FRIDAY, MAY 8, 2009

LIGHTNING 1317

"Spring lightning over Grand Portage Bay - May 7, 2009"

Last night saw the first lightning storm of the year come over Grand Portage Bay... at least, the first one that produced lightning strong enough to photograph. These images were captured from the beach in front of my house on Grand Portage Bay at about 1:30 a.m.

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Lens: Canon EF 24-105mm
Focal length: 47mm
Shutter speed: 6 seconds
Aperture: f/8
ISO: 100

FRIDAY, MAY 8, 2009

LIGHTNING 1348

"Electric Sky"

Last night saw the first lightning storm of the year come over Grand Portage Bay... at least, the first one that produced lightning strong enough to photograph. These images were captured from the beach in front of my house on Grand Portage Bay at about 1:30 a.m.

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Lens: Canon EF 24-105mm
Focal length: 80mm
Shutter speed: 10 seconds
Aperture: f/8
ISO: 100

SATURDAY, MAY 16, 2009

SUPERIOR SPRING 1598

"Enjoying a beautiful spring day on the Big Lake"

Today some friends and I headed out into the woods and along the shore of Lake Superior to do some hiking, despite some rather wintery weather! As kind of a parody/tribute of a favorite Blues Brothers quote of mine, I put on my Facebook page: "Its May 16, gusty winds, 32 degrees, its snowing.... and we're going hiking. Hit it!"

The weather may have been less than desirable, but it was still a great day to be out in the woods. Our morning was peppered with snow showers, at times even while the sun was shining! The snowflakes falling in the sunlight looked like little jewels falling from the sky.

After our woods hike, the skies were clearing and it was starting to warm up a little, so we decided to tromp through the woods to a remote part of the Lake Superior shoreline. The hike through the woods to get to the shoreline was quite rough... more like a jungle than anything, and we had to climb over a LOT of downed trees, but once we got to the shoreline the struggle was worth it.

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Lens: Canon EF 17-40mm
Focal length: 17mm
Shutter speed: 1/1250
Aperture: f/8
ISO: 400

SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2009

STAR TRAILS 1738

"Polar Rotation"

My friend Roger http://www.rogernordstromphoto.blogspot.com/) was just here for a weekend visit and we spent some time together photographing the stars on friday and saturday nights. Roger has been interested in learning more techniques for shooting stars, and since I shoot a fair amount of night-time images, he wanted to pick my brain a bit.

We are both armed with Canon 5D Mark II full-frame cameras, which means we have cameras that are capable of producing some stunning night images. While we didn't have the best skies for shooting stars (there were more clouds than I would have liked), we still came away with some fun images.

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Lens: Canon EF 24-105mm
Focal length: 24mm
Shutter speed: 1,575 seconds
Aperture: f/4
ISO: 50

SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2009

STAR TRAILS 1697

"Reaching for the stars"

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Lens: Canon EF 24-105mm
Focal length: 24mm
Shutter speed: 2,490 seconds
Aperture: f/4
ISO: 200

SUNDAY, MAY 31, 2009

SPIRIT TREE 1770

"Spirits in the sky"

For the past couple of nights I've been taking advantage of both some beautiful night skies and the low-light capabilities of my new Canon 5D Mark II camera. This camera is just awesome for making night images. The image above is a 30 second exposure taken at ISO 3200, which I never could have done with my old camera. The old camera at ISO 3200 would have had so much noise that the image would have been unusable. By using such a high ISO setting, the camera was also able to pick up the Milky Way in the image.

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Lens: Canon EF 17-40mm
Focal length: 17mm
Shutter speed: 30 seconds
Aperture: f/4
ISO: 3200

SUNDAY, MAY 31, 2009

SPIRIT TREE 1768

"Spinning stars over the Spirit Tree"

The image above is a 2 hour exposure made between 11:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m. This image was shot at ISO 100, but even with such a low ISO setting, at 2 hours most cameras would still be producing unacceptable noise levels. Not so with the 5D Mark II! The image is very clean, with very acceptable noise levels. It should be noted that in the above image, the glow of light on the horizon is not from the sun or the moon, but rather from the city lights of Thunder Bay, Ontario, which is about 40 miles away.

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Lens: Canon EF 17-40mm
Focal length: 17mm
Shutter speed: 1,016 seconds
Aperture: f/8
ISO: 50

SUNDAY, MAY 31, 2009

SPIRIT TREE 1782

"Pre-dawn star trails over the Spirit Tree"

The image above was a 1.5 hour exposure, taken this time from 2:30 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. This time of year, by 3:30 a.m. the sky is already starting to show signs of light from the coming sun, and by running the exposure until 4:00 a.m. the final image looks almost like the blue sky that you see during the day.

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Lens: Canon EF 17-40mm
Focal length: 17mm
Shutter speed: 4,631 seconds
Aperture: f/4
ISO: 50