Vacation in Northern Michigan
These are some shots I got in 2001 of a trip we took to various spots in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. They are, by no means, the only pictures I took there. They are either some of the more interesting ones or some that presented problems of one sort or another. Some advice on how to avoid or fix the problems in the future would be helpful. The camera I used was a Kodak 3200, about as basic as a digital camera can get. The one I have now has some features that would probably be useful in avoiding problems and making the shots better, since it has light settings and zoom capability.
The first three shots are of the Taquamonen Falls and River. The first one seems to capture the power and unique color of the Falls. The Brown color comes from Tannic Acid derived from the river passing through a cedar swamp upstream.
The second shot is the river less than one hundred yards downstream from the Falls. I was trying to capture the pattern of the foam here.
The third shot is of the river a bit farther downstream and shows it smoothing out and returning to normal.
I had something of a problem with the next shot and think that I may have corrected it, but I'm not sure if there may have been a better solution. I took it in a darkened room, but couldn't use a flash because it would produce glare.
This is the solution I came up with, lightening it with Microsoft Picture It. It worked, but just doesn't seem to have the right feel and seems to have been somewhat blurred.
Any advice on how to make this one better would be appreciated. It's a long trip to take the shot again and I certainly don't want to throw this one away. This is the ship's bell of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which was recovered from the bottom of Lake Superior. It's on display at the Whitefish Point Museum.
Next is a problem for which I can't think of a solution. Perhaps one of you can. The shot was taken through the glass bottom of a boat at a place called Big Spring. The smaller photo shows a profile of the spring.
The spring is about sixty feet deep and the shot below was taken of a fish about 2/3 of the way down (it was a monster). I took it from the center well of a raft. The water is always very clear, clear enough so that you can see the bottom of the spring being roiled by the water entering. However I couldn't get anything but the outline of the fish and the details are somewhat fuzzy, possibly because of refraction. How could I have eliminated that effect?
The next shot is of the pier in the Village of Copper Harbor. My focus on the shot was the boat at the pier, which is the excursion boat that takes people to Isle Royale National Park in the middle of Lake Superior. Unfortunately, I couldn't get any closer. That one is a solved problem, though, since the camera I have now has a zoom feature.
This last one is of the Fanny Hooie River at the Ft. Wilkins State Park (Ft. Wilkins is at the northern tip of the Keewenaw Peninsula, which is the northernmost point of the State of Michigan. I just included it because I liked the pattern of the rapids.
As a little side note, Fort Wilkins was established in the late 1830's, to protect the Copper mines in the area, and was abandoned after the Civil War. Fanny Hooie was a young lady who came to the fort to visit one of the officers and his wife in 1858 and stayed over the winter. Contemporary diaries stated that she was very popular and beautiful. Since she was the only unattached female within 100 miles of wilderness and there were 150 batchelor soldiers at the fort, I imagine she was popular; after all, they named the local river after her. Beautiful? She could have bayed at the moon and those guys would have considered her beautiful.
Hope everyone liked these ones.
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