White-out

A recent spring snow in Spearfish Canyon, together with a rising sun, makes everything almost too bright to look at, let alone photograph. Instead of trying to tame the highlights in the upper right hand corner, I decided to just go with it and let that area of the image blow out. Artistic? You decide.

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Frozen Waves

I like to visit area lakes this time of year because oftentimes there are interesting shapes and patterns created as the lake ice melts and shifts around. Here it appears that, as the ice toward the shoreline became thinner, the thicker ice in the deeper parts of the lake started pushing outward against these thin ice sheets causing them to break and ripple. Kind of reminds me of frozen waves.

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Encased in Ice

I’ve photographed Spearfish Falls in the winter before, but this year was special. As I approached the falls, I couldn’t hear the sound of the water crashing over the canyon wall, and as I got closer I could clearly see why; the rushing water was almost completely encased in a frozen cascade of beautiful ice crystals formed by several days of zub-zero temperatures. What a treat to witness and capture the image!

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Orion Through the Clouds

The other evening I went out with the idea of capturing the Orion Nebula rising over Spearfish Canyon near Savoy, SD with a snowy forest as a foreground. Things didn’t work out as planned. For one thing, the wind came up during the day and blew most of the snow off the tree branches and for another, clouds came rolling in. Luckily I was able to get a shot before the stars were completely obscured and while the Orion constellation was still visible. I guess I’ll have to wait for another snowy night to capture the magenta cloud I was expecting to see surrounding the constellation.

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