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.

You never know....

Ten minutes before sunrise I was at my favorite spot in Badlands National Park ready to capture some beautiful colorful photographs.

After two days of great sunrise light I guess I took it for granted that there would be sun, but today there wasn't and this was the view I had.

Rather than the view I had hoped for. Something like this, taken two days earlier.

I actually like interesting silhouettes, but humans see the world in color and I prefer it.

So when I saw sunlight to the west I headed in that direction. When I couldn't find the right scenes to photograph I turned back around.

I went to some rock formations I was familiar with and made more silhouettes.

A bit of blue sky peaked through the clouds, but it didn't look like it was going to clear up. 

So I got back in the car again and drove towards the light. 

After three hours of driving back and forth and starting to feel a little frustrated I parked the car, grabbed a camera, and walked out into the plains.

That's when everything got a lot more fun.

It was 65 degrees with big billowy clouds rolling in on a consistent north wind.

My mood went from not the best to really happy as I walked about choosing foreground hills and cloud formations to photograph.

One of my favorite things about western South Dakota are skies like these.

As shadow and light continually change it's hard to be bored or not have fun. Compose, smile, and shoot.

If you don't like what you're seeing, just wait a minute and it will change.

I was worried the light was getting harsh as it was almost midday.

But the clouds looked so nice and I was having fun so I kept shooting a bit longer.

I found a shed mule deer antler about a half a mile from the road.

Finally, the light seemed played out as I headed back to the car happy with the experience and optimistic about the photos. You never know how things will turn out.

Sometimes it hurts to do this.....

 

This may look like an idyllic northern Wisconsin lake on a beautiful summer afternoon.

 

 

 

And it is....

 

 

 

but it was also my own personal bug hell. By that I mean that I was accosted by thousands of black flies and then later by hoards of ginormous and persistent mosquitoes.

 

 

 

It had rained the day before and I was lucky enough to have some rubber boots with me so wet feet weren't going to be a problem. The thing is, I was wearing shorts and as soon as I got out of the car I had swarms of black flies buzzing around me and biting any and all exposed skin. 

 

 

 

The sky looked promising and I thought the lake might make for some beautiful images, so I took my camera and tripod and headed off into the woods. So far so good, the bugs weren't that big of deal as I walked towards the lake shore.

 

 

 

It was only once I reached the shore and began to set up my tripod that the real assault began. The black flies were swarming in such numbers that their buzzing started to affect me. The incessant humming up and around my head and face almost made it seem like my body was actually vibrating. Meanwhile dozens of their kind were feeding on my exposed skin. Not only on my thighs, and knees, and upper calves, but inside the boots down to my ankles and up under my shorts. Their bites were painful and caused red welts and marks that lasted more than a week.

 





 

But the light was good, and the view was better so I stuck with it long enough to make these images. Once I made it back to the car I was relieved to be out of the bug swarm but kept shivering (almost like when you've seen something really scary and get the heebee jeebees). I seemed to be having bad feeling flashbacks to my bug experience.

 

Though the light had left my little lake there was still light in the sky as I drove down the road searching for another lake to reflect any possible sunset.

 

At Clam Lake I walked down to the shore and was fed on by an even larger hoard of mosquitoes. These weren't any regular sized mosquitoes, these were super sized.

 

 

Notice the many dots and specks in this photo...

 

 

 

each and every one is a mosquito, and I think every one of them bit me before I finally left.

 

I set the camera on a tripod, composed the image, focused, used my hat to wave it in front of the lens in order to move all of the mosquitoes, and  pressed the remote shutter release. There were just too many, no mater what I did the ridiculous number of bugs remained in the images. All the while an equal or greater number of ginormous mosquitoes were biting me everywhere imaginable. 



If nothing else, this was a new personal record for number of bug bites sustained and discomfort tolerated.

P.S. I don't know if it's true or what it means, but I looked up both species of bugs after I got home and read that it's only the females that bite.

First Day of Spring....

 

and back to Hyde Wisconsin. This is the Hyde Chapel, originally built in 1861 and known as the Mill Creek Church.

 

 

 

I found a reflection in a puddle nearby.

 

 

 

Then back down the road to Hyde's Mill on Mill Creek.

 

 

 

I was there in the afternoon and once the sun started down there wasn't much time.

 

 

 

So I captured some details of the waterwheel and old window.

 

 

 

Just before the sun dropped below the hills rising in the west. The mill is tucked in amongst the steep hills and small valleys of southwestern Wisconsin.











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.