Apostle Island National Lakeshore

I have been to the Apostles a few times before but it has been a while. Unfortunately our trip only lasted two days because of high wind forecast which would have pinned us down on Stockton Island past when we needed to get the 12 miles back to the mainland. Stockton Island has the largest concentration of black bears

in the country. It seems quite inadvertently that there were three themes to our fall shoots this year. One is that we stayed and shot on an Island in Lake Superior. Two: Rock, rock more rock. Three: Both Islands had the most incredible Tombolo's I have ever been on. I guess all of the cold clear green water could count as four.

A photographer friend commented on how many hours I had in front of me in Photoshop after seeing images from the last shoot. Although I generally only crop, color correct and work with contrast mostly, the process of converting RAW files is sometimes tedious. All of the images that I have shown in the last two post are just the jpgs as they were shot - no post processing. With digital, I shoot differently than with film. Film you shoot to be as close as possible to what you want the end image to look like. With Digital I shoot fairly unsaturated and with as little contrast as the camera will shoot. I also shoot on the light side or the right side of the histogram so as to get as much information as possible. All this translates into fairly bland looking images that usually need something post shoot. Keep this in mind as you look at some of these images. Also there are simple point and shoot shots just to show the area. Can't always have good light for that perfect shot, so we shoot "record" shots as long as we are there.

This is a short slide show of waves crashing on the rocks (and on me) in sequence to hopefully give the feel of actually being on those slippery rocks with waves crashing all around you.

http://www.brimmages.com/splash/index.htm

Here are a few images from the Apostles - Mostly Stockton Island.

http://www.brimmages.com/apostles/index.htm

Enjoy

Steve

Grand Island and Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore shoot

Well I'm back from trip #1 and I'm off to trip #2 tomorrow, the Apostle Island National Lakeshore. I put up a quick edit slide show from Grand Island and Pictured Rocks. It takes a minute or two to load depending on your connection as there are about 150 images. To many, but...

We had some awesome light, howling winds, pretty days, starry nights and a sauna. Thanks to the generosity of Marty in Munising, who gave us a boat and cabin to work from, we were very

comfortable. Jeff and I shot a lot from the boat which was pretty tough going. Shooting digital and using image stabilized lens really increased the odds of getting sharp images. I stretched hard drive and camera batteries past their limits as I shot more than 20 gigs this trip. That's about 1700 images. I knew you were dying to know that. The Light House in some of the shots is the Grand Island East Channel Light . One of the Great Lakes most photogenic lighthouses has been in danger of collapse. But thanks to a small, but dedicated group of local volunteers, including Marty, the Grand Island East Channel Light has been saved for future generations to see.

Ok, gotta go pack.

2008 Fat Tire Festival

It seems an unlikely fact that I co founded this race 15 years ago. Sam Raymond at Keweenaw Adventure (which I also co founded) and his crew have done an awesome job turning this into the event which I imagined. We started out with less than 50 riders and this year we had 330. We were lucky enough to have Steppin' in it play an outdoor gig in our new band shell. By the end of the night we had quite a dust storm kicked up by all the twirling and bouncing. If you weren't here this year better put it on your schedule for next year. Always Sunday on Labor day weekend. http://www.keweenawadventure.com/fat_tire.htm

Check out the full slideshow. The music scenes were shot at the end of a long day and with a beer in one hand while dancing so be kind with your reviews. http://www.brimmages.com/fattire2008/index.htm
It might take a minute to load.

Steppin in it was awesome. Check them out. http://www.steppininit.com/