Molly and I returned from our cabin on Northstar Lake a few days ago, and I’ve finally had the opportunity to process my Common Loon family photographs. While most people pay attention to whether you want to “pop” the shadows and highlights in post processing, do you spend enough time while out in nature long before you are even on a computer by “composing images in your head”?

The answer to that question for me is a definite “yes”. Over the course of two days I had researched / found two Common Loon families which were raising chicks of quite different ages near my cabin.

• Family #1 lives out on the big part of Northstar Lake, which tends to mean my photographs will have more blue, some reeds and no lily pads.
• Family #2 lives on a much smaller section of the lake with hills rising on all sides of the water. This section of the lake is much more protected from winds which generally means calmer waters, and lots of greens reflected into the water from all the pine trees on shore rising above the lake. There are also lots of lily pads.

Thus, I know I will get significantly different kinds of photographic opportunities in both sections of lake (different colors and vegetation). I tend to like the greens and calm waters better with loon family #2, but both are worth pursuing.

Common Loon Families of Northstar Lake

Spend attention to cropping. I recommend pressing / clicking upon both sets of images … perhaps even saving both to your computer. Then toggle back and forth between option 1 and 2 for each photograph. Many people do not utilize a 16:9 cropping (normally considered more a “video” kind of crop), but I like the end result. It shifts the eye more to the action of the photograph while still maintaining image quality.

Images #1 (A & B)

Images #2 (A & B)