75 ($45 off regular price of $120) SOLD!

(pardon the reflection on the glass)

Last Two Art Fairs of the Season

Greetings everyone! With the mild fall weather here in Minnesota lately, it is hard to believe that winter and the holiday season are just around the corner! I'm hoping my next newsletter/journal update will include some of the new images I've captured this year.

As you may know, I've still got a couple of indoor shows left before we hibernate for the winter. I will also have my year-end display piece sale (see below) at both of these shows, while they last.

Here's where you can find me:

• Sat/Sun, November 7-8 - Artists in the Garden - Bachman's on Lyndale, Minneapolis, MN
• Saturday, December 5 - Art at Ramsey - Ramsey Middle School, Saint Paul, MN

Year-End Display Piece Sale

Near the end of the year, I typically offer a selection of my art fair display pieces at discounted prices. These are pieces that have traveled with me and have been displayed at shows for the past 1-2 years. As a result, they may have minor flaws or may not be quite as squeaky clean as a brand new piece. However, most are in excellent condition.

If you are interested in the condition of a particular piece, please feel free to contact me.

"Cedar's Rest" – 24x36 Premium-Framed Canvas Gallery Wrap — only $545 ($50 off regular price of $595)



"Autumn Rush" – 24x36 Float-Framed Gallery Wrap — only $345 ($150 off regular price of $495)
"Morning & the Mittens" – 24x36 Gallery Wrap — only $225 ($170 off regular price of $395)



"Navajo Dawn" – 20x30 Gallery Wrap — only $175 ($100 off regular price of $275)

"Autumn Meander" – 6x9 print, matted and framed to 11x14 — only $50 ($29 off regular price of $79)


"Autumn Meander" – 15x22.5 print, matted and framed to 22x30 — only $145 ($50 off regular price of $195)

(pardon the reflection on the glass)

"Profile of Light" – 11x14 print, matted and framed to 16x20 — only $75 ($45 off regular price of $120)

(pardon the reflection on the glass)

Keep up with my latest updates on Facebook: www.facebook.com/NorthShoreImages or search Facebook for "David Barthel Photography."

Happy autumn everyone!

Okay, okay...there are a few precious summer days left. But, cool, crisp evenings are definitely starting to signal the changing of seasons. Speaking of autumn, I wanted to send a little note to let you know which art festivals I will be exhibiting my photography at during the next few months. My last outdoor show of the season will be in Red Wing, MN on the weekend of October 10-11. I will also have my booth at a couple of indoor venues during November and December.

The list below rounds out my schedule for the rest of the year. Thank you for helping make this year my most successful year yet!

• September 12-13 - Wausau Festival of Arts - Downtown, Wausau, WI
• September 27 - Millstream Arts Festival - Downtown, St. Joseph, MN
• October 3-4 - Fall Fine Art and Music Festival - North Lowell Park, Stillwater, MN
• October 10-11 - Fall Festival of the Arts - Downtown, Red Wing, MN
• November 7-8 - Artists in the Garden - Bachman's on Lyndale, Minneapolis, MN
• December 5 - Art at Ramsey - Ramsey Middle School, Saint Paul, MN

Greetings everyone!

I want to offer a big thank you to all who have come to visit me at one of my first four art fairs of the year. The year have been very successful so far and I have met a lot of great people.

Over the next several weeks, I will be bringing my work to the Northland (northeastern MN) and Fargo, ND. I last exhibited my work at an art fair in the Northland back in 2012, so I'm really excited to be returning. My show schedule now includes events through mid-September. Please stop in and visit if you are nearby!

• June 27-28 - Park Point Art Fair - End of Park Point, Duluth, MN
• July 11-12 - Grand Marais Arts Festival - Grand Marais, MN
• July 16-18 - Downtown Fargo Street Fair - Fargo, ND
• July 24-26 - Blueberry Arts Festival - Whiteside Park, Ely, MN
• August 1 - Lake Superior Art Festival - Brighton Beach, Duluth, MN
• August 8-9 - Powderhorn Art Fair - Powderhorn Park, Minneapolis, MN
• August 15 - Northwoods Art Festival - Hackensack, MN
• September 12-13 - Wausau Festival of Arts - Downtown, Wausau, WI

Multnomah Falls

Multnomah Falls – Columbia River Gorge, Oregon, USA

If you've been to my art fair booth this year, you might have caught a glimpse of, or perhaps been wowed by, this new image. I actually captured this image about two years ago when I was in Oregon for the first time and (finally!) got around to processing and releasing it.

In making this image, I used a 24mm tilt-shift lens, which is a special kind of lens that allows the photographer to maintain control of perspective (the shift part). This means that straight lines stay straight throughout the photograph. With a standard lens, I would have had to point the camera at an upward angle, introducing converging lines toward the top. To support the strong, narrow, and graceful vertical drop of the falls, I wanted to keep all vertical lines as such, and therefore, used this lens, shifted upward. This also happens to be one of the sharpest lenses I own—the detail in this image is exquisite!

*Note: A tilt-shift lens' also allows the photographer to adjust the plane of focus (tilt). I didn't use that function for this image since the plane of focus was already in line with my subject.

Art fair season is off to a great start this year! I hope you can make it to one of my events this summer and fall and see my latest work. Here are three events I have scheduled for the month of June:

• June 6 – St. Anthony Park Arts Festival – St. Anthony Park Library area, Saint Paul, MN

• June 13-14 – Art on the Lake – Excelsior Commons on Lake Minnetonka, Excelsior, MN

• June 27-28 – Park Point Art Fair – End of Park Point, Duluth, MN

**Please note that I will NOT be exhibiting at the Edina Art Fair this weekend. The good news is that you can skip the crowds and visit me at the beautiful St. Anthony Park Arts Festival instead!

The snow is gone, the grass is greening, and the trees are beginning to leaf. That means art fair season is just around the corner! I will once again be exhibiting at several great events throughout Minnesota and the Upper Midwest. This list represents the shows I anticipate participating in through July 31. More dates will be added to my show schedule page (www.northshoreimages.com/Schedule) as they are confirmed.

*Please note that the weekend of June 5-7 is still tentative. I will likely NOT be exhibiting at this year's Edina Art Fair, but will likely instead be at the one-day St. Anthony Park Arts Festival in Saint Paul. I will send and post an update if anything changes.

Please stop in and visit if you find yourself at or near one of these events. I just might have something for that blank spot on the wall...

• May 16-17 - Old Capitol Art Fair - Springfield, IL
• May 30-31 - Rivertown Art Festival - North Lowell Park, Stillwater, MN
• June 5-7 - Edina Art Fair - 50th & France, Edina, MN (**WAIT LIST**)
• June 6 - St. Anthony Park Arts Festival - St. Anthony Park Library Grounds, Saint Paul, MN (*Will be here if not called from Edina Art Fair wait list)
• June 13-14 - Art on the Lake - Excelsior Commons on Lake Minnetonka, Excelsior, MN
• June 27-28 - Park Point Art Fair - End of Park Point, Duluth, MN
• July 11-12 - Grand Marais Arts Festival - Grand Marais, MN
• July 16-18 - Downtown Fargo Street Fair - Fargo, ND
• July 24-26 - Blueberry Arts Festival - Whiteside Park, Ely, MN

Greetings,

I hope everyone's year has been off to a good start! This is my first photo journal update for the year, so it is packed with new images to share with you. Most I captured within the past year, but a few were made in 2013 or earlier and only processed and released recently. The photographs are shown in no particular order.

For those of you interested in my art fair schedule, it will be made available within the next few weeks (you will get another message, if you subscribe to my updates). There are still a few unknowns in the schedule that should be more clear by then. If you'd like to know whether I will be at a specific event before that time, please feel free to contact me.

Also, if you are on Facebook and would like to also follow my work there, please like my page at www.facebook.com/NorthShoreImages.

Now, the images...

Rock Candy – Lower Antelope Canyon, Arizona, USA

The slot canyons of the southwest offer some of the most spectacular examples of glowing color created by reflected light. Lower Antelope Canyon exemplifies the convergence of color and formation created by these canyons. In this case, sunlight enters the slot and bounces off of the sandstone walls of the canyon, producing color ranging from near blue to contrasting orange and yellow.

The slot canyon continually takes on a different character throughout the day as the sun moves across the sky. I don't think I could ever tire of walking though and photographing it. Even if I didn't make photographs, there is a sort of spiritual experience that I feel when I spend time here. It's kind of like candy for the soul!


At the Heart of Second Beach – Olympic National Park, Washington, USA

I made this photograph last spring on my first visit to Second Beach on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. While I didn't experience an epic sunset by any means, my introduction to this spot was plenty grand!

After a several hour drive from the Columbia Gorge, I arrived (later than I would normally prefer) just as the sun was setting. As day transformed into twilight and the light became ever more sublime, I found myself in front of a bed of seaweed that bordered a residual tide pool in the sand. What the sky lacked in colorful clouds was made up for by a magnificent crescent moon above the beach's most iconic sea stack.

After making a several images, I briefly met renown photographer Dreamscapes by Ian Plant, who was leading a photo workshop in the area. I was surprised to learn that he had recently relocated to my home state of Minnesota.

It was a magical evening at perhaps one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever visited!



Fresh Snow Sunrise – Two Harbors Lighthouse Point, Minnesota, USA

I spent a morning this past February making a few photographs on Lighthouse Point in Two Harbors, overlooking Lake Superior. There was a lot of stacked plate ice adorning much of Minnesota's shoreline around that time. A snowfall occurred the evening before I made this image, so the ice itself wasn't very photogenic. As the color on the horizon was building, I quickly searched the area for a suitable composition and was drawn to some patches of grass poking through the fresh snow.

At first glance, this scene could look like one from a white sand desert if you didn't see the ice and lake in the distance!


Twilight Falls – East Branch Baptism River, Minnesota, USA

 The rivers that drain toward Lake Superior's north shore contain many dozen, if not hundreds, of waterfalls. Many of these are rarely, if ever, seen by people. I would categorize this one as a "rarely-seen" falls. I made this image on an October evening as dusk was fast approaching.

A lesson for me and other photographers: make sure you always know where your focus point is located. In my haste to make this image, I focused (or left my focus) too far into the scene. This left the foreground rocks a bit softer than I would have liked. Normally, I am quite obsessed about my focus throughout the frame, but working quickly in the fading light must have led me to make this error. However, I still like the mood this photograph conveys.



Alien Dusk – Stud Horse Point, Arizona, USA

In an off-the-beaten-path location on the Colorado Plateau, a bizarre set of seemingly improbable balanced rocks, known as hoodoos, tower over a landscape that could resemble the surface of an alien planet. If it wasn't for our understanding of how erosion has worked over millennia to create these unusual forms, it would be easy to think of these as the creations of some ancient intelligent life form!

This is a new image I captured two years ago and recently processed.




Let There Be Light – Upper Antelope Canyon, Arizona, USA

The slot canyons of the Southwest are some of the most sublime natural wonders anywhere on Earth. Antelope Canyon in northern Arizona exemplifies the beauty of these narrow Navajo sandstone passages, sculpted by occasional flash flooding that has occurred over millennia.

I captured this image nearly two years ago in Upper Antelope Canyon and just processed it recently. Photographing this particular canyon is challenging for two reasons. First, because of the high walls and narrowness, the canyon interior is relatively dark in most areas, except for spots with sunlight peering in from above. This results in extreme differences in light intensity, which can be difficult to record in a photograph. Second, due to its unparalleled beauty and relative accessibility, the small space is enormously popular among photographers and sightseers, making it nearly impossible to make an image without someone else appearing in the shot. With some skill and a little luck, I was able to bring this one back!


The East Face – Palisade Head, Minnesota, USA

This 200-foot sheer cliff overlooking Lake Superior, an exposed section of rhyolite formed about one billion years ago by the Midcontinent Rift System, is a favorite of rock climbers. It's also a fine location for the less-adventurous looking for one of the best views of this Great Lake. Its highest point is about 300 feet above lake level.

I made this image during the fall of 2011 and just processed it for the first time recently.


Red Sky at Morning – Grand Marais, Minnesota, USA

The ancient rhyme, "Red Sky at Morning" has been used as a rule-of-thumb by mariners for centuries to forecast the weather and sea conditions. While modern tools have made for more accurate prediction of the atmosphere, this rule-of-thumb remains a fairly reliable indicator of whether an impending storm or fair weather is on the way.

Red sky at night, shepherd's delight.
Red sky at morning, shepherd take warning.

or the more popular variant...

Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.
Red sky at night, sailors' delight.

This is a new image from this past fall.


In Flow – Tettegouche State Park, Minnesota, USA

This is a brand new image that I made last fall at High Falls of the Baptism River on Lake Superior's north shore. At about 60 feet, this is the highest waterfall located entirely within Minnesota's borders. On the border with Canada is High Falls of the Pigeon River, about double the height of this falls.

Alpine Eruption – Glacier National Park, Montana, USA

Last summer.
The mountains called.
I went.
They delivered.

Late last summer, I snuck away between art fairs and spent about a week in Glacier National Park. Conditions in the park made for great photography. Just before I made this image, I happened to be photographing a nearby subject in the direction of the sunrise. I turned my head to find this scene unfolding behind me. An important lesson in landscape photography, particularly when making photographs at sunrise and sunset, is to keep an open mind and prepare to compose your shot toward the best light. Sometimes, it all comes together...behind you!

The peak in this this image is Mount Grinnell, located in the Many Glacier region of Glacier National Park.


 Swiftcurrent Sunrise – Glacier National Park, Montana, USA

Often referred to as the "Crown of the Continent," Glacier National Park's beautiful alpine landscape has few rivals. When the atmosphere cooperates and provides amazing light, epic photographs can be made. I particularly like the moody pre-dawn light, as well as the directional flow provided by both the Swiftcurrent River's rapids and the intensely-glowing clouds in the sky.

I have several more images from Glacier National Park that have yet to be processed. Stay tuned for more from this beautiful landscape.


Edge of Dusk – Horseshoe Bend, Colorado River, Arizona, USA

This is a re-process of an image that I captured in the spring of 2013 and originally released about a year-and-a-half ago. My processing techniques and sensibilities have become more refined since then, so I decided to give this image new life.

Over 1,000 feet below the edge of this cliff, the mighty Colorado River makes a distinctive horseshoe-shaped meander through Glen Canyon as it flows its way downstream toward Grand Canyon, some 50 miles to the south.


Quiet Dawn – Grand Marais, Minnesota, USA

This image from early October along Lake Superior's north shore almost didn't happen. Before the sun broke the horizon, a rather thick fog completely blanketed the lake. The fog hung around for several minutes after the sun rose while I patiently waited to see if the golden light would break through. Oftentimes, the best landscape photographs are made during the most challenging and seemingly improbable conditions. The sand in my glass nearly ran out, and then this happened.


Morning Surf – Tettegouche State Park, Minnesota, USA

When I wake up early and set up my camera at locations like this, I usually hope to see an amazing show of light from the sunrise. While an explosive sunrise would have made this scene extraordinary, I do like the rather stormy mood exhibited by this image.



Basalt & Surf – Tettegouche State Park, Minnesota, USA

Sometimes I find beauty in more subtle, less dramatic landscapes, such as this one looking out over the great expanse of Lake Superior. The gentle crashing surf over the volcanic basalt rock added a dynamic element to contrast with an otherwise peaceful scene.
Lucky Light – Central Minnesota, USA

A few weeks ago, on St. Patrick's Day, we had a spectacular display of aurora borealis. This was one of the best displays of northern lights I have seen in at least a year. I have never seen the red hues as intense as they appeared on that early morning . I didn't spend much time out exploring, so I didn't get too creative and pretty much just sought an unobstructed northern sky.

Some of you may remember that the aurora made an appearance exactly two years ago to this day in the northern USA. Must be something about St. Patrick's Day...


The Road North – Central Minnesota, USA

Here's another from that morning, this one with more foreground interest that leads the viewer to the glow on the horizon.