Back to Sherburne

So after I had done my 6 mile run, mowed the grass. It was long grass so it was a long job. With the sun out and lovely clouds in the sky I decided to head over to Sherburne Wildlife refuge and take some pictures. I'd not been over there for a while and things were decidedly dead and bleak then so I was looking forward to seeing some life. My first visit was to the trees I named "the three witches" on my first visit my how they've changed.

Next I look a tour around the wildlife drive, open now that the Eagles have finished nesting. The Wild Lupines are blooming and I was rather intrigued by the somewhat abstract view of the plant from above.
Photographing them from above was easy compared to getting a side on view as every plant I chose seemed to have ants in the shot...
After a while I drove around to the woodland walk looking for some different ant-free plants to try my abstract close up skills on. Trillium perhaps they are starting to bloom. They are one of the few Minnesota plants I can recognise. But no. No Trillium. Just this thing.
I've no idea what it is. The shot is remarkable for being hand held and manually focussed on the E-P2 whilst the plant was blowing in the breeze. Manual focus on the E-P2 is great because as soon as you turn the focus ring the viewfinder automagically zooms in to 7x magnification to aid your focussing.

So, there we are, another trip to Sherburne. Another great time.

Sherburne at Sunset

It had been a grey grey day all day here in mid Minnesota. Nothing more annoying than that when you want to go out and take pictures. It did rain for a while, late afternoon. But we'll draw a veil over that. I was convinced that I wouldn't get any more than my one shot from earlier in the day. However, about 6:15 or so I noticed things brightening up a bit. So I took a look outside and saw the clouds breaking in the west and making the clouds to the east look rather interesting. With that I was gone. I jumped in the truck and headed out to Sherburne to see if I could have any success.

Above: Love them clouds.
Above: I really, really, really like this one...
Above: I'll never forget taking this one. I watched the scene through the viewfinder and as the sun came out from behind a cloud the rushes went from flat and dull to bright and golden. I could feel the anticipation as I clicked the shutter.

There is almost no post production on these pictures. I sharpened them up in iPhoto and tweaked the saturation ever so slightly to bring the yellows up a bit like I remembered seeing them in the viewfinder.

All in all not a bad hours photography.

More from the blasted heath

I enjoyed myself some much yesterday on the Blue Hill walk at Sherburne that I thought I'd throw a few more pictures at you.

Above: Another burned tree stands out against the blue sky
Above: Logs buried in leaves

Below: dead leaves against burned tree stump

For these two pictures I switched over to Manual to see how things worked. The camera is pretty easy to work in manual mode. It didn't take any reading of the instruction manual to work out how to change aperture and shutter speed and the display on the viewfinder was clear and concise. The Upper picture shot at f13 has great depth of field. and the lower pictures exposure is pretty good considering how the black of the burned wood could dominate things.
Below: I just liked to see all the broken twisted trees about.
There we are. The Sherburne Wildlife refuge is a fascinating place. One that I certainly will return to often in the future to explore and photograph in greater detail.

Macbeth: Act 1, Scene 3: A heath near Forres

William Shakespeare certainly never came to the Sherburne Wildlife Refuge near Princeton, MN. But if ever a place matched the description of "Blasted heath" it is here.

It's very early spring here so everything is still asleep from the winter and some of the trees must have undergone a prescribed burn recently as there are a lot of blackened trees and logs about. All in all its a very eerie place. Eminently suitable for Hollywood to come and remake "The Scottish Play" or some kind of post apocalyptic drama...

Above: It wouldn't take much of a leap of imagination to see the army of Macbeth marching towards us...
Above: Here perhaps, the witches have been turned into trees by some strange supernatural powers
Above and below: Strangely changing the images to black and white doesn't make them any more eerie than the real thing
Below: Bent and twisted trees litter the landscape on the Blue Hill walk.
An awesome place that is only a handful of miles from my home, yet this is only the second time I've been there (shame on me).