Category: water

Ludington State Park

December 1, 2018
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Last September I rolled into Ludington State Park for a one-night stay on my way back from filming in Traverse City. I had never visited this park before, so I spent the evening walking the dunes and looking for images. To my surprise, while the campground was almost full, no one else was out wandering the dunes – much to my pleasure. Having the place to yourself gives you time to wander and take in the place and space you are in. It was interesting to find areas without any footprints in many places. It was a peaceful evening filled with images everywhere.

In the morning, while folks were still not out on the dunes yet, I flew a drone over the area before heading back home. Enjoy.

Cheers,
Richard

The Sweetwater Seas Fine Art Posters

May 9, 2018
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I am proud to be partnering with Quiet Light Publishing and The Sweetwater Seas documentary team to offer these Fine Art Posters from our film on all five of the Great Lakes. We currently have 24 Fine Art Posters for sale on the Quiet Light Publishing storefront. They are available in two sizes – 24″x36″ and 20″x24″. Each is printed on Fine Art Archival paper to our exacting standards. You can see and purchase any of them using this link: The Sweetwater Seas Fine Art Posters.

Time-lapse of clouds and water

February 13, 2018
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I’ve been shooting time-lapse for awhile now and am always amazed at how cool it can be when you see the final results. Working on The Sweetwater Seas – A Documentary About the Great Lakes,  I have done a fair amount of time-lapse with moving clouds, stars and the water. The other day here in Evanston it was cloudy and very windy until about an hour before sunset when the clouds started breaking apart and moving out over Lake Michigan. I ran down to Lighthouse Beach to try a time-lapse but this time using a 1 second exposure to make the waves smoother and the clouds wispy as they moved across the sky. It was a nice result which I shall use more in the future – maybe even with longer exposures of 5-10 seconds. As those who shoot either still images or time-lapse, which after-all is just a collection of still images shot at a timed interval, shooting at sunrise / sunset can be a difficult exposure challenge as the light changes. There are cable releases now that you can tie into your cellphone, tablet or laptop which can allow you to ramp the exposures along the way but I didn’t use that this time as it is new to me. I did adjust the exposures over time by 1/3 of a stop and then in Lightroom adjusted the images even more to even out the exposures even more.

The tech specs. The camera is the Canon 5D Mark IV with the 16-24 F2.8 lens. The exposures ranged from 1 second at F19 to f11. There are 538 images. Each shot was 3 seconds apart so with a 1 second exposure there is 2 seconds between shots. It took 27 minutes to shot this 20 second time-lapse which is at 24 frames er second.

One more thing about shooting a time-lapse is the perspective it gives you. Once you have set everything up and started the camera shooting it becomes your time. Instead of constantly looking for the next image you can just sit there and quietly reflect on what nature is putting in front of you. A peaceful time for me when sitting by the Great Lakes. This was no different. I also had the place almost to myself as only a few folks came down walking there dogs or at the halfway point of a run they were doing. All stopped and gazed at the sunset as well before returning to whence they had come from. People enjoy the Great Lakes – a precious resource for us all.

 

Lake Mead National Recreation Area

April 30, 2015
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Images of Lake Mead and Hoover Dam, 2015

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.

Images of Lake Mead and Hoover Dam, 2015

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.

Images of Lake Mead and Hoover Dam, 2015

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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