Yes, it’s another four weeks of photos submitted to 52 Frames. Three of the four are from Minnesota, so if you haven’t seen much of that state, you’re in for a treat. It’s gorgeous!
I’m not sure if people find these posts interesting or not, so leave a comment with your favorite of the four if you read this 🙂
Week 30: Distorted
Place: Lake Superior, Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, Michigan
I spent a week with this view and this image best captures how I feel about the lake and the cool breezes and chilly waters. There’s not just one mood to the lake, it changes all the time.
This challenge was a creative one, not a technical one, so pretty much anything “distorted” would have worked. I decided to use the Slow Shutter app on my iPhone to blur the scenery outside my door. As it turns out, the lake is so big and that horizon so far away that the blur was really just the rocks and not so much the water. I like how it turned out though, kind of an impressionist view of Lake Superior.
Week 31: Wide Aperture
Place: Waabizheshikana Trail, Duluth, Minnesota
Taking photos with a wide aperture is definitely a technical challenge. I took a lot of photos but I wasn’t really happy with any of them. I made this one of flowers work simply because I wasn’t willing to give up on the streak I have going in 2021.
Week 32: Line from a Song
Place: St. Croix National Scenic Riverway, Minnesota
I love a week when the challenge is so easy. The first day I was camping at Interstate State Park, I saw this paddleboat going by at sunset. I waited and waited to get another shot at it, and finally did. The song? Proud Mary, of course!
Big wheel keep on turnin’
Proud Mary keep on burnin’
Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ on the river
Week 33: Night
Place: Buffalo River State Park, Minnesota
Stayed up till past midnight two nights in a row, learning about how to take better images of the moonless night sky. What I learned: use a tripod, amp up the ISO to 2000 or so, set the 10-second timer, and, most importantly, have a good lens (I used my 55mm f/1.8 Zeiss lens).
Patience helps, too. A 13-second exposure takes another 13 seconds to process, so each shot, adding in the timer, took about a minute to set up and then let happen. I did see a few meteors over my head but none that I was lucky enough to capture in photos.
There were trains going by all day and night but I wasn’t able to get set up fast enough to capture the light trails of the engine across the prairie. I can still see that shot in my head, the one that got away.
You just have to live and life will give you pictures.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Yeah, I agree! Proud Mary has been my ear candy for the last week as a result of this challenge…
I love the paddleboat pic, not only because it’s a great pic (love the colors, composition, and the reflections of the clouds and trees in the water), but because that song is awesome!
I really like the first one, Distorted… but they are all pretty wonderful!
I do enjoy your 53 frames posts. This one is a tie between the song and the night pictures. Or maybe it would be the night picture if it was paired with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TfVJBOju10
Wow, that’s a pretty cool family history. I wish you could know which ones they worked on, but maybe you can just imagine it when you see them (or the few remaining ones). I feel that way about the power plants my dad worked on. And I love going by the Moss Landing plant near where I used to live in Santa Cruz because my dad once told me my grandfather worked there for a short while.
Tina Turner and Proud Mary are favs of mine, but I like the distorted image best.
My grandfather (the construction company he worked for) built many of the grain elevators in Saskatchewan and Manitoba between 1920 and 1960, so I always wonder if any old ones I see were built by him. My dad even worked on some of them. But the old ones are vanishing quickly from the skyline now.
I feel better, knowing another photographer has “the shot that got away” haunting them. I feel like someday I might get a similar shot but it won’t be that one. The description of your missed shot sounds so evocative, I can see it (it helps there are grain elevators all oround me these days).
Ah, thanks, Elle. I like the cover photo too, but it didn’t fit any challenge theme, darn it. I put it up there because it deserved to be seen, and so glad you liked it.
This might be my favorite comment ever 🙂
Thanks, Laura! I usually don’t get that inspired by the song challenge, but this year, it was easy simply because I was in the right place at the right time. A lot of the challenges, I’m a week off from them, like I see a great door the week AFTER the Door challenge. I guess it’s part of my personal effort, to find the challenge subject wherever I am that week.
There was more light in the lower area/middle than in the upper sky. It was a 20 second exposure to try and get as much light as possible, so the lower/middle area with the ambient lighting from the ground had more light than the higher areas.
Your night sky photo is gorgeous. And I hated the song lyric challenge. I guess I didn’t see that paddlewheeler to get my inspiration.
I’m wondering why the corners of the night sky pic are dark.
Love the paddlewheeler and Proud Mary. The blur is my second favorites. Keep ’em coming. The structure the challenge creates for you makes me seek out other structures for myself, to keep me going.
Whenever photography and music meet, I’m for it. Proud Mary.
I enjoy the movement blur with the long exposure of Lake Superior of the four. But my favorite is the very top photo at the masthead of the blog — love those sun rays and the water.
I like your 52 frames posts, as I never (or rarely) remember to go to 52 frames to check out the entries, but I do enjoy seeing the various interpretations of the assignments. None of these pictures really jumps out at me as my favourite. Your comment about the picture that got away resonated with me, however. I remember a view from the car one evening in Manitoba – sunset light, old grain elevator, big sky – but this was back in the days of film and we didn’t have time to stop on the highway. I thought I’d get a similar shot ‘someday’, but that elevator no longer exists. I can still see the picture in my head. 25 years later!
Love the night shot. With your commentary, I am imagining the train, just out of sight.