p.1 #1 · Ice Caves - Apostle Islands National Lakeshore
Looks like I posted my Ice Caves shots to the wrong forum, sorry about that. I guess I usually hang out on the Nature & Wildlife forum so I posted there, when it should have been here. Not reposting everything but thought I would put a few in here for those that don't visit that forum.
These are just a few of the many shots from my weekend up at the Apostle Islands National Lake Shore Ice Caves, well I guess Sea Caves coated in Ice. It was a great experience, but bitter cold. Getting ready to go out before sunrise I had my gloves off for only a few minutes and my hands were so cold I couldn't feel them. I though it was going to be a short day, but I had to go out.
I was the first one to the parking lot Saturday and the trek out was unbelievably hard. I thought I was going to have to turn back. I had assumed since so many had been there previously (thousands) there would be massive packed trails. Well when I got there you couldn't tell where any trails were. It was crazy at times thigh deep in snow and could barely move.
It was worth it though, I had the place pretty much to myself for several hours really no one in the way until after noon when I was heading back and by then there were many hundreds of people out there.
These few shots are all HDR (some of my first ever attempts at this) All were shot at ISO 200 on a Tripod most were at f/16 and for fairly slow shutter speeds of 1/4 sec to 1/2 sec give or take a bit. All shot on a D300s with 17-55mm f/2.8 lens.
p.1 #7 · Ice Caves - Apostle Islands National Lakeshore
Thanks all for the comments. It was an interesting place to shoot and has been getting tons of visitors as of late, so I suspect we'll be seeing more shots from here.
p.1 #12 · Ice Caves - Apostle Islands National Lakeshore
These are insane! I was there last year and it sure didn't look like this I wasn't aware that this actually happenes. Almost hard to believe since when I was there that water was ROUGH. Thanks for sharing, I love each one of them.
p.1 #16 · Ice Caves - Apostle Islands National Lakeshore
That's a really cool location. I'm drawn to #2 in particular. I love the opening with all the ice hanging from it. It has a bit of a HDR feel to it though. Was that from doing HDR, or from some heavy shadow recovery? Perhaps the clarity setting was bumped up? If you have multiple exposures to work with, I bet you could manually blend that one to give it even more depth and make it feel even more 3D.
p.1 #18 · Ice Caves - Apostle Islands National Lakeshore
Thanks all again for the comments.
@Ben Horne - Yes these 3 are all HDR I tried several different things out there including multiple off camera flashes for some of my internal cave shots. Those I didn't repost here there are a few in the original post on the Wildlife Forum. These shots were my first HDR attempts so it's something I'm still learning and working with to keep it under control but provide me with the DR I really want.
I wasn't aware that this actually happenes. Almost hard to believe since when I was there that water was ROUGH. Thanks for sharing, I love each one of them.