Lake Superior Revisited

Katherine Cove at sunset

I have been going through some of my image files from the past summer and fall trying to get caught up on some much needed processing. Today, I was going through some photos from the four day excursion to Ontario’s Lake Superior Provincial Park. This Provincial Park, with its rugged coastline, has some of the best scenery in the province and is one of the many locations that can be found in my e-book ‘A Photographer’s Guide to the Ontario Landscape’. During my trip last September, stormy weather and strong winds dominated much of my time there, but it also allowed me to produce some of my favorite images to date.

Katherine Cove at dusk with storm clouds developing

Lake Superior shoreline

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Sanderlings at Katherine Cove

Sanderling at Katherine Cove on Lake Superior

During my September trip up to Ontario’s Lake Superior Provincial Park I had the opportunity to photograph a small group of migrating Sanderlings at Katherine Cove. The weather on this day was a real mixed bag of sun and cloud with rainstorms and sun-showers. After photographing of few landscapes I decided to sit down and have my lunch when I became aware of a group of shorebirds making their way along the beach and pausing to rest from time to time. I enjoyed watching them for sometime before embarking on photographing them. The area of the beach they were at has many rocks among the sand and capturing images with a clean background was a challenge, but I also thought it was necessary to have a few images that would illustrate the surroundings that they were foraging and resting within. I photographed these Sanderlings using the Nikon 80-400mm VR lens, handheld, with the vibration reduction feature activated, while lying flat on by belly in the wet sand. My favorite Sanderling image from the day is the above photograph. Please take a moment to let me know which is your favorite and why?

For this image I added a touch of canvas to the left side of the frame to repair a clipped tail. I like this image for the inclusion of the autumn, white paper birch leaf and I do like the patterns in the background created by the debris that the Sanderlings were foraging in, that washed ashore due to rough waters the day before.

In the next two photos below, I could not decide which I prefer. I like the shadow below the Sanderling in the sunlit image, but I also like the even lighting in the last image that was captured seconds after the sunlit image. As I mentioned, sun and cloud cover was constantly changing as a result of the weather systems that were rapidly moving through the area.

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More From Lake Superior

Katherine Cove, Lake Superior

I have been catching up on processing more of the images from my Lake Superior trip in September. When I look back at these images I can’t wait to go back there again. In my honest opinion, I believe that some of Ontario’s finest landscapes can be found in Lake Superior Provincial Park and various locations along Lake Superior’s north shore. The images in this post are all from lake Superior Provincial Park.

Agawa Bay, Lake Superior

Early Fall Colour on the Coldwater River at Lake Superior

The image below is a 5 frame HDR processed with Oloneo PhotoEngine. I previously posted an HDR of this same scene, but when reviewing my other image files I came across this sequence that I think I like just a little bit more.

HDR – Katherine Cove, Lake Superior

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Old Woman Bay and Approaching Storm

Old Woman Bay on Lake Superior

During my recent trip to Lake Superior Provincial Park I awoke on the first morning to a bitter, cold wind and a sky full of rather nasty looking storm clouds. I was hoping for weather conditions that would have been a little more favorable, but I always make a habit of getting up and getting out there regardless of the current weather conditions, especially on windy days when things can change in a hurry. One of my favorite spots in the park is at Old Woman Bay. The sandy beach at this location has many sun-bleached logs strewn about, presumably by extremely rough conditions on the lake during stormy weather, something that Lake Superior is noted for. I found an old tree stump at the water’s edge that I knew would make a nice foreground element, so I sat down on the beach with my 12-24mm lens and framed this scene. Why did I sit down? I wanted a low perspective so that the tree stump would not rise above the horizon line and merge with the sky and secondly, it was incredibly windy and it is much easier to keep everything steady (camera and tripod) when you assume a lower profile. I also used a polarizing filter to reduce some of the glare from the water and make the clouds a touch more dramatic. I also used my 2-stop Singh Ray grad filter to darken the sky. As I was playing around with various shutter speeds to get the desired amount of blur to the incoming waves when the sun began rising behind me and lit up a section of the clouds adding the final piece of the puzzle to this scene.

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Katherine Cove – One Image, Two Takes, Which Do You Prefer?

Katherine Cove on Lake Superior – B&W Effects

While wandering back along a section of the Coastal Trail in Ontario’s Lake Superior Provincial Park at Katherine Cove this pattern, caused by a previous wave, caught my attention. I used my 12-24mm lens and positioned my tripod low to the ground and chose a vertical composition so that this interesting pattern could dominate the foreground of this photograph. I was able to squeeze off a couple of frames before a rogue wave came ashore and washed away the design. Above is a version converted to black and white using the new photoshop plugin from Topaz Labs called B&W Effects. There is a free trial version available for download, but until October 3rd you can use Topaz Lab’s discount code from the website and purchase the plugin for a mere $29.99. Below you will see the original, colour version of the image which do you prefer?

Katherine Cove on Lake Superior – colour version

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The HDR Bug

Sunset at Katherine Cove, Lake Superior Provincial Park, Ontario

I have always been hesitant to give HDR imagery a try. Recently, I became aware of  Oloneo Photo Engine and was very impressed with how natural images processed with this software looked. On my recent trip to Ontario’s Lake Superior Provincial Park I decided to try a few scenes as HDR to see how they would turn out when processed with Oloneo Photo Engine. I was quite impressed with how easy the software was to use and how natural the end results were. The image above of the sunset at Katherine Cove is a 5 frame (-2,-1, 0, +1 & +2) HDR composition. In the image below, as I was photographing the Aux Sables River in Chutes Provincial Park, which was on my route of travel while driving to Lake Superior, the sun broke through the clouds creating rather unpleasant contrast within the scene. I decided to shoot 3 frames at -1, 0 & +1 as an experiment to see how the scene would be rendered after processing the image files with Oloneo Photo Engine. So far I am very pleased with this HDR software for keeping my landscape imagery looking as natural as possible. However, when I am seeking the grunge look it is hard to beat Photomatix. A 30-day trial is available from Oloneo Photo Engine so that you may try out the software before deciding to buy.

Aux Sables River in Ontario’s Chutes Provincial Park

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Superior Water Blurs

Incoming Wave Blur on Lake Superior

While in Lake Superior Provincial Park last week I took advantage of several opportunities to shoot various water blurs around Lake Superior and beyond. These blurs included wave blurs and flowing river blurs which I could shoot all day long. I spent several hours along the Magpie River near Wawa, Ontario during some over-cast, rainy weather conditions creating many moving water blurs. There are several rivers in Ontario’s Algoma Highlands that flow rather quickly down from the highland terrain as they make their way to Lake Superior. I often find it best to bracket the length of my exposures for moving water blurs so that I can choose the amount of blur I desire in the flowing water later when back home at my computer. I will most often start with an exposure of about 1/15th of a second and increase the exposure time from there, depending on the flow rate of the river of course. There are also several waterfalls along these rivers that I will feature in a future post. This post contains a few of my favorite water blurs that I have processed thus far. Hope you like them too!

Magpie River at Magpie Falls, Wawa, Ontario

Mini-cascade on the Magpie River

Magpie River Details

Magpie River Details

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A Few Days on Lake Superior

Wave crashing into Lake Superior’s rugged coast

I spent a few days last week up on the eastern shore of Lake Superior in Ontario’s Lake Superior Provincial Park. All of my previous trips to Lake Superior the lake was always rather calm. Lake Superior is noted for being a dangerous lake as winds can change and the lake conditions can become extremely rough. In the above photo I would guess the waves this day were in the 4-5 foot range and as they crashed into the rugged shoreline they would create impressive sprays up into the air. The winds and rain persisted throughout for the above location which can be noted in the out-of-focus look to the background – it is a torrential downpour in the distance. These rains and winds continued for the duration of my trip creating various challenges and the nights were rather chilly for sleeping in the car, but I able to find several nice situations that I will share in upcoming posts. One challenge was creating sharp images in the brutal winds. For the image below I sought shelter on the down wind side of a small peninsula at Katherine Cove and choose a long exposure to blur the water and the forest. By shooting on the down wind side I was easily able to keep the massive boulder at the water’s edge in sharp focus to anchor the image.

Windy conditions at Katherine Cove on Lake Superior

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Katherine Cove in Black & White

Here is an image of Katherine Cove in Ontario’s Lake Superior Provincial Park. It was photographed a few years ago. I have always liked this shot in colour, but something about it always bugged me too. Today, I decided to convert it to black and white using Nik Software’s Silver Efex and I also used their “Tonal Contrast” filter to give this a slight HDR look. I am thankful that I shot this image on the day that I did because the very next day a family was attacked by an injured wolf at this exact location.

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