Exploring the wonders of creation through a 50mm lens...and other lenses too.

You might be seeing a pattern here: this is the third sunset photo in as many weeks, much like my series of cardinal bird shots from a little while ago. While those avian images were somewhat planned, in that I knew as I was looking through them that I would end up posting at least three, this was more serendipitous though just as enjoyable for me to shoot the photos. While my two earlier sunset pictures were taken at Caribou Lake in the Boundary Waters, this was shot on my drive home somewhere in Iowa. I don’t remember exactly, but judging by the timestamp I think it was maybe an hour north of Des Moines. I was driving south on Interstate 35 when I saw a field of wind turbines set aglow in the fading sunlight, so I looked for a spot to pull over and take a picture.

One thing about shooting photos while on a road trip: you have to keep safety as the top priority. I didn’t want to endanger any other drivers or myself, so I needed to find an exit and a side road from which to take the shot. When you’re on back roads this isn’t much of an issue, but on mainline arteries like the interstate it’s critically important that you prioritize safety when doing any type of photography. As such, I kept driving until I saw an opportunity to leave the road and then, as luck would have it, I ended up on another side road that went north which gave me a clear view of the horizon. (My guess is I took 270th street and then turned north onto Underwood, but I can’t remember for sure.)

The sun sets quickly, often much faster than you might think, so I knew I only had a few minutes to take some shots. I got out my D750 and 70-200 f/2.8 lens, and did everything I could to limit the amount of light coming in. When you’re essentially shooting straight into the sun, the best option is an ND filter but absent that option you have to stop down your aperture, increase your shutter speed, and lower the ISO as much as possible. I don’t remember my initial exposure settings but I did dial in -5EV for exposure compensation, and I was hoping I could get a good shot of the sunset with the clouds and wind turbines.

I knew from previous wind turbine shots that the position of the blades can be a little tricky so I used a continuous high-speed burst, hoping one of my pictures would turn out. I fired off a dozen shots, adjusted my composition, engaged the continuous shutter again, and that’s when this moment happened: a flock of birds flew by right as I was pressing the shutter. I was astounded, having never seen this happen in any of my photos before, and desperately hoped that one of my pictures would turn out. I got exactly two frames with birds in them, and of those two this is the one I liked best.

The birds add such an incredible dynamic element to this shot, and I like how everything is silhouetted against the brilliant setting sun. The clouds give off a beautiful glow, and even the foreground has a bit of light right at the base of the image. I have seen shots like this but never thought I would be able to get one, and I still can’t quite believe it happened. One fraction of a second later and the birds were gone, leaving what was still a good shot of the wind turbines and setting sun, but without that sense of life and energy with the birds.

If this looks similar to last week’s photo, that’s because I shot it at the same location, using the same gear, at the same time of day, using almost the same exposure settings. The only difference is that this was 24 hours later, and had different weather conditions which led to a strikingly different image as a result.

In my photo from last week you can see the streaks in the sky which show cloud movement over the course of a two-minute exposure. Clearly those streaks are not present here, which indicates that the weather was much calmer and peaceful. There’s also another difference brought on by the lack of wind: the lake is a perfect reflection of the trees, almost like something out of a Bob Ross painting. Even though last week’s image showed a flat, glassy lake as a result of a long exposure, the reflection of the treeline was missing because of all the small but noticeable ripples on the water throughout the course of the exposure. Here the wind was so still you couldn’t feel it at all, and that sense of calm and peace is what makes the water so still.

It makes for a striking composition when compared to its counterpart from last week: similar on first glance, but vastly different upon closer inspection. At first I didn’t like this one very much, and preferred the dynamic sweeping clouds of the initial image, almost as though the sky itself were in a hurry to get on with night. But the more I look at it, the more I think this image reflects the way the Boundary Waters made me feel: peaceful, calm, serene. It’s full of subtle colors, like the rocks in the lake and the dull orange way in the distance, and I think this picture invites the viewer (or me, at least) to pause and consider things a bit more whereas last week’s image is kind of a one-and-done type of photo. “Ooo…, look at that sky!” and then on to the next image.

This was a 4-minute exposure (Which is a little more difficult than it sounds. Without my cable release I had to keep my finger firmly pressed on the shutter while being bitten by mosquitos.) shot at f/16, ISO 200, and the 3-stop ND filter of my Fuji X100F enabled. And while I enjoyed taking this picture, I was eager to be done with it and get back to the campfire with my cousins. Ironically, the calm scene here is a far cry from the next morning: we had to contend with wind and rain throughout the night and long after daybreak as we made our way back across the lake, the portage, and another lake to end our time at the Boundary Waters. It was an amazing trip and I hope I get the chance to return soon.

Earlier this year I had the incredible opportunity to go camping at the Boundary Waters Canoe Area with my two cousins. It was a trip my wife arranged for my 40th birthday, and I couldn’t have been more pleased with how everything turned out. The BWCA is more than a thousand square miles of untouched wilderness at the Minnesota/Canada border, with hundreds of lakes, just as many campsites, and no motorized vehicles allowed. We arrived at the Clearwater Lodge entry point at 7am (which meant we had to leave the Twin Cities about 1:30am) on a Sunday morning, got our gear, packed everything into a canoe, and hit the waters. A few hours later we arrived at our campsite on Caribou Lake which was our home base until Wednesday morning.

Weight is pretty important on a trip like this, since you have to carry everything you bring with on your shoulders. There’s also the issue of rain, wind, dust, and other natural elements: I didn’t want my camera gear getting full of dust or dropped in a lake. As such I mostly just used my iPhone for any pictures, but I brought my trusty Fuji X100F and Peak Design Travel Tripod with for one specific purpose: to get a picture of the sunset. I’m not even sure if I go the photo I was hoping for, but then, if you were to ask me in advance I don’t know that I could have even described the photo I was hoping for. I just wanted a long-exposure sunset image of a lake on the Canadian border.

That’s basically what you see here: a two-minute exposure just as the sun was setting, taken from the shore just off our campsite on Caribou Lake. I forgot to bring my cable release which meant I had to sit on the edge of the lake holding the shutter down with one finger while swatting mosquitos with my other hand, but it wasn’t too bad and I got a few pictures that I liked including this one. The long exposure served two purposes: smoothing out the lake and adding motion blur to the clouds. It’s not quite as dramatic as the sunset photos I took at Milford Lake last summer, but this one comes with a really fun set of memories involving camping way up north, and that’s something you can’t get just any time you want.

I can’t believe I got this shot.

This is my third and final shot of cardinals, and as you might have guessed I got this in the same timeframe as the other two: between 7 and 7:45pm on a warm spring evening as the sun was slowly setting. When I set out to get a shot of these birds all I had in mind was the male: his brilliant red feathers, his piercing black eyes, and his wild mane of untamed tussle on top of his head. As luck, or perhaps divine providence, would have it, I also got a shot of his partner in child-rearing. But to get this shot of the two of them, together, as if catching up on the day’s events or marveling at how quickly their babies were growing, was really special.

For much of my time taking these photos I saw either one bird or the other, but there was one time when they were both together that nearly made my heart skip a beat. I even popped off a few frames before one of them flew away, and even though I didn’t think the images would turn out too well, I was glad to have gotten the chance to try. To wit: in that handful of pictures the male was in the foreground, the female in the background, and one of them was turned the other way. They weren’t great shots, but they were all I could get.

Until ten minutes later both birds returned, giving me one more opportunity to catch them in a single frame. I had my camera ready: D500, 200mm, Auto-ISO with minimum shutter speed of 1/250 second, and an aperture of f/2.8 which I quickly changed to f/4 before I started firing a burst of images at 10 frames per second. Even at that blistering pace I only got maybe five shots that were worth keeping, and only one–this one right here–that rose above the rest. Not one second after I got this shot one of the birds flew away, and the moment was over. But my oh my, what a fun moment it was.

Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

Matthew 6:26

As a postscript to this series, it wasn’t two days later that the birds were gone, having completed their mission of raising two babies from eggs to adulthood. I believe it was the day after I got this shot that one of the birds in the nest was gone, and the next day both had taken to the skies leaving the family of four that had taken up temporary residence in our backyard tree to find new adventures in a place far away. I hope they come back, maybe next Spring, where they will be welcomed with a tree for nesting and some people ready to take their pictures. I’ll be waiting, my camera at the ready.

If this picture bears a resemblance to the one I posted last week, that’s because it was shot only a few minutes later. I’m not going to recount the entire backstory of the incident here, so if you’d like to learn a bit more I recommend going to my entry for the previous photo to catch yourself up. I rarely post pictures in pairs, but this was a rare event to get a picture of a cardinal this close up, so here you go :)

What I found most fascinating about this picture wasn’t the image itself but everything that led up to it. And I don’t mean me standing in my hard holding my D500 and 70-200 f/2.8 lens, but the week prior where my wife, my kids, and I got to watch this female cardinal and her mate care for their small nest of baby birds in our backyard tree. For several days we could see them flying back and forth from the fence to a tree to the neighbor’s roof and, of course, to their babies in the nest to bring food. When we first saw this cardinal she was sitting on the eggs, but when I shot this image her babies were just two days from leaving the nest. I know, on an intrinsic biological level, that mother birds care for their young until they are ready to fly away, but it was fascinating to witness the entire process over the course of a few weeks right in our own backyard.

As with last week’s image I’m not sure if these birds had acclimated to me and my family, but they were a lot less skittish than normal when they finally allowed me to get close enough for these shots. It felt like we had a mutual sense of respect and understanding, though perhaps that’s reading a bit too much into the situation. We gave Mama and Papa Cardinal a wide berth and all I asked was that they let me take their picture, and I’m glad they were willing to oblige for one fleeting moment in time.