Superior's North Shore

For my son's third birthday my wife planned a trip to the north shore.  She was also hoping that it would be a chance for me to get some landscape pictures and star trail pictures.  Initially I had mixed feelings.  I was excited to go on a mini vacation to celebrate the our son's birthday, but it was too early for any foliage (sticks just aren't that interesting in pictures).  As we drove further and further north I realized that the landscape would be interesting enough without leaves on the trees.  Our resort in Tofte, Mn was mainly surrounded by evergreens which made it even better.

The one benefit to the time of year we went was the rivers and waterfalls were in full force due to the spring melt.  It seems that no matter where you went there were waterfalls.  Even small ones that fall off mini cliffs at roadside.  I don't know that I've ever been in an area where there are as many state parks close by than Tofte.  Within just a few minutes drive we could be at several different parks.  Expanding that drive to about an hour and the number increases even more. 

During the few short days that we were up north we managed to go to Temperance State Park, Tettegouche State Park, and Split Rock Lighthouse (although that short trip was mainly due to Alex being car sick).  On any vacation I try to get a photo of where we stayed.  Most of the time it ends up being a couple interiors that go into a scrapbook.  This trip was unique in that there was a little private bay right in front of our unit. 

I decided to shoot a rather large panoramic to encompass the entire area.  To the left of the frame there is beautiful blue sky with some wispy clouds.  This transforms into this thick fog on the right side of the frame.  I've never seen fog like this.  Our entire trip there was this bank of fog that sat a few hundred yards off shore.  Periodically it would come in and blanket the shore line then it would quickly move back out.  Please check it out at my SmugMug site and look at it in a much larger size. 

Reflections

There is something truly magical about reflections.  We encounter them every day and yet when I see one in a landscape it still captures me.  I'm not sure if it is the symmetry or added depth that I like.  Add a sunset plus a reflection and you end up with something striking. 

Getting the perfect reflection in water can be very difficult as the water has to be ridiculously smooth.  The slightest disturbance can distort the image and take away from the effect.  Now this isn't always the case.  Some reflections look perfectly good even with some distortion. 

Our last trip to Gull Lake afforded me with an excellent chance to get a nice reflection with sunset.  After a few days of sitting on the dock only to have the clouds disappear or drop to the horizon I finally got a night where everything lined up just right.  The image below is a three panel stitched panoramic.  In reality since each panel was a nine frame HDR the image is composed of 27 different exposures.  I decided to use HDR for this because I really wanted to get some of the detail in the shore across the bay.  You can get a perfectly good sunset by underexposing the image slightly.  That gives you the rich colors in the sky while the foreground elements are usually in deeper shadow.   For this particular scene I wanted to try to preserve the image as I saw it while sitting on the dock with Mom.

I should add a big thanks to Mom for being a constant source of support and a frequent shooting companion.

As always prints are available here as well as the image in full resolution where  you can see much more detail.

Creating something artistic

We have all had times when the scene before us looks better in person than it does through the camera.  Rather than deleting those images try applying an artistic filter to add some interest.  Photoshop has many built in and some free available for download.  Depending on your needs and budget there is a myriad of plugins available for purchase.  I've purchased the photographer bundle from Topaz Labs.  Among enhancement filters there are artistic filters.  The best part is the effects are customizable.  The following image was a panoramic HDR of the forest that surrounds the Gull Lake timeshare our family enjoys every fall.  Initially the panoramic didn't really have the interest that I was looking for.  After using a couple different filters the final image was much more to my liking. 

For the final image I used a plugin that gave it the look of an oil painting.  If you go to my SmugMug site and look at the image full size (original size) you will see it even adds brush strokes.  I had it printed as a 10x30 and am quite pleased with how it turned out.  It would look even better on canvas.

Next time you have an image that didn't capture quite as you would like, try getting creative with the processing and you may find that a dud image turns into something great.