Fall on the North Shore 2010

We spent our fall vacation this year at the Cabin at Chimney Rock perched atop a cliff overlooking Chicago Bay in Hovland, MN. The old Hovland dock provided some great photo opportunities. Our cabin is the two orange lights on the far shore off the end of the dock in the last photo. The big house in the first photo is the home of the landowners who were kind enough to rent us their guest cabin.






The forest floor provided many interesting color and texture combinations.



Seeing these old growth pines is a magical thing, but yet a reminder of the old overlogging days.



Rengo Road on the Grand Portage Indian Reservation is by far the coolest road for fall colors in Minnesota



The big Birch trees are my favorite with their yellow white and black colors.

Autumn art

This technique was inspired by a fellow photographer http://rogernordstromphoto.blogspot.com/2010/09/fall-abstracts.html and I decided to try my luck. I twisted and zoomed at the same time during the exposure at this patch of sumac.


And got these...

My day today 9-4-2010

Set up the camera outside my office window, ran my long shutter-release cable in and took some fun pics of the hummingbirds at the feeder. At times there were 4 or 5 birds dive-bombing each other and making a bunch of noise!


Male Ruby-Throated Hummingbird

Female Ruby-Throated Hummingbird

Then I went out and set up my blind in a known big buck area! None today, but stay tuned!

Prairie grass and Goldenrod

A lone Cottonwood tree stands sentinel over a SW MN rural soybean field

As the sun set, the colors came alive.

Minnesota State Flower

Me and Mike headed up to Itasca State Park hoping to view the state flower blooming in it's natural environment. I knew the yellows were blooming, which are usually earlier than the pink and whites, so I thought we could try and at least get some photos of the yellows. Last year, the pink and whites didn't bloom until the 4th of July.

One bad thing about going to Itasca is there is A LOT of poison ivy in the same area as the lady slippers. The last two years, I have gotten it really bad and Alex (my son) did too last year. So armed with long pants and sleeves and knee pads we arrived and were greeted with pink and whites in the ditches in the park. They were just starting to bloom in some of the more popular clumps that I knew of.

We hit all the hot spots and were rewarded with some spectacular displays of this gorgeous orchid. It sure is easy to understand why this flower was picked as our state flower after seeing it in real life.

The wild roses were blooming everywhere and we smelled roses all day long, what a treat!

The Blue Flag Irises were even blooming, along with the Marsh Marigolds, what luck we had!

It sure was worth the 4 hour drive! As we were leaving the park, we came across some really big patches of pink and whites that were all blooming! Two hours south, when we were near Long Prairie, I spotted a whole ditch full of pink and whites! Guess next year we don't have to drive so far.

Cardinals

I have literally dreamed of getting these certain photos. I think that about sums it up. It's been really fun hanging out with my buddy Mike getting these images from our blinds!

Our winter bird blinds

We have located at least where the Pileated Woodpecker sleeps, but is this where they will nest? We dug holes 3 feet down into the snow then set our blinds on the snow around the hole elevating them from the ground so we are able to stand up in them for now. We have had them set up for about a month now in hopes of getting the birds used to our presence. So far so good. Every morning that we have visited at sunrise, he pops his head out of the hole and peeks at us before flying off. Then he always flies to this one tree and begins hammering away. It is a loud, solid, hollow, hammering noise, almost eerie on a quiet cold morning such as today,10 degrees! Our next task is to get good flight shots of him soaring out of his hole and to investigate the tree he goes to all the time. We have seed feeders and suet feeders to keep us company while the big woodpecker is gone. We have had chickadees, nuthatches, downy and red-bellied woodpeckers, and cardinals visit us at our 2nd home. We actually spent some time mimicking the birds and calling them in and it worked

That's all for today, stay tuned!!

Hoar frost

Well, it sure has been a winter full of snow. We were blessed with a couple days last week where it was foggy and it collected and froze on the trees creating this beautiful new look to everything. I was able to get a few photos before the wind blew it all off. Enjoy!

I really didn't know where to start taking photos and I saw this scene so I stopped the truck right in the middle of the street in town and took this out my window, beware, I do this alot!

I took this Milkweed photo leaving Camden State Park.

I was able to get out on the river and stand on the ice to get this shot.



Cattails

Old farm equipment. Not my usual subject for photography, but I found this very interesting, especially in black and white.

This is an old shed on an abandoned farmstead which is now state park land.

I found these fenceposts leading away to be a pleasing composition.

This lone tree really caught my eye.

Frosty winter scene.

Frosty pines.

Frosty pine cone close-up

Trumpeter Swans

Me and my buddy Mike went to Monticello in late December 2009 to visit the Trumpeter Swans on the Mississippi. There is a lady who feeds them everyday and there are literally thousands of birds right in front of you! We viewed them from Swan Park, right next to her property, and had endless opportunities to photograph them along with Canada Geese and Mallards.