On a clear day...

You can see forever. This is the view from Sugarloaf Mountain on 550 near Marquette a couple days ago. You can see the Huron Mountains I believe, in the top of the pic and the beach of Wetmore Landing in the bottom. This has to be what I have concluded one of the most beautiful vistas in the U.P and Upper Midwest. Thanks to conservation efforts, the view in many directions is still of rolling hills and forests, although more and more development is creeping in on the southeast view, not to mention what seems to be more and more towers every year. I can't remember the facts on the Little Presque Isle area which is the coastline you see in the pic, but I believe this large tract of shoreline is protected from development and is really a gem of solitude along the Lake Superior shoreline.

Yooper... Daily....?

Well, wondered how long it would be before my daily turned into a weekly. I've come to the realization that it's gonna be real tough to post daily once the art show season hits in earnest.
We just got back from a show and I don't know, all of the daily media pounding on the recession has me a bit skeptical. We just had our best sales totals of any year we've been doing this last show and I have to ask, recession? What recession?
I know people are hurting, in some regions of the country very dearly, and people are cutting back. We are cutting back on some things. People are loosing their jobs. But to get our country moving again, the media has to do a better job of reporting fairly what is going on out there when there is good news too. It's easy to begin to believe that, yes, the media is in the bag with Obama and will make it sound as bad as possible to get this upcoming "pork stimulus" bill passed. Personally, I think a little "good news" reporting on the economy would do wonders for getting people to spend again. If you watch a lot of the media reporting on the economy lately, you've already hidden your life savings in ball jars in the back yard for the next five years and the only items you buy are bread and water for survival. I mean, come on, give it a break, media! and I'll give politics a break, that's the last thing I wanted to include in this blog.
Well, tonight is the full moon, and it was spectacular last night. We're clouded over tonight, but if you are in a clear sky location, enjoy! Winter is an especially cool time to experience moonlight, with the reflection of the trees contrasting against the snowy white.Lake Superior, and moonset in the winter

transition

Amazing how quick the lake changes. Every day Lake Superior can change drastically. The pancake ice I photographed yesterday was all but gone today. At that location, the ice had frozen over ice skating rink smooth all the way to the ore dock; only skeletal remnants of the pancakes could be seen sparsely along the shoreline. Really if you hadn't seen it the day before, you wouldn't know it had been there.
Where there's still any inkling of open water, which is a fetch to find, just as amazing sounds as sights are to be had. Big sheets of ice are shifting with the wind, coliding into each other like bumper cars. The lake sounds like a big soup of cracking and creaking with an occasional thunderous pop of a massive piece of ice sheet cracking. Tommorrow everything will probably completely frozen stone solid, that's how quick the lake is freezing now.
Lake Superior with pack ice to the horizon

My dog knows what's good in life

Molly, our 5lb tiny toy poodle, relaxing by the fire


Molly's routine is basically this, she sleeps in until about 10 or 11am, usually under the covers in the winter, goes outside and does her business, gets her treat for doing so, hides her treat, gets me to play a game with her where she shows me where she hid her treat, eats her treat, then runs downstairs to the basement and takes a long nap by the fire. Dogs have it soooooo easy and we spoil her rotten, and I mean rotten.

Well, this morning with it being so frigid, little Molly got really cold paws while outside. See, she can't just go out quick and do her business,no, she has to find the right exact spot to her liking, which sometimes takes a considerable amount of time. Well, as you can imagine, I had to rescue her this morning once her paws couldn't handle the cold anymore. Once inside, she bolted to get to her specially prepared doggie bed by the fire, her content look shown in the pic to the left.



Frozen Lake Superior shoreline and windblown drifts

I continue to take the 15mm lens out to learn about it's wide coverage and what the different effects are at different angles due to barrel distortion. Here is a pic I shot a couple days ago showing frozen Lake Superior with some of the barrel distortion corrected in post processing.

I hope to find many uses for this lens as I really like it.

Shadows and Hilights

Lake Superior, near sundown, in a steel grey, ominous, almost colorless mood

These are two pics, first taken the day before the storm and second pic during the storm yesterday. Winds and waves didn't seem to be near what was forecast,probably because the lake is ready to really freeze. It's brutal cold now. What's left of open water on Lake Superior is looking real syrupy now, being in an almost supercooled state.


Presque Isle, with the bay diffused by blowing snow, taken with a 15mm

The winds are a howlin

The drifts are piling up, and the ice is forming further and further out, muffling the roar of the waves normally heard when a gale blows thru.


Lake Superior looking towards Shot Point, Marquette County.

Ice Volcanos

The time is now for "ice volcanos" to form along the shoreline.
"ice volcano", Lake Superior

When the wind and temps are just right to cause the surf to splash up on the ice banks, the water from the surf keeps freezing, and the ice sometimes forms a hole that the water keeeps shooting through every time a wave hits the shoreline. These ice volcanos don't last long, as the ice keeps forming further and further out under these conditions, or it warms up and they get smashed to shreds. Pretty cool.

Oh, and Happy Birthday MOM!

"oh what a beautiful morning"

Not this morning, but yesterday!

Sunrise, Marquette Upper Harbor, near the mouth of the Dead River.
After having it snow for 20 some odd days straight(which means LOTS of cloudy skies), the sunrise yesterday was a most pleasant change of pace. In this picture you can see how the frost builds up on the plants from the outflow of the power plant nearby, and boy was it chilly, below zero again this morning.

Perigee moon

Full moon lighting up the snowscape over Lake Superior

This moonrise and moonset has the biggest moon of the year, called the perigee moon. The moon is 14% wider and 30% brighter than other moons.
I went out this morning and thought I might get lucky with catching the moon setting between clouds. It cleared out beautifully, and here's a couple pics looking west towards Marquette MI. It was below zero when these pics were taken, with temperature differential adding to the distortion around the moon's edges at 300mm focal lengths.

the full moon setting over Marquette, MI, Jan 10,2009

I'm used to it now

You know you are acclamating to the cold when you step outside and 15 degrees feels warm. Looks like we have an artic blast headed our way early next week. This will probably freeze up the Big Lake for sure.

surface ice piling up on the shore broken up into shards by a wind shift on Lake Superior.

birdseye view

Can you guess what this is?


It's the big lake, viewed from a 300 foot tall sand dune, Grand Sable Dunes. This time of year, Grand Sable could be considered back country as the only way in is 5 miles via snowmobile. That's exactly what we did yesterday, was take a ride in to the dunes, with temps topping out at about zero.


LOG SLIDE: This caution sign states that the dunes are 300ft in elevation at this spot, very steep, and at this time of year, frozen solid, with a 500 foot hike from bottom to top.

Grand Sable Dunes with the sun low in the sky-to see it covered in white was a refreshingly beautiful view. Tommorrow, I will be sharing an account and slideshow of what I consider an extreme backcountry "adventure" that few would care to attempt.

Wind n Waves

One thing I never get tired of in the winter is the sights of lake effect squalls moving across Lake Superior.

Shore ice is really starting to build now, so as long as it stays cold, the ice mountains are really going to pile up on the shore line. We'll have to wait until a big thaw to see waves like this:

Presque Isle, Marquette MI shoreline, "black rocks"

Resolutions?

So here it is. 2009.

What better way to kick off the new year than to eat right, exercise more and START A BLOG...! (I hear chuckles already...)
I thought a blog might be a nice way to share current sights of the Upper Peninsula, Lake Superior, and our travels, as well as provide some impetus to getting my website updated and overhauled.
Should be interesting to see how this blog develops, or see IF it develops, lol.
This is going to be my attempt at doing something daily, and sticking to it, in attempt to do something in a disciplined manner!

Finally, our art show "off" season is here. Time to relax a little? We'll try to squeeze that in as well before the madness starts up again in earnest in May, 2009. However, now is when all the deadlines start coming up for juries and applications, lots of work.

Big news in these parts is we've had 24 straight days of snow.










This is the view out our patio door- it's piling up!
Yep that's right, it's been snowing every day for almost a month straight. We are forecast to get a good dumping tonight and tommorrow too, so the streak will continue at least a couple more days.
My Christmas gift this year was a 15mm fisheye lens. I'm busy testing this baby out to see how creative it can be. It offers some really cool perspectives-










Presque Isle, Marquette, MI. Winter 2009 Now that's a wide angle view.