Author: rdmegr

A Field of Honor Forever

Published on by rdmegr

On September 11, 2001, terrorists hijacked four planes. They flew two into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and another into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The fourth plane, left Newark, New Jersey, bound for San Francisco. Near Pittsburgh, the terrorists overwhelmed the pilots and took control of the plane turning it towards Washington, presumably to crash it into the United States Capitol building.

Passengers and crew members, having become aware of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, voted to fight back. Knowing their fate, they struggled with the terrorists to prevent them from achieving their goal. Sensing that they would be overcome by the passengers and crew, the terrorists crashed the plane into a field on a hillside near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, just 18 minutes from their intended target in Washington.

Today, the National Park Service maintains a memorial at the site, a field of honor forever.

The Visitor Center has a sobering display that recounts the events of that day. Videos of news reports from 9/11 took me back to that morning, when I sat in a conference room with colleagues from my law firm watching intently as events developed. Our country was under attack. Most haunting in the display is an exhibit where you can listen to voicemail messages left for loved ones by the passengers and crew who knew they were going to die.

A platform at the Visitor Center looks out over the field where Flight 93 crashed. Photos of the scene in the Visitor Center show a crater in the shape of a plane after the crash. The plane and its contents were all disintegrated, leaving only fragments of the plane and its passengers and crew.

The National Park Service has erected a memorial on the field where the plane crashed. A long walkway leads to a memorial wall where the names of all forty of the passengers and crew are listed. The day we visited a delegation from the Wisconsin State Patrol conducted a ceremony to honor them.

On a small shelf in the wall leading to the memorial, people leave mementos and tributes.

Each passenger and crew member is named on a separate panel of the accordion-shaped wall, which aligns with the flight path of the plane as it crashed.

A Ceremonial Gate is constructed from hemlock beams. There are forty cut angles in the beams to commemorate the dead.

A massive boulder marks the spot where the plane crashed.

The Tower of Voices, a 93-foot tall tower, has forty wind chimes that make music to honor the forty passengers and crew members who died fighting to prevent the terrorists from crashing the plane in Washington, D.C. Having heard of the crashes at the World Trade Center, the passengers and crew members knew their fate, but they rose up to prevent a greater tragedy in our nation’s capital. On September 11, 2001, this common field became a field of honor forever.

Sunset Shores Beach

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I had an opportunity to spend the night in Glen Arbor to do some night photography at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. I had hoped to photograph the Milky Way, which is making its annual reappearance after wintering below the horizon. I did my homework, using the Photopills app to find a good viewing point, and checking six different models for the weather forecast. According to my research, if all went well, I would have clear skies between midnight and 1 a.m., when the Milky Way would be visible across the horizon at Sunset Shores Beach.

I visited Sunset Shores Beach on Thursday afternoon to scope out a place to set up later in the evening. Unlike Good Harbor Beach and Esch Road Beach, Sunset Shores Beach has some large stones, including an erratic boulder, which I hoped would make a nice point of interest for the foreground.

I came back to the beach to catch the sunset to make a few photos. If everything went as planned, Sunset Shores seemed like the perfect spot for photographing the Milky Way.

Well, the weather cooperated. The clouds didn’t roll in until after 1 a.m. But, apparently there was a little operator error in using my Photopills app to determine when the Milky Way would rise above the horizon. I didn’t see the Milky Way, but I had a wonderfully clear evening to try work on my night photography (a work in progress).

The erratic boulder did a nice job anchoring the foreground. And the ten-second exposure smoothed the waters of Lake Michigan. No Milky Way, but a nice shot of the celestial heavens. I’ll have to figure out what I did wrong for when I have another opportunity to enjoy the night sky at Sleeping Bear.

Some Winter Photos in Sleeping Bear

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So far this year, Leelanau County (Michigan’s little finger) has had 124 inches of snow. I took advantage of this yesterday and visited Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, making a random group of images.

As always, the sun came up yesterday, but it was hidden behind a blanket of dense clouds and blowing snow. Shortly after sunrise, I began taking photographs on Aral Road, a two-track that passes over Otter Creek. Setting up my tripod spooked the ducks that were floating in this old vestige of the mill pond that was here when the creek was dammed and a saw mill was located just a bit downstream.

Near the creek, a sumac tree was outlined in white.

I stopped by the Tweedle Farm. The red of its outbuildings and the rust on the silos stood out against the gray sky and white snow.

The Mill in Glen Arbor is an old grist mill on the Crystal River. It has been wonderfully restored and given new life with a couple of restaurants and great space to relax by the river.

I can’t stop taking photos of the granary on the Peter and Jenny Burfiend Farm in the Port Oneida Rural Historic District. The stark geometry and bright white of the granary make it stand out against the landscape, even when the landscape is covered with snow.

This is a photograph I took years ago of the Burfiend’s house that they built after establishing the farm in 1882.

I took this photo of the garage on the farm yesterday.

Across the field and beyond a swamp on the shore of Lake Michigan is the farm of Peter Burfiend’s father, Carsten, and mother, Elizabeth. There are several outbuildings on the farm, but only the foundations of the barn and silo remain.

On the way home, I stopped in the southern portion of the park where the Platte River flows into Lake Michigan. There I found a spot where the snow had blended with the sand of a dune between the river and the lake.

The Beach in January

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Earlier this week, I drove north to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, my old reliable spot for finding interesting things to photograph. I am sure that I pass many wonderful scenes as I make the three hour drive early in the morning, but Sleeping Bear has my heart and calls out to me in all seasons of the year.

The day was cold and windy. The combination of 20 degree temperatures (Fahrenheit) and winds gusting to 45 miles per hour, created a windchill that hovered in the single digits. Nonetheless, I headed to the beach to see how the shore ice had developed. On my last trip to Sleeping Bear, just two weeks ago, there was no shore ice. But the cold temperatures and high winds in the intervening days made all the difference. As I approached the beach from the parking lot at Esch Road and looked north toward Empire Bluff, I could see that the ice had indeed built up along the shore.

Waves crashed against the wall of ice. I thought of trying to capture some images of the waves, but realized that in the wind and the cold, I didn’t have the patience to stand in wait for the right wave to come along. Besides, once I got down to the shoreline, my view of the lake was blocked by the ice wall, so I could not see the action of the waves and could not anticipate when to trigger the shutter.

I decided that making images along the shoreline would be the order of the morning. Ice balls formed a ridge just feet from the shore, bringing to mind the spine of some ice creature laying in wait.

Along the shore, the sand cracked underfoot.

Otter Creek flows into Lake Michigan at the Esch Road Beach. I visited Otter Creek back in December, expecting to photograph images of snow and sand but was disappointed by the lack of snow. On my trip earlier this week, there was plenty of snow but Otter Creek itself was free of ice except along its shores.

Photographing in such bitter cold calls for some compromises. I returned several times to my car to change camera lenses. There was so much sand blowing in the wind that it would have been unwise to do so on the beach. I ended up leaving my glasses in the car since they kept fogging up. I had to trust my camera’s automatic focus because, without my glasses, I could not check critical focus on my camera screen. A number of images for which I used a slow shutter speed turned out to be blurry. Even on my tripod, my camera shook in the wind.

After a couple hours on Esch Road Beach, I drove to Sunset Shores Beach on Sleeping Bear Bay. The road to the parking area had not been plowed, requiring a short hike through a foot of snow to reach the stairway to the beach. The ice wall at Sunset Shores was not as large as the one at Esch Road, so I could look across the Manitou Passage to North and South Manitou Islands and could see the action of the waves.

At the base of the stairway to the beach, this cedar tree caught my eye. I liked how the pattern of the bark contrasted with the smooth, white snow. I decided that the image worked best in black and white.

The images I made on this trip were serviceable. None are really notable, but they testify to the beauty of the beach in winter. Even without a “prize-winning” image, I would mark the day big success. I enjoyed meeting the challenge of working in the bitter cold. Not surprisingly, I was the only person on both beaches. To have such a remarkable place to myself was a gem. I can’t wait to return.

Otter Creek

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Yesterday, I posted about my visit to Shalda Creek last week. That got me looking back at images I made in December on Esch Road Beach, where Otter Creek flows into Lake Michigan. In my past visits, Otter Creek flowed almost directly into the lake. Conditions have changed, however. Lake Michigan has dropped several inches in the last year, dipping about 5 inches below historic levels and expanding the beach. So the creek has had to cut a new path to the lake. I was surprised to see that the creek has taken a left hand turn and run parallel to the shore for about fifty yards before flowing into the lake.

I came to the beach hoping to make some abstract images of snow and sand mixing together similar to this photograph, which I took last January.

I liked the way the sand and the snow blended together. But, alas, this year there was no snow on the beach. I continued to scout around and found some interesting images along the shore of the creek.

A Visit to Shalda Creek

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Earlier this week, I visited Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Initially, I set out to photograph on Esch Road Beach, but the cold temperature and high winds convinced me that I needed to find a spot sheltered from the wind. I made my way to Good Harbor Bay at the point where Shalda Creek empties into Lake Michigan.

Shalda Creek originates at the west end of Little Traverse Lake and winds its way through wetlands and the forest until it reaches Lake Michigan. I make a point of stopping there on almost every visit to check out the work of the beavers who are altering the landscape as they dam the creek and to enjoy the peaceful surroundings, which I usually have to myself. Notwithstanding the work of the beavers, the creek keeps flowing toward the lake making its mark on the land.

The force of the water continually adjusts the path of the creek as it approaches the lake. Each time I visit, the mouth of the creek has moved a little or a lot.

On Wednesday’s visit, I found the creek had formed a small depression in its path creating a mini-waterfall.

GAAC Exhibit: The Sky Is Always There

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Over the weekend, I attended the opening of “The Sky Is Always There,” a new juried show at the Glen Arbor Arts Center. The Arts Center asked applicants to go beyond direct representation and portraits of puffy clouds “to consider the sky from its atmospheric characteristic to its mythic history.”

I was fortunate that my submission “Noctures” was accepted for the exhibit. Nocturnes is a triptych of photographs of the night sky that I printed as cyanotypes.

From left to right, the images are of a moonrise over Shalda Creek, the Milky Way over Port Oneida, and the northern lights over a farmhouse in Kirkjubæjarklaustur, a village in the south of Iceland.

I shared the inspiration for my entry in my Artist’s Statement: “When my children were young, we would lie on the shore of Sleeping Bear Bay at night and watch for satellites. Those moments when we marveled at the night sky have remained with me all these years. I wanted to recreate that sense of awe for this exhibit.  More recently, my grandchildren and I created cyanotypes of leaves and twigs. We shared a similar sense of wonder as we watched the images coming to life in the developing tray. These experiences gave me the idea to process photographs of the night sky as cyanotypes for this exhibition.”

To create the cyanotypes, I converted my digital photographs to monochrome images and then reversed the tones to create digital negatives. Using a mixture of ammonium iron citrate and potassium ferricyanide, I treated hot-pressed, 100% cotton watercolor paper to sensitize it to UV light.  Then I made a printed image from each negative by exposing the negative and paper to a UV light source. To deepen the blues, I bathed the final prints in hydrogen peroxide.

There are some remarkable works in the exhibit. If you are in the area of Glen Arbor this winter, I encourage you to stop by the Glen Arbor Arts Center and enjoy it. The exhibit runs through March 20.