Lake Superior Provincial Park

Sunset at Gargantua Harbour, Lake Superior Provincial Park, Ontario
Nikon D800, Nikon 18-35mm lens @ 26mm
Singh-Ray 3-Stop Reverse Graduated Neutral Density Filter

 

I finally had a chance to go through my image files from my September trip along the shore of Lake Superior Provincial Park. One of my most favourite locations within the park is that of Gargantua Harbour. A long, winding dirt road brings you to within walking distance of the lake, where you will come to a fantastic beach to the left and to the right the shoreline is scattered with large boulders which have been rounded and smoothed by the waves of Lake Superior. A couple of other bays that are often quite productive for landscape photography are Old Woman Bay and Katherine Cove. As you view the images make note of the captions and you will notice that for some of the imagery I chose to use my B+W 10-Stop Neutral Density Filter. I will often resort to this filter when I am wishing to blur the wave action to a silky smooth texture, but the ambient light is still too bright to facilitate this, therefore, I will add the 10-Stop ND filter and presto I can usually go down to 30 second exposures with easy. When using this very dark filter I find it is best to use Live View and open up the aperture of the lens to compose the scene and focus the lens. I will then stop the lens down to my desired f-stop and click the shutter.

Please do remember to click on the images to view the larger, sharper versions.

Gargantua Harbour, Lake Superior Provincial Park, Ontario
Nikon D800, Nikon 18-35mm lens @ 18mm
30 Second Exposure
B+W 10-Stop Neutral Density Filter

 

Gargantua Harbour, Lake Superior Provincial Park, Ontario
Nikon D800, Nikon 18-35mm lens @ 18mm
Nikon Neutral Polarizing Filter

 

Old Woman Bay, Lake Superior Provincial Park, Ontario
Nikon D800, Nikon 18-35mm lens @ 24mm
Singh-Ray 3-Stop Reverse Graduated Neutral Filter

 

Katherine Cove, Lake Superior Provincial Park, Ontario
Nikon D800, Nikon 18-35mm lens @ 20mm
25 Second Exposure
B+W 10-Stop Neutral Density Filter

 

Katherine Cove, Lake Superior Provincial Park, Ontario
Nikon D800, Nikon 18-35mm lens @ 35mm
25 Second Exposure
B+W 10-Stop Neutral Density Filter

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Moonlit Katherine Cove

Katherine Cove, Lake Superior Provincial Park, Ontario

During my September visit to Ontario’s Lake Superior Provincial Park I spent a couple of nights at Katherine Cove for sunset imagery. On the particular evening that the above photograph was created there was not much interest in the sky and any lovely sunset colors were lacking as well. Once the sun had set I began creating a few long exposures and about a half hour later I noticed the details in the rock formations along the shore and instinctively knew that a wide angle lens would be perfect for this composition. Since there was little interest in the sky it was evident that I should exclude as much of that element as possible, and concentrate more on the rocky details. Using the new Nikon 18-35mm lens on my Nikon D800 I carefully framed the scene making sure not to clip the small puddle on the left side of the frame. And in the upper right corner you will noticed that I made certain that the rock out in the lake was positioned to help anchor down that area of the composition too. Since the sun was long gone by this point I needed to dial in an ISO of 800 and for adequate depth of field an aperture of f16 was selected, this gave me an exposure of 15 seconds. This lengthy exposure was the perfect solution to smoothing out every ripple on the lake to create the illusion of calmness, which in turn allowed the moonlight shimmering on the water to be recorded nicely in the final result. This image has become one of my favorites from the Lake Superior excursion. I’d love to hear your thoughts?

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Please remember to click on the above image to view the sharper, larger version.

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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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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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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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