A few days ago I made my latest visit on an unusually warm mid-November day, overcast and very calm. I don't know if I've ever seen Gitchi-Gami this still. That would change in the coming overnight hours, but I was home by then.
I started my photo adventure at the Duluth Aerial Lift Bridge at about 7:30am. (This means I left home before 5:30am. The things I do for my art...) Yes, jillions of Lift Bridge photos are out there but here are a few more. After this, I worked down Minnesota Point (a.k.a Park Point), the 5000 year old sand bar Duluth neighborhood south of the bridge, to Park Point Beach to snap a few shots on the mostly vacant beach. I then worked up shore toward Gooseberry Falls Park for some waterfall photos. Again, it seemed like I was nearly alone in the park, few cars in the lot and never any competition for photo vantage points. After a dry summer, the Gooseberry River was running low but this provided an open view of the rocky riverbed which carved up the flow of the water. I feel this makes for a very interesting waterfall photo.
All photos captured with a Pentax K-3 camera and Pentax 18-135mm lens. Editing was in Photoshop CS5. The waterfall photos were taken with an F/22 lens aperture and a polarizing filter to cut down the light into the lens, allowing a long open shutter time (.5 to 1.5 seconds, a tripod is required), resulting in the creamy appearance of the flowing water.
Clicking on a photo will show a larger format slideshow of all the images from this posting.
