Category: Otter Creek

Some Winter Photos in Sleeping Bear

Published on by rdmegr

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

Published on by rdmegr

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

Published on by rdmegr

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.