One of the nicest spots on the North Shore of Lake Superior is Grand Marais, Minnesota. This small town is 100 miles up the shore from my home at the northern edge of Duluth. Since I was a little boy, my family has come up to this region. When I was in junior high, on busy holiday weekends my brother and I would help friends who ran a business right on the Canadian border. Given the Pandemic there is no border traffic, but after work we we loved fishing  on the Pigeon River just downriver from High Falls (park did not exist back then). Occasionally if the weather allowed, we would take the small 12 footer out on to Lake Superior in search of Lake Trout.

My point in my preamble is to demonstrate my family has history in this area, and a deep love of the region. Two days ago I photographed the small lighthouse that guards the harbor … 12 hours apart. In between it stormed like crazy till the sun finally returned two hours before sunset.

Finally … good news coming. Hoot will have a second printing. Expect the formal announcement in a day or two. Reserve your copy. They sold out fast in the first printing. Anyone on the list (see form) is guaranteed to Hoot!

Red in the Morning … Sailors Take Warning

Moonrise

One more photograph from my weekend up the shore at Grand Marais. While having breakfast on Saturday morning, I noticed a dark clump … one of my technical terms … out on the harbor breakwater in the pre-dawn darkness. I figured there was a good chance that a Bald Eagle had spent the night on the rocks. I quickly finished my bowl of Life Cereal and walked over to the harbor. Hiding next to the side of a building, I inched closer waiting for some light to illuminate the scene. This was the result!

It just goes to show … some days the photographic opportunities come to me with very little effort, but then there are mornings like today. It was cold (9F) with a 20 mph wind. Given the sun made a rare appearance I worked the back roads / farms of Duluth north of my home. My hope was I might find an early season Snowy Owl migrating south along the shore (nope), or at least some Rough Legged Hawks down from the Arctic perched in the early morning sun (double nope). Oh well … it’s off to Sax-Zim Bog tomorrow morning. The weather forecast includes our first overnight lows below zero (F), sunny and light winds.

When you are out and about with your camera with the intent of taking landscape photographs, do you find a location and remain stationary? While there are certainly some locations where the interplay of light and the subject demand a preferred location for taking a photo, you are doing yourself a disservice if you do not “move around”!

This morning I was out before sunrise (per norm!) with the intent of photographing the Grand Marais, Minnesota lighthouse. The skies were clearing over Lake Superior, and the dawn was gorgeous. Here are three images I took over the course of ten minutes exactly. I changed locations frequently and the amount of zoom utilized which affected the sky displayed in any one image.  As the saying goes, every picture tells a story … in this case three different stories at essentially the same time.

Photo #1: Grand Marais Lighthouse

Photo #2: Grand Marais Lighthouse

Photo #3: Grand Marais Lighthouse