This past March I spent a week travelling around Lake Superior. It happened to be the exact same week I had been up there in 2013, in fact this shot of the night sky was done on the same night 3 years after I had done a similar shot. This time though I was doing a series of time-lapse images of the night sky as part of my project for The Sweetwater Seas – A Documentary About North America’s Great Lakes. In 2013 there was snow and ice with temperatures below 0°F and the lake frozen over with ice. This year it was between 20-35°F and the ice was almost none existent. However, knowing the ice wouldn’t be there, I still wanted to travel around the lake and was hoping to get a few nice time-lapse of the night sky along with time-lapse of clouds and any other subject which drew me in. On a trip like this you hope to come back with at least one good set of images. I was lucky enough to exceed my expectations even though some things didn’t go the way I had hoped. I had only one clear night. I spent hours on the beach at Split Rock State Park in Minnesota shooting the night sky with wolves howling in the distance. It was a beautiful night and morning. For those who don’t know much about time-lapse, first you need to know your frame rate, how long you want the clip to be and then do the computations to figure out how many shots you need over what time period. In the case of these I did a 15 second exposure with 3 seconds in between. So to get 13 seconds of video it took almost 2 hours of shooting. Not a bad way to spend your night…
Aerials at Grosse Pointe Lighthouse
Grosse Pointe Lighthouse from Richard Mack Photography, Ltd on Vimeo.
I had the pleasure of shooting at the Grosse Pointe Lighthouse on Lake Michigan as part of filming for the television documentary I am part of The Sweetwater Seas – A Documentary About North America’s Great Lakes. With the soft light of a winter afternoon I set out to get footage I had thought about for awhile with my Solo 3dr. When flying it takes a lot of planning to get the shots you want to get from various angles in order to tell the story you want to get across. This day seemed perfect so from flying over the water to around the lighthouse it was a great afternoon. You can see more about this documentary on the Sweetwater Seas website.
Honorable Mention in 2015 Black & White Spider Awards!
The Power of Water & Ice, Niagara Falls
I am honored to share the news that an image I did as part of The Sweetwater Seas Documentary has been awarded an Honorable Mention in the 2015 B&W Spider Awards in the Nature Photography – Professional’s Category! Here is the press release from the B&W Spider Awards:
10TH ANNUAL BLACK AND WHITE SPIDER AWARDS HONORS PHOTOGRAPHER RICHARD MACK FROM USA
LOS ANGELES 11/21/2105 – Professional photographer Richard Mack of Evanston, Illinois was presented with the 10th Annual Black and White Spider Awards Honorable Mention in the category of Nature Photography at a prestigious Nomination & Winners PhotoShow webcast Saturday, November 21, 2015.
The live online gala was attended by over 10,000 photography fans around the globe who logged on to watch the climax of the industry’s most important event for black and white photography.
10th Annual Jury members included captains of the industry from Bonhams, Random House, Aeroplastics Contemporary, Stockholm City Museum, Annenberg Foundation, Leo Burnett, FTM Art Advisory and Fratelli Alinari who honored Spider Fellows with 505 coveted title awards in 31 categories.
“It is an incredible achievement to be selected among the best from the 7,686 entries we received this year,” said Basil O’Brien, the awards Creative Director. “Richard Mack’s “The Power of Water and Ice, Niagara Falls” is an exceptional image entered in the Nature category, represents black and white photography at its finest, and we’re pleased to present Mack with the title of Honorable Mention – Professional in Nature Category.” Jury member Diane Ruggie from Velocebella agency added, “The gallery of winners and runners up has true stopping power.”
BLACK AND WHITE SPIDER AWARDS is the leading international award honoring excellence in black and white photography. This celebrated event shines a spotlight on the best professional and amateur photographers worldwide and honors the finest images with the highest achievements in black and white photography. www.thespiderawards.com
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Anytime you are honored with an award it is both humbling and exciting to know folks like your work. We did put a small video together from this shoot for The Sweetwater Seas documentary. You can view it on vimeo
Niagara Falls Winter from Richard Mack Photography, Ltd on Vimeo.
You can also see more about the documentary on our website The Sweetwater Seas.
Cheers!
Richard Mack
Lake Mead National Recreation Area
It is said the great wars of this century will be fought over water.
The first week of April I was out in Nevada and shot images around Lake Mead which show not only the scarcity of the water with Lake Mead being at its lowest level since Hoover Dam was built in the 1930’s. The lake level has dropped almost 100’ as of 2015, a vast amount of water for a lake which is when full 110 miles long. Harbors have been moved ¼ to almost a mile from where the shorelines were and some harbors just plain closed.
You can tell how far down it is by seeing the white “bath tub ring” as it is called around the edge of the entire lake. Turning the camera the other way you can also see why this is a National Recreation Area. Its landscape is both arid and beautiful. And gives you a feeling for what we covered over in the landscape by building Hoover Dam and covering over these valleys to create Lake Mead. This lake supplies not only power from the generators in the dam but controls water flow to Nevada, Arizona, California and Mexico via the release of the water down the Colorado River.
I covered this area as part of The Sweetwater Seas, a documentary on the health and beauty of all five of the Great Lakes. Currently there is an international treaty which protects the lakes from losing water to the west via pipelines. The west is facing the worst water shortage in history.
To see more of the images you can use this link: Lake Mead
Richard
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