Photographs by Frank

21 October 2021

Our Magnificent Planet 2021

Filed under: Odontates,Other Insects,Wildlife — Frank @ 6:52 PM

Stalwart readers may remember that I had a photograph published in Our Magnificent Planet 2020, a book published by the folks who issue LensWork magazine (see this post).

A few months ago, I submitted three photographs to this year’s version, Our Magnificent Planet 2021.

A few weeks ago, I was notified that, again, one of my photographs has been selected for inclusion in this book. I am batting 1.000!*

Below, are the three photos I submitted.

I like a surprise so I have continued my ‘tradition’ from last year and I have not emailed the publisher to find out which photograph was selected.

We’ll just have to wait until December when the book is delivered!

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* My friend Joe Sack is also batting 1.000 in this game.

11 October 2021

Random Photos (2021 Trip)

Filed under: Misc.,Road Trips — Frank @ 10:00 PM

I made about 2,700 exposures in the month we were “on the road”*. Some of these photos don’t fit the stories that I tell in the other posts. Thus I post them here.

The photo titled “Woody’s Sign #2” (in the color section) requires some explanation.

Woody Guthrie’s famous song “This Land is Your Land” is usually sung in an abbreviated version. One of the often omitted verses reads as follows:

As I went walking I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said “No Trespassing.”
But on the other side it didn’t say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.

More than ten years ago, on the Rhode Island coast, I made a photo of a no trespassing sign similar to this one. Now, I have two such photos. I think that I have the beginnings of a new project!!!

Black and White —

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Color —

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* In these blog posts, I have shown 110 photos in total.

Great Lakeshores (2021 Road Trip)

Filed under: Landscapes,Road Trips — Frank @ 9:30 PM

After our trek on “the 200s”, we spent the next five nights in Michigan exploring the Lake Superior and Lake Huron shores. We spent two nights near the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore area, two nights further east on Whitefish Bay (both Lake Superior) and one night in Harrisville, MI on Lake Huron.

While at the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, we did a 10 mile hike visiting both Chapel Rock/Beach and Mosquito Beach along the way. The four mile stretch between these two beaches is reached only on foot or by boat. The scenery was spectacular although the weather (heavy overcast and some fog) was not ideal for photography. This was true for most of our visit to Pictured Rocks.

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Of course, where there is shore there are lighthouses. I photographed a few! Perhaps the most interesting of these was the lifesaving station at Vermillion. It is a little off the beaten path! I was looking at the map of the Whitefish Bay area and noticed a point marked Vermillion on the Lake Superior shore. It was at the end of a dirt road about seven or eight miles from the main road. Intrigued and knowing nothing more, we headed for Vermillion and were glad we did. At the end of the road was a nature preserve and a well preserved lifesaving station, but no lighthouse. It was well worth the trip.

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While we were camped in Harrisville, MI we decided that it was time to head home. The distance from Harrisville, MI to Antrim, NH is roughly 800 miles. We made this distance in two days. We stopped for the night in a motel near Rochester, NY and made it home late afternoon on Friday (8 October)… exactly one month and 6,772 miles after we set out.

Elk Rut and Prairie Dogs (2021 Road Trip)

Filed under: Mammals,Road Trips,Wildlife — Frank @ 8:02 PM

Our usual route east, towards home, from Western Montana is US Route 2 which runs across the country just south of the Canadian border. This time, we decided to try a different route… a series of state routes numbered 200. We picked up Montana 200 in Missoula (the route starts a bit farther west, at the Idaho border) and eventually continued on the contiguous North Dakota 200 and Minnesota 200 until we were in the Duluth area. This week-long, roughly 1,100 mile trek took us across the central parts of those states. We saw lots of prairie and not a lot of people.

The drive was interesting and quite different from the drive on US 2. The towns along route 200 are generally much smaller and farther apart than the towns along US 2. I think that this is because of the railroad… US 2 generally follows the railroad while the 200 route does not.

The drive was interesting, but I did not make many successful landscape photos along the way. I guess that I did not find a muse in the high prairie. However, I did photograph wildlife in two locations.

Back in 2017, we spent a few hours at the Slippery Ann elk viewing area of the C.M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge in central Montana. This trip we stopped and spent the night. The elk rut was in high gear (as it was at more-or-less the same period in 2017) and we spent a late afternoon and early evening watching and photographing the action… it was fascinating. The bugling continued after it got dark and, in fact, went on all night. We were hoping to photograph again in the morning before moving on but the elk were in the woods and thickets nearer the river rather than out in the open by the road. We could hear them but not see them.

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The second wildlife opportunity along this section of the trip was unplanned. We pulled into a campground in the north unit of Teddy Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota one evening. As I wandered the environs looking for landscape photographs (an endeavor complicated by power lines), I heard odd noises coming from a fenced in pasture abutting the campground… the sound was almost, but not quite, avian. I wandered over the found that the noises were emanating from prairie dogs!

I made one photograph through the fence (the first one shown below) but by the time I found a better vantage from which to photograph (a matter of maybe five minutes) the light had faded and there were zero prairie dogs to be seen! Of course, they were all back out-and-about the next morning and I made many photographs of these amusing creatures.

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The Bitteroot Valley (2021 Road Trip)

Filed under: Landscapes,Road Trips — Frank @ 6:03 PM

After our raft trip we spent four nights visiting Joan’s brother and his wife in Hamilton, MT.

During our visit we made one long (about 8 mile) hike to Coquina Lake in the wilderness area of the Salmon-Challis National Forest. Additionally, we did two drives (with a little walking) on Forest Service roads; one drive in the Bitterroot Mountains, (on the west side of valley) and one in the Sapphire Mountains (on the east side).

The autumn colors were in full swing in the Rockies so many (but not all) of my photos from these trips are in color.

Color Work

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Black and White Work

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9 October 2021

River of No Return/Frank Church Wilderness Raft Trip

Filed under: Autumn,Landscapes,Road Trips — Tags: — Frank @ 10:34 PM

Joan and I returned from a month long road trip yesterday (Friday) afternoon. We left two days after Labor Day and made more-or-less a beeline for Salmon, Idaho.

We made overnight stops in western New York, Ohio, Iowa, Minnesota, Wyoming and central Montana. The last day of the outbound leg, we made a brief stop at Joan’s brothers house in western Montana to drop off our camper before proceeding to meet the folks we would be rafting with in Salmon.

The river we ran is the main stem of the Salmon River. This stretch of the river is also sometimes called the River of No Return* and runs through the Frank Church Wilderness which is the largest wilderness area in the lower forty eight states. We were on the river for six days/five nights. The boats were oared rubber rafts and inflatable kayaks.

Our truck was shuttled to the takeout and after we got off the river, we headed back to Hamilton, MT where we had left the camper. We spent a few days visiting Joan’s brother and sister-in-law before beginning our meander back east. (More on rest of of the trip in subsequent posts.)

Of course, I made a few photographs along the way!

The first batch shown below are photos I made while we were in camp… usually before breakfast or in the late afternoon/early evening before dinner. They were made with my main (dSLR) camera.

The second batch of photos are those made during the day (either at lunch stops or while on the river) using a small fixed (wide angle) lens camera.

As the regulars know, my landscape work in mostly black and white and thus the large majority of these photos are of that ilk.

However, I have snuck a few (three, to be exact) color photos in at the end of the first batch. Not even I would try to photograph a rainbow in black and white!!! As for the last photo (made early on our last morning on the river), the sky was just to luscious in color to convert.

So without further ado…

Batch 1 —

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Batch 2 —

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* This name is not as bad as it sounds. Early settlers (ranchers and miners, in the main) would build boats in Salmon (and up river) and then float the river to their camps. Upon arrival the boats would be dismantled and the (valuable) lumber used for other projects. Thus, is was boats that did not return not people.

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