Waiting on sunset.....

I've been having better luck with sunrises and sunsets lately.

By that I mean there's been light most of the days I've tried to photograph sunrise or sunset. 

Tonight in Ashland Wisconsin was a good example. 

I got to the shore of Lake Superior a couple of hours before sunset with mostly clear skies and fairly calm water.

It looked likely there would be sunlight and just the right amount of clouds for decent photos.

After about half an hour a breeze picked up and I needed to find a more sheltered spot. I drove around looking for a place with calm water near the shore to use for reflections. 

The picture above is from the place I found. It was still early and I got quite a bit of lens flare shooting directly at the sun.

I tried a little different view, but you can still see all the flare in the image. 

There were some clouds and the scene looked pretty to the eye, but I was having trouble capturing it with the camera. So I had to get a little creative.

With the lens I was using I could just barely reach far enough out in front of the camera to focus on my hand. 

I liked the silhouette and played with the placement of the sun on my fingers. A few minutes later with the sun on the horizon I attempted more standard sunset photos.

I hoped for lots of clouds to catch the colors at sunset and was a bit disappointed with what I got.

The clouds just kept disappearing and the colors were a bit muted.

A sapsucker landed in the tree above me and went to work. Pieces of bark fell to the ground near me as I sat at the edge of the lake with my feet right up to the water.

The good news was; I had sun, some clouds, calm water, reflections and a beautiful night.

So I did the best I could with the conditions as they were.

I waited until the last color started to fade, then put my camera away, folded up the tripod and walked back to the car. Though it wasn't the dramatic sunset I'd hoped for, it was a pretty good way to spend a couple of hours.

Sunday..

I spent Sunday in Ashland Wisconsin. I was out by 5am and at the shore of Lake Superior hoping for some clouds and color.

 

No luck. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, crystal clear with a sliver of orange along the horizon.

 

 

 

I walked along the shore looking for any kind of interesting foreground element and tried to do something with these trees.

 

 

It was 25 degrees and the wind picked up from the north. I was getting cold and decided to drive down the road and see if I could do anything with some old dock pilings.

 

 

I wanted to shoot from water level but the waves were about a foot high now and splashed off the rocks getting me and the camera wet every time I tried. I got cold and frustrated and this was the best I could do.

 

 

The sun made it above the horizon and there were small pockets of steam on the water for just a few seconds.

 

 

Since I wasn't having much success there I drove back near where I started and walked a trail so I could put the sun behind this biomass power plant.

 

 

I kept moving myself so I could get the angle and put the sun where I wanted it in the scene.

 

 

Then I was ready to drive to where I had seen some red foxes the day before. I saw one fox on the road when I got close, but I wasn't able to get any photos. after waiting about an hour and a half it was time to give up until the afternoon.

 

 

I saw two kits right when I got there in the evening, but they quickly ran to the den and didn't come back out. The only fox phot I made was this adult waiting on the side of a road to cross to its den. I waited for more than two hours until the area fell into shadows but the foxes never cooperated.

 

 

So I drove to the Ashland marina to try and make some sunset images. I used these dry docked sail boats as a foreground to the sky and clouds.

 

 

As the sun dropped below the horizon it was cold and the wind hadn't died down.

 

 

I stayed until the color mostly disappeared.

 

 

Then headed back to get the pictures off the camera and onto the computer and then start editing and deleting. Nothing really came easy, but all and all it was a pretty good day.







 



Dots of color.....

A few days ago I was in northwest Wisconsin on my way to Pattison State Park. I wasn't familiar with the road I was on and found myself driving past a prairie like grassland with individual pine trees sprinkled across the landscape. Every so often I thought I was seeing vibrant dots of orange amid the green grass.  

 

I slowed down to better see what the color was, and finally pulled over to find beautiful wood lilies in full bloom under big billowy clouds.

 

 

 

Lucky for me the flowers were growing at a state wildlife area and the land was publicly owned.

 

 

 

So I grabbed a camera and a couple of lenses and went to see what I could do.

 

 

 

I had a 180mm macro on, but quickly realized I wanted to capture the flowers in their environment not tight images of the blooms.

 

 

 

I switched to a 10-22mm lens and got low to the ground to try and capture the color of the flowers and the drama of the sky above.

 

 

 

It was 75 degrees and got pretty hot laying in the grass and waiting for interesting clouds to form and blow over.

 

 

 

I tried a few images with fill flash and a reflector off to the side to bounce some light under the flowers.

 

 

 

I spent almost two hours trying to capture the colors and skies.

 

 

 

Before I left I did take the time to isolate individual flowers with the macro lens.

 

 

 

The breeze was pretty persistent and it took some patience to make sharp images but,

 

 

 

the time was well spent and I was really happy with the images I captured.

 

 

 

I'm thankful for happy accidents. Like taking an unknown road and finding vibrant dots of color.

















Reflections...

 

My dad and I spent the afternoon by Lake Namekagon and I finally got some nice water lily photos. 

 

 

This yellow water lily (Nuphar advena) looks ideal in the pleasing afternoon light. 

 

 

 

By laying on the ground at the edge of the pond with a 700mm lens and the camera resting on a beanbag I could isolate the flower and get the reflections I liked. 

 

 

The mosquitoes were bad. It was 83 degrees, and I was hot wearing jeans and a long sleeve shirt to keep the bugs off, but this set up worked a lot better than my last attempt at water lilies. 

 

 

About a week ago I tried to use a shorter lens and went into the water after some white water lilies in Madison. 

 

 

It didn't work out to well. I didn't get any pictures and I got wet, but I did keep the camera dry as I learned that the lake was deeper than I thought. 

 

 

When we first saw these flowers I was hesitant to get out and shoot them because of the bugs and the heat.

 

 

 

I'm glad I eventually took the leap, tried using a long lens, and embraced the bugs. If not, I wouldn't have learned how to shoot water lilies.











 



Up north . . .

I was on my way to northern Wisconsin and noticed that lots of tamarack trees looked really colorful.

 

For years I had hoped to make some decent images of tamaracks and since the trees were looking so good and the sun was out I decided this would be the day. 

 

 

 

The cool thing about tamarack trees is although they're coniferous, their needles change to a beautiful golden color in the fall and then drop to the ground.

 

 

 

This particular tree was in a bog just off the road near Prentice Wisconsin. By using a circular polarizing filter I was able to capture the actual colors of the tree and sky.

 

 

 

I headed towards Clam Lake and found more great looking trees just off highway 77.

 

 

 

So I parked on the side of the road and spent the next hour trying to capture some of the beautiful colors,

 

 

 

and different perspectives and compositions.

 

 

 

Tamaracks like to grow in wet conditions so I was walking around in a bog of some type with lots of moss on the ground.

 

 

 

There was a small lake nearby and I was lucky to catch this image of the tree's reflection as light filtered through the forest.

 

 

 

I made several close ups of the beautiful golden needles against the blue sky.

 

 

 

The weather had been mostly overcast and rainy for the last couple of weeks, and I'm glad I made the time to photograph these distinctive trees while I had some sunlight and blue sky. It was a great fall afternoon in northern Wisconsin.