April was a whirlwind for me. I was in Florida for the first part of the month both on vacation and then kayaking in the Florida Keys with friends finishing up a three-year kayaking expedition. On the way back from Florida, I swung through the Smoky Mountain National Park, and when I got home, I [...]
This newsletter is a little late, because I was on vacation/road trip/kayaking trip for the last month and didn’t have the time to think about a newsletter/process images/stop to catch my breath. My road trip ended up being one of the hardest that I’ve ever packed for, because part of it was a vacation on [...]
Busy and fantastic is how I describe February 2013. It was cold enough to form ice on Lake Superior, which makes this year better than last (the winterless year). It was still not as icy as previous winters, but it was good enough to get some great photos. February was also a busy month for me with [...]
What and odd month that just passed. January came in cold, got warm, rained, hit the 40°s F and then dropped to the -20°s F. The shoreline went from ice to basalt to ice, and the ground near the lake went from snow, to clear, to ice, to snow — sort of reminds of the [...]
Over the last week, I’ve been looking back at the photos I took in 2012 trying to identify my best images of the year and my favorite images of the year. I also compared this year’s photos to last year to see how my style has changed (and it has changed!). My pictures in 2012 [...]
It’s now solidly winter in the northland, which is one of my favorite times to photograph the north shore. The days are short, so shooting both the sunrise and the sunset is easy. The sun rises and sets over Lake Superior each day, and the ice on the shore changes daily which refreshes the look. [...]
With November come and gone, we northlanders have found ourselves in winter. In fact, I can tell you exactly the day it happened. Winter happened the day after Thanksgiving. On Thanksgiving, we took our visiting family on a mild fall hike up to Pincushion Mountain just up the Gunflint Trail from Grand Marais, and then [...]
My Northern Landscapes 2013 Calendar features images from the Grand Marais and Grand Portage area of Cook County, Minnesota. I took each of the images at some point during 2012, so all the images are fresh and some of the most liked of the year. Most of the images are of Lake Superior, but I [...]
It’s hard to believe that it’s November already. October went so quickly that I don’t even really remember it. At the beginning of the month, they wind blew the fall colors off of the trees and at the end of the month I taught a Night Photography Class at the North House Folk School. What [...]
September in the northland came and went way too quickly. Fall started early, then stopped and held off until the last week of September, and then blew away in the first few days of October. I’ve always thought that the last week of September is a safer bet than the first week of October for [...]
Lake Superior Winter Photography Workshop In February, Lake Superior starts to freeze. Thick sheets of pack ice get pushed up onto the shore making a maze of blue ice to walk through. This ice also makes an interesting subject to photograph — the deep blue of the ice contrasts with the splash of color during [...]
In April when winter’s snowpack melts, it rushes down Lake Superior’s tributaries and over the numerous waterfalls. The waterfalls thunder, the narrow canyons fill and the ground shakes from the excess water. No other time of year allows for the dynamic photography of waterfalls along Lake Superior. Although we won’t visit the well-known and over-photographed [...]
August in Grand Marais was busy — as usual. It’s always busy in August, and it always seems that August slips away quickly. As a photographer, towards the end of August I really started noticing that sunrise and sunset became easier to photograph as they were later and earlier, respectively. It also got colder. July [...]
July in Grand Marais was hot! Even Lake Superior got hot with it holding at 72F for a couple of weeks. I was busy guiding Grand Marais kayaking for North Shore Expeditions, shooting portraits. writing magazine articles, blogging about paddling and teaching private photography lessons, so I didn’t get out to shoot much for my [...]
Summer is always busy in Grand Marais. In mid-June things start to pick up and by July 4th, the town is in full swing with lots of tourists coming to town to hang out by Lake Superior, lounge in its natural air conditioning and enjoy skipping stones. For people that live here, it’s busy. We [...]
Brrrr….May has been chilly, which is a shock after such a warm March, but not so shocking after a chilly April. Things in the northland are warming up though and it’s gotten green out. Grand Marais is coming to life with visitors showing up. You now need to look both ways before crossing the street, [...]
March was warm and April was not so warm, which was an interesting switch. On the north shore, you never know what you’re going to get in April. It’s one of those months that locals call the mud season, because you can almost always count on mud during the end of the month. On the [...]
What a month March was in the northland. It got hot, the snow melted, it got cold, it snowed. The waterfalls are running, kayakers are kayaking and skiers are still skiing. It was an unusual March in Grand Marais. Usually, during March we photograph frozen shorelines and the breaking up ice pack, but this month [...]