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.
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.
As I write this, 2024 is quickly coming to a close. Time once again to look back and select some photos from this year that I especially like.
This year was a little different from previous years because my main photography focus for the year was researching and preparing two lectures that I delivered in November at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (“OLLI”) at Aquinas College. The lectures were titled, “Editing Reality: The History of Manipulated Photography.” The first lecture dealt with the period before the digital age, while the second began with the digital age and got into the consideration of the impact of artificial intelligence on photography. I had a blast doing the research, reading a wide range of sources and, though the lectures are done, my reading continues to focus on the history of photography.
Incidentally, I was honored that OLLI sought my permission to use my photographs on their Fall and Winter Course Catalogs.
I am principally a landscape photographer who shoots in what some have termed, “the eyewitness tradition.” I edit my photos to create a realistic image that truthfully presents how I saw what was before me when I clicked the shutter. I do not use generative artificial intelligence or insert items into my images that were not before me. That said, this year I experimented making multiple exposure and montage images. There were two that I particularly liked.
I created this first image from three exposures taken of the side of a dumpster at the East Grand Rapids Public Works Facility. I blended them together in Photoshop. I rather liked the result.
This tree is one of my favorites. Standing alone in a farmer’s field, it reveals its majesty. On the day I took this photo, the sky was cloudless. While the sun was shining and the sky was a beautiful blue, to my eye, the sky offered nothing of interest. Photoshop now allows one to replace the sky with a menu of clouds. Doing so seems disingenuous and certainly would violate the eyewitness tradition I adhere to. Rather than create an artificial photo and present it as real, I chose to try something a little different – a composite of two photographs, one the photo of the tree and the field, the other an image of the bark of a tree for the sky.
Earlier this year, the Glen Arbor Arts Center put out a call for entries to a juried show titled “The Sky is Always There.” The prospectus called for entries that “move beyond direct representation, beyond portraits of puffy clouds.” I was eager to try to get something accepted for the show, but my photography is very representational. I gave it much thought but was coming up empty. Then, after creating cyanotypes of leaves and twigs with my grandchildren I got the idea of submitting photographs of the night sky processed as cyanotypes for this exhibition.
I selected three digital images – a moonrise, the Milky Way, and the northern lights – to create a triptych. From the digital files, I created monochrome negatives of each image. I used a mixture of ammonium iron citrate and potassium ferricyanide to sensitize hot-pressed, 100% cotton watercolor paper to UV light. Then I made contact prints 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.
I am pleased to say that the juror selected my entry for the exhibit, which will run from January 10 to March 20, 2025, at the Glen Arbor Arts Center in Glen Arbor, Michigan.
Here’s a selection of more straightforward images that are among my favorites for 2024:
“Sunrise on Sleeping Bear Bay,” Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore
“Hall Lake Morning,” Yankee Springs Recreation Area
“Lake Superior Lakeshore from Above,” Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore
“Lake Superior Stones,” George Hite Dunes, Eagle Harbor, Michigan
“Milky Way,” Port Oneida Rural Historic District, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore
“Northern Lights over White Lake,” Wabaningo, Michigan
“Hanging On,” Teichner Preserve: The Leelanau Conservancy
“Fall Foliage,” Howard and Mary Dunn Edwards Nature Sanctuary, the Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy
“Turkey Tail and Maple Leaf,” Houdek Dunes Natural Area: The Leelanau Conservancy
In the coming year, I will continue to research the history of photography. Of particular interest to me are cabinet cards created in the second half of the 19th century. I will also continue to deepen my understanding of generative artificial intelligence and its impact of the art of photography. And, of course, I will continue to get out with my camera in an effort to capture nature’s beauty.
Happy New Year
Here are links to my my year-end review of images in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2024.
Earlier in the week, Friday night looked like it would provide a great opportunity to try my hand at nightscape photography. The long-range weather forecast predicted clear skies, and the moon would not rise until long after the galactic center of the Milky Way would reach its highest point in the night sky. As luck would have it, the D.H. Day Campground at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore had one campsite left for Friday night. So I reserved it and started planning.
I used an app called Photopills to identify possible locations to shoot. The app allowed me to locate a spot on the map and see where the Milky Way would be in relation to it in the night sky. I checked out several locations, finally deciding on three sites that would be close enough that I could cover each of them in one evening.
On Friday morning, I made the three hour drive to Glen Arbor, Michigan, and visited my intended locations during the afternoon. I used the augmented reality feature of Photopills at each site to confirm the position of the Milky Way at the times I intended to shoot. Now all I needed was clear skies.
I had been using three different sources to predict the weather for Friday evening. Two forecast clear skies and one predicted thunderstorms. Turns out, all three were partially right and partially wrong. As evening approached, so did some foreboding clouds.
Undaunted and certain that “this too shall pass,” I set up at my first location (the old cannery in Glen Haven) around 11 p.m. I could see some breaks in the fast moving clouds, but soon the rain began to fall. I jumped into my car and headed to my next location, hoping that the sky there would be clear. Within a few miles I was in the midst of a thunderstorm, so I pulled over to the side of the road to wait it out. It didn’t take long for the storm to pass. Within 10 minutes I was on my way again.
My second location was the bridge over the Crystal River on Country Road 675. People who have kayaked the Crystal know this bridge as the location where you “shoot the tubes,” the culverts that allow the river to pass under the road. Getting out of the car, I was pleased to see that the sky had cleared. I quickly donned my reflective vest and set some reflective triangles along the road to warn approaching cars that I was standing on the bridge with my camera and tripod.
The biggest challenge of photographing stars is getting them in focus. There are a couple of methods of doing so. The first one failed me completely. That method involves placing the brightest star in the middle of the camera’s LCD screen and magnifying it to allow you to focus. Sounds great, but on my LCD screen all I saw was darkness. On to method two – relying on the “hyperfocal distance.” The hyperfocal distance is a spot at which everything halfway from the camera to infinity will be acceptably in focus. I knew that for the focal length and aperture I was using the hyperfocal distance was 16 feet 6 inches. But how do you focus in the dark? I set my camera 16 feet 6 inches feet from the back of my car, shined my flashlight on my bumper and focused on it. And then I was in business.
There it was, just as Photopills had predicted, the Milky Way!
Having found success on the Crystal River, I moved on to my third location, the Carsten and Elizabeth Burfiend farm in the Port Oneida Rural Historic District. Carsten Burstein bought 275 acres in what became known as Port Oneida in 1852, when the government opened the land up to settlement. I was interested in photographing the farm’s granary, corn crib and shop.
I lit the buildings with two small LED light panels. Both were set at their lowest output and placed on light stands far away from the scene. To the naked eye, they provided little illumination, but to the camera, with its 8 second exposure, the lights provided about as much light as would a one-quarter moon.
Having met with success at my second and third locations, I headed back to the cannery in Glen Haven, unsure of whether the Milky Way would be positioned well to get the picture I wanted. After all, it had been nearly three hours since I originally had planned to shot there. While it is not the shot I had planned, it still worked out pretty well.
I was pleased with the evening’s success. Several years ago, I had tried my hand at photographing the Milky Way, but my equipment wasn’t up to the task. I recently purchased a “fast” lens that has a much wider aperture. That made a significant difference. The night provided everything I hoped for. . . and more.
Shortly before calling it a night, at 2 a.m., I checked in with a woman I had met earlier in the evening in the parking lot at Glen Haven. She had come north from Saint Joseph, Michigan, when she learned there was a chance to see northern lights. “Any success,” I asked. She said that indeed she had seen them. “In fact,” she said, “they are out there right now.” I looked off to the northwest and all I saw was a faint glow along the horizon. “That’s them,” she said, and she showed me some photos she had taken earlier in the night with her cell phone. So I set up my tripod and aimed it at the horizon, taking a twenty second photo. Sure enough, there was the faint glow of the northern lights.
The color wasn’t visible to my naked eye, but there on the back of my camera was the telltale green glow I have seen before. I switched from a wide angle lens to by telephoto.
I crawled into my tent about 2:15 and was up and out again at 5:30 a.m. to catch a different glow as the sun rose on Sleeping Bear Bay.
