Nope! There was a smelt run on the Lester River last night. I arrived at the mouth of the river with Lake Superior before sunrise. I took these images and video just as the sun kissed its way above the horizon. In addition to the cormorants and ring-billed gulls, there were quite a few mergansers. This was about 1/10 of the birds present. I didn’t stay long as I needed to head to the “owling grounds”.
Smelt Run on the Lester River (sorry about the highway noise in the video)
Another snowstorm is barreling down upon us here in northern Minnesota, with a second expected this weekend. If the two dumps of white stuff appear as forecast, we will break the all time record for the snowiest February. Thus, somehow it seems appropriate to bring you twelve hours of splendor on the Ice Planet. The day was glorious with a bright blue sky and powder white snow. As a reminder (see yesterday’s post) it all started with me hiking the woods before 6:00 am in search of my Great Horned Owls perching trees. The day then progressed in this manner:
All and all it was a great day. I was in long underwear from before sunrise to after sunset. It was nice to finally get home, take off my warm weather clothes and enjoy a glass of wine with my wife!
Note: In the Lake Superior photographs, in addition to the vista you are seeing the ice fishermen who walk out onto the ice at sunrise, returning at sunset with their catch of lake trout.
Sunrise Over the Ice Planet
Northern Hawk Owl
Snowy Owl (male)
Moonrise Over the Ice Planet
I was out in the woods before 6 am this morning. I was hoping to finally figure out the exact trees my pair of Great Horned Owls use for perching every day. Well … although my buddies have hooted every morning for the past week, today my owls were silent. Perhaps the -8F temperature made them decide to conserve energy and stay mum.
While heading over to my owl trailhead I did notice that a great sunrise would likely occur. Thus, after giving up on my owls, by 6:45 am I was down near the mouth of the Lester River. The ice fishermen were gathering for their morning march out onto the frozen lake. The few clouds added to the scene, and made for my “ice planet sunrise” images.
For folks who have been following my Canon SX70 reviews, unlike most of my landscape images which I take with my Sony A6000, this morning I used my new Canon SX70 and a monopod for stabilization. The only issue I discovered is the native Canon RAW CR3 format required my to update my free Adobe Camera RAW DNG Converter to version 11.2. Once I figured out this issue and installed / updated my software I was good to go using Photoshop Elements.
The two images used identical settings except for the exposure. By shortening the shutter speed, I achieved colors which were closer to what I saw with my own eyes. Aperture Priority brightened up the photograph too much. Normally one might use a higher Aperture setting for a landscape photo, but I chose 5.0 on purpose given I had moving people in the photographs. I needed to “stop action”.
After my owl hunting and sunrise photoshoot, I was still home by 7:30 for a later breakfast!
Lake Superior Ice Planet Sunrise 1
(Aperture Priority … ISO100 … 1/25th of a second exposure … F5.0)
Lake Superior Ice Planet Sunrise 2
(Manual Mode … ISO100 … 1/80th of a second exposure … F5.0)