Good start into 2015

 

I wish all visitors, friends, and followers of my blog a happy, safe, and creative year 2015!! Thank you for stopping here during the last year. Your comments, critique, and encouragement mean a lot to me and keep me writing this little journal about nature and photography.

We had a nice start into the new year with our friends Jeanne and Dave. Good conversation and playing some games made for a fun New Year’s Eve. Unfortunately Joan had to work today so I dragged myself out of the house on my own this morning. ;-) I went south along the Mississippi and just tried to spot some wildlife. The temperatures were way below freezing during the last few days and there was a lot more ice on lakes and rivers.

I found what I was looking for in Sabula, Iowa, a small town on an island in the Mississippi River. There were lots of Common Mergansers in the water. I positioned the “mobile blind” (my car) near the narrow entrance to the city’s marina. The marina was frozen over while the main channel of the river was still free of ice. The mergansers were hunting for fish by diving underneath the ice. It was fun to watch how they approach the edge of the ice in groups, dive under, and return, with or without fish, after a few seconds.

For me there is no better start into a new photography year than coming back already from the first trip with a memory card full of bird images. I wouldn’t mind if this continues throughout the year… ;-)

Mild Christmas

 

This was the mildest Christmas since I have been in Iowa during the holiday season. As every year we spent the holiday at Joan’s parents in Cherokee, a small town in northwest Iowa. Over the years it became a Christmas tradition to have at least once a walk around a lake in one of the city’s parks. I remember years when this walk took no more than maybe fifteen minutes, because the temperatures and icy wind were just brutal. Not so much this year. Almost no wind and temperatures above freezing made for a different experience. Our little dog Cooper didn’t mind that we stretched it out to over an hour on all three “mini hikes” this year.

It was Christmas morning when the sun finally appeared from behind the clouds and lifted all the gray. The lake was covered partially with a thin layer of ice and that’s where I tried to find a photo that tells the story. While working on this image I became aware again how important white balance can be for the story telling. Most of the time when snow and ice is part of my photo I make sure that some blue, at least in the shadows, transmits the message, “it’s cold here”. My first trial with this image was a conversion to black and white with a slight blue touch on the final photo. It looked good but it was just not what this Christmas day was about. The photo was originally made with a white balance set to cloudy and this is how I finally left it. The warm touch of the sun in this image reflects a lot better what I saw and how it felt that morning…

In search for the right perspective

 

We discovered the story telling potential of this setting immediately after getting out of the car in Potawatomi State Park along the Sturgeon Bay. The track of broken ice from the island to shore, the reflections, and the overall mood just had an effect on us. However, I scratched my head shortly after starting to work the subject. I just could not find a perspective that satisfied me totally. One of the reasons is that I’m not a big fan of bare branches sticking into the frame from any direction. The canoe needed to be within the picture, because it is an important part of the story, and the curves in the ice are the lines in the story telling. I used my feet for zooming and ups and downs, but sometimes it is just a little detail that makes the difference between a great image, just a decent one, and a goner. (I have not seen Joan's photo's yet. She may have kicked my butt... ;-)   )

The blue toned black & white seems to reflect the mood of this gray winter day better than any other finishing I tried. Sometimes it takes me a year or two to find the final version of a photo. But this is ok, it is part of the artistic process and part of the learning curve…

River in motion and other news

 

The first photo is already three days old. The ice on the Mississippi started to break up and just got jammed across Mud Lake because of the dam a couple miles down the river. The other image is from today at almost the same spot. The main channel is clear now and only the quieter backwaters and the marina are still frozen over. There were even a few guys ice fishing on the ice of the marina this evening.

Hundreds of Canvasback moved in (the photo shows only a small fraction) and will probably continue to go further up the river. Unfortunately I haven’t been able yet to get my lens close to them. I’m not crazy enough to step on the ice of a big river in motion… ;-)

The other news is that I saw clearly an owlet in the nest of the Great Horned Owl. The mother wasn’t present at my arrival at Mud Lake Park but a fuzzy looking young owl peeked over the edge of the nest when I pulled into the area. After watching the ducks on the river I checked the nest again and the mother had returned. The owlet wasn’t visible anymore. I guess the mother bird ordered it back into the safety of the deep nest. I’m excited about maybe having the opportunity again to make some photos of a young Great Horned Owl in the next few weeks. We will see…

Having the right lens in the bag

I took off early from home yesterday morning. The air was cold but it was sunny and clear. I had hope to find some Bald Eagles on the Wisconsin side of the Mississippi River. The river is frozen and only a small stretch of maybe 50- 100 yards below the dam had open water. Unfortunately there were only a couple eagles in a tree, too far away for a photo. They must have had a good breakfast already because they didn’t move at all during the whole time I was there. With other words, I got skunked by the eagles!

I have the habit to take more than just one lens on every trip, even if the goal is wildlife photography with a long lens. You never know what may come your way and it allows to change plans and look for different subjects and opportunities. The clear air, the nice light, the snow and ice, the mist from the water coming down the dam, this all invited me to make an architectural image of the dam. I have made photos from this vantage point before but these were by far the best conditions ever. The Carl Zeiss Distagon 35mm/f2 is my favorite lens for this kind of photography. It has manual focus but I love its color rendition and the incredible sharpness. I’m glad I had the 35/f2 in the bag yesterday… ;-) By the way, both photos just add to what I wrote about snow and colors in my last blog post. Wishing all of you a wonderful week!

Beauty in ice

 

I don’t think there is much to write about today’s photos made at Lake Michigan up in Door County, Wisconsin. Ice sculptures are a wonderful subject for nature photography and if the light is right their beauty can be revealed easily. We had a great time working these wonderful ice formations from different perspectives and angles. I hope you enjoy!

Winter in Eastern Iowa, part 2

 

I come back today with a few pictures from yesterday's hiking and driving around trips.

Snow and ice are wonderful elements to reveal the beauty that can lay in a landscape. Look at this image to see what I mean. Without the snow cover and the broken ice floes in the river the muddy walls of the river bed would just blend into the color of the harvested fields at this time of the year. The snow and ice gives the river and the fields in the background some structure and creates depth in the photograph.

This old church near the little town of Graf is built from lime stones that were probably quarried locally. Their color was pronounced by the evening sun and made for a nice color contrast to the blue sky and the snow in the foreground. The German inscription above the church door tells the story about who attended the service in the old days.

Earlier in the day I went to lock and dam #10 in Guttenberg, Iowa again. I worked on a picture of an eagle in a tree but I thought this image of a returning fisherman, who had a hard time to get his boat back to shore, was much more story telling about the conditions on the Mississippi yesterday. These ice floes below the dam were jammed against the old, solid ice on the river and the water was just freezing over again.

Laziness never pays in photography. Instead of walking over to the car and get a lens capable for good landscape photography out of the bag I just used the short end of the Sigma 50-500 for this view across the river. It was mounted to the camera for the eagles but as you can see the photo lacks detail, especially in the background, and it was therefor not a good choice. Well, next time... ;-)

I hope you enjoy my impressions about the Iowa winter. It's supposed to snow 8 - 10 inches (20 -25 cm) tonight again...

Quick decisions

 

Here is another photo from last weekend's action on the ice of the Mississippi in Guttenberg, Iowa. Sometimes nothing happened for several minutes and suddenly quick decision had to be made where to focus on and how to compose. I like having the dam in the background in some of my images. No matter how cold it is the water below is always open and it is the place where the eagles feed when the rest of the river is frozen over.

Action on the Mississippi

 

It was by far the best day for shooting Bald Eagles at the Mississippi River during this winter so far. The river is only partly ice covered and this allows the eagles to hunt for fish at many different places. We learned already yesterday that many eagles were present at lock and dam #10 in Guttenberg, which is about thirty miles north of Dubuque, Iowa. I decided to go back there again and spent a few hours in the icy wind. Warm boots and a down coat are very useful while hanging out at the river for an extended time. But I can tell you, it was worth every minute because there was a lot of action today. It is difficult to count the eagles because they move around all the time but it is safe to say that more than 50 birds were within sight.

There was a lot of push and shove going on and catching a fish wasn't always called final success. The eagles tried to steal the fish from each other and some were very competitive. Yesterday I tried mainly to shoot eagles in flight because the sky was blue and made for a good contrast and background. Today it was a little more hazy and therefore I focussed on action shots on the ice.

Distance was a little bit of a problem because the Bald Eagles stay at the edge of the ice or circle over the open water and that was quite a bit away from my shooting location. There is not much I could do about it, except for cropping my photos a little bit. Walking onto the ice is no option! ;-)