TECHNICAL DETAILS
Ice Out Sunset, Shagawa Lake, St. Louis County, Minnesota, 2017
Sony A7ii, Sony Zeiss 16-35mm f/4
Zomei .6 soft graduated ND filter
2 exposure blend: 0.4″ and 2″ at f/16, ISO 100
ICE OUT SUNSET
Up at the cabin mid-week to do the annual adjustment of the heating system that heralds the end of winter, and I found myself with the opportunity to grab some images of a stunning sunset. I’m usually on Burntside Lake for sunsets, but I went into Ely for a bite for dinner with the intention of going down to Sandy Point on Shagawa Lake near town for the occasion. I had been watching the sunset forecast on sunsetwx.com, and it was looking pretty positive for a photogenic end to this early April day. The melt was full on, and everywhere, the ground was fully saturated, runoff pouring down the hillsides, filling the ditches. But the big lakes were still locked up solid with ice, despite open water back home for a couple of weeks. I explored the shoreline on Burntside earlier that day, ice axe in hand, and found it still at considerable depth. And then later I saw two snow machines rocketing across the slushy surface toward Burntside Lodge, so clearly it’s a ways away from break-up.
Shagawa was in a similar state. I had driven around the east end to scope out conditions on my way to town for dinner, and while it seemed a little more rotten than Burntside, there was no evidence of impending break-up there either. So after a burger and beer in town, I made a leisurely drive down to the Sandy Point boat landing. I knew the western exposure there would make for a good sunset spot if the weather provided, and sure enough, it shaped up to be very nice. There were enough clouds to enhance the colors and reflect warm tones on the surface of the ice, a nice contrast to the blues of the frozen lake.
There are a good scattering of rocks and structure along the lake edge on Sandy Point, and the warm sunset tones were nicely lighting this collection of rocks, half in, half out of the ice. With the smaller pebbles between, it made a pleasing composition. The dark shorelines and the dark tones of the rocks were many stops off from the hot horizon, and I knew I would not capture the dynamic range in a single exposure. Perfect opportunity to blend. Even with a multiple exposure approach, I elected to put on a 0.6 soft graduated ND filter to bring down the sky a couple of stops. I was shooting straight into the sunset, so a circular polarizer wasn’t going to add anything. The camera went low to the ground on a tripod with the Sony Zeiss 16-35mm f/4, and I added a remote control to the camera to further minimize movement and vibration for a longer exposure. I bracketed all around, capturing maybe 20 different variations while on site.
When I got back to my large, calibrated monitor at home a few days later, I reviewed the captures and ultimately chose a 0.4″ base exposure at ISO 100 to work with. In Photoshop, I used a 2″ exposure to blend in highlights and some texture along the shorelines, along with picking up a little more of the glow on the faces of the larger rocks. I did two different versions of the final blend, and found this one to be much closer to the original experience. The other, after a night away and later review, was too enhanced and looked ‘HDR-ish’, which is something I try to avoid almost always. The tone-mapped look isn’t at all what I was after here, and a simple layer blend brought the image back to what it looked like in my mind’s eye when witnessing the original scene.
Sometimes, you struggle to make an image. Sometimes, all the plans come together in textbook fashion. This was one of the later. The sunset forecast technology was spot on. I selected a good place from online maps and using The Photographer’s Ephemeris app to check sunset angle from the location. I pre-visualized a final composition and exposure blend, shot accordingly, and achieved what I had set out to capture. It was all so straight forward, and that almost never happens!
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