Go See Do Explore

Epic Michigan Road Trip: Lighthouse Hunting

On August 15, 2016

In Camping, Michigan, Project: State Parks, Road Trip

In Sault Ste. Marie I picked up a Michigan Lighthouse Map which shows every lighthouse in Michigan and whether or not its open to the public. So, when we were making the drive down the Lake Huron coast, we made a point to stop at all the lighthouses we could. We managed to stop at 7 lighthouses on our way down south including three in Presque Isle, two of which we climbed. The above photo is of the Tawas Point Lighthouse.

For our night on Lake Huron we stayed at Hoeft State Park in Rogers City (south of Cheboygan). This park surprised me. We were there the Friday before the Fourth of July and I was expecting it to be kind of rowdy but it wasn’t at all. It seemed to be mostly families, a lot of which had bikes and were making use of Huron Sunrise Trail. The sites were big and wooded, but the bathrooms didn’t live up to Hartwick Pines (this was the theme of the trip). If I was looking to stay near Lake Huron, I come back here in a heartbeat!

About the Photo:
I got incredibly lucky with this picture! There were no Photoshop tricks or external flash used here. We happened to get to the lighthouse when it was sprinkling a little, but a bigger rain was definitely on its way. To the west, the sun was not covered by clouds with made for this awesome cloudy background with evening light on the lighthouse. This was a single RAW exposure with basic edits done in Lightroom.

Camera Gear:
Nikon D3100 with 18-55 kit lens and polarizer, handheld

Date Taken:
July 2, 2016

Thanks for stopping by! If you like my photos be sure to “like” my Facebook Page, follow me on Instagram, and Flickr! To see inside my camera bag, check out my Gear Page. To plan your Lighthouse Exploration Trip, visit MichiganLighthouseGuide.com. To book your stay at Hoeft State Park visit the Michigan DNR.

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Wordless Wednesday: Locks Worker

By Ashleigh

On August 10, 2016

In Michigan, Wordless Wednesday

Epic Michigan Road Trip: The Soo

By Ashleigh

On August 8, 2016

In Camping, Michigan, Road Trip

I have wanted to visit Sault Ste. Marie (which means the Rapids of the Saint Mary’s River, thank you Google!) for as long as I can remember. Since I was little, I’ve heard about how my grandfather guarded the locks during the Korean War and yet, I had never seen them. So, when we were planning our road trip, I added a stop in the Soo. After doing some research, I discovered that the best way to experience the locks was on a Soo Locks Boat Tour. I always enjoy these kinds of tours because they give you interesting facts and history of a location. This tour had so many facts, I barely remember any of them, but getting to go up and down in the locks was an experience I will never forget. For those of you who are unfamiliar, the Soo Locks were built to bypass a 21ft waterfall on the St. Mary’s River that runs from Lake Superior to Lake Huron. Unless you have your own boat, the Soo Locks Boat Tour is the only way to ride through the locks. I highly recommend it!

The nearest state park to Sault Ste. Marie is in Brimley which is a 20 minute drive to town. So, I started exploring the private options. There are several private campgrounds in Sault Ste Marie, but only Aune Osborne allows you to reserve your spot in advance (although you have to call, they don’t take online reservations) and as I mentioned in a previous post, that is very important to me. I am not wasting vacation time driving around trying to find a place to sleep. The biggest thing this campground has going for it is the location. It is right on the river, the Soo Locks Boat Tour dock was two doors down. Waterfront sites are available (although not to tents because of “liability reasons”. I’ve posted the pictures from Straits right? This seems nuts to me) so you can watch the freighters go by while you sit around the campfire. That is pretty unique. Also, the bathrooms were the cleanest and fanciest of the trip, although they are locked which caused me a little headache trying to remember the code to get in. The downside and the reason why I usually stick to public campgrounds, we were one of three sites with a tent. I could get over this if it wasn’t for the fact that the other campers looked at us like we’d slept in an igloo or something. It was an interesting experience. I asked myself if I would stay here again and that’s really hard for me to answer. If could get a waterfront spot, I would be back in a heartbeat.

About the Photo:
This was a single RAW exposure taken on the Soo Locks Boat Tour and with basic edits done in the Lightroom. I was trying to highlight the architecture of the building along with the engineering marvel that is the locks.

Camera Gear:
Nikon D3100 with 18-55mm kit lens, handheld

Date Taken:
July 1, 2016

Thanks for stopping by! If you like my photos be sure to “like” my Facebook Page, follow me on Instagram, and Flickr! To see inside my camera bag, check out my Gear Page. For more information about The Soo Locks Boat Tour and Aune Osborne Campground, visit SaultSteMarie.com.

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Wordless Wednesday: Upper Falls

By Ashleigh

On August 3, 2016

In Michigan, Project: State Parks

Epic Michigan Road Trip: Chasing Waterfalls

By Ashleigh

On August 1, 2016

In Camping, Hiking, Michigan, National Parks & Places, Project: State Parks, Road Trip

The Upper Peninsula is home to roughly 200 waterfalls and many of them can be found on the drive from Houghton to Munising. Some of these waterfalls are in parks with trails and parking areas, while others can be found on the side of the road or even in subdivisions. My favorite was probably Scott Falls (unfortunately, none of my pictures of it turned out) which is just on the side of M-28. The falls were just at a trickle when we were there, but I liked how I could get right up to the falls and put my hand in the water. A lot more of the falls used to allow people to walk behind them but because of the erosion, now there are fences keeping people back.

In Munising, we stayed at the Bay Furnace Campground, which is a rustic National Forest Campground right across from the Kewadin Casino in Christmas. I booked Bay Furnace because it was one of the few campgrounds in the area that you can book in advance. I would’ve liked to stay in the Pictured Rocks, but I was worried that there wouldn’t be any availabilities and we’d waste time driving around for a place to stay.

About the Photo:
The above photo was taken at Wagner Falls. One of the tough things about this shot is that I knew I wanted to blur the motion, so I was going to need a long exposure. As I mentioned above, a lot of the waterfalls have walkways and railings to keep foot traffic from eroding the falls, this makes space for a tripod tricky, especially with 2 photographers camping out. I chose to leave the tripod in the car and use the railings to support the camera. Compositionally, its not the best approach, but I felt like I could crop it and make it work. This was a single RAW 1/3 second exposure, with basic edits done in Lightroom. Because of the time of day we were at the falls, there were some blown out spots, so I pulled it into Photoshop and used content-aware autofill to bring back the texture to the water.

Camera Gear:
Nikon D3100 with 18-55mm kit lens, with a polarizer

Date Taken:
June 29, 2016

Thanks for stopping by! If you like my photos be sure to “like” my Facebook Page, follow me on Instagram, and Flickr! To see inside my camera bag, check out my Gear Page. To plan your UP Waterfall tour visit, UPTravel.com. To make a reservation at the Bay Furnace Campground, visit the National Forest Service.

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Wordless Wednesday: Tree on Rock

By Ashleigh

On July 27, 2016

In Michigan, Wordless Wednesday

Epic Michigan Road Trip: The Keewenaw

By Ashleigh

On July 25, 2016

In Camping, Michigan, Project: State Parks, Road Trip

After leaving St. Ignace we began our trip up to the Keewenaw. It was our longest drive of the trip and we made it longer but going down to Manistique and Palms Book State Park to see the Big Spring which I will write about at some point. McLain State Park has beautiful views of Lake Superior and you can catch both the sunrise and sunset at the campground. Views aside, it is one of the strangest State Park campgrounds that I’ve ever stayed at. Its biggest problem is that road that used to run the loop around the campground eroded off of a cliff into Lake Superior. So, while I’m assuming you used to be able to drive the whole way around, now you can only go one way and to get back to the front of the park or to the beach, you actually have to leave the park and drive a half mile back past the entrance booth. This is especially frustrating to those in campers and RVs who actually have to leave the park and come back in to use the sanitation station. The park has a camp store, which on the map is listed at the information booth but is actually at the beach which is a good two miles from the campground. Also, when compared to Hartwick Pines and Straits, the restrooms at McLain leave something to be desired.

About the Photo:
The campground at McLain State Park has these benches along the cliff overlooking Lake Superior and when I first saw them, I knew I had the subject for a sunset shot. This shot started with merging 3 RAW exposures using Lightroom’s HDR funtion. From there I adjusted the exposure, contrast, and color temperature.

Camera Gear:
Nikon D3100 with 18-55mm kit lens, on a tripod.

Date Taken:
June 28, 2016

Thanks for stopping by! If you like my photos be sure to “like” my Facebook Page, follow me on Instagram, and Flickr! To see inside my camera bag, check out my Gear Page. To plan your visit to McLain State Park visit the Michigan DNR.

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Wordless Wednesday: Lady Mackinac

By Ashleigh

On July 20, 2016

In Michigan, Wordless Wednesday

Epic Michigan Road Trip: Mackinac Island

By Ashleigh

On July 18, 2016

In Michigan, Road Trip

Visiting Mackinac Island is like taking a step back in time. No cars are allowed on the island, so everyone either walks, rides a bike, or gets around by horse drawn carriage. One of the most popular things to do is to rent bikes and ride the 8.2 mile trail around the island. We rented a tandem bike from Ryba’s bike rentals. I had never ridden a tandem before but once I got used to it, it was a lot of fun, and now I want one! It was nice to not have to do all the work myself!

There are three ferry companies that transport guests to the island. We chose Arnol d Line, which has the slowest boats but the cheapest fares (Update: at the end of 2016, Star Line bought all of Arnold’s assets and now operate the slow boats) . We were able to get a 2-day pass for the price of one round trip on the other lines. We weren’t in a hurry, so the extra 15 minutes weren’t that big of a deal to us. The first day, we went to the island from Mackinaw City and the second day from St. Igance. Arnold had more and later departures to and from Mackinaw City, but the ride from St. Ignace was a lot more scenic since you actually drive around the island.

About the Photo:
This shot was taken from the ferry on the way to the island from St. Ignace on a foggy morning. This was a single RAW exposure edited with an Improve Photography Black & White preset in Lightroom.

Camera Gear:
Nikon D3100 with the 55-200 kit lens, handheld

Date Taken:
June 26, 2016

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Chris Corner #12: The Tent Shot with the Mackinac Bridge

By Chris

On July 16, 2016

In Chris' Corner, Michigan

Tent at the Mackinac Bridge by Christopher Mowers on 500px.com

From the moment I knew we were going to stay at Straits State Park in St. Ignace, and that we would have a campsite right on the water, I knew that I wanted to take a photo of my illuminated tent with the Mackinac Bridge in the background. This post will walk through the process I took to come out with this image.

Planning:
I took the photo during late blue hour because I wanted a relatively even exposure between the lights on the bridge and the illuminated tent. I considered using my speedlight in the tent, and that may have yielded a better illumination, but in the end I decided to use a few LED flashlights, as I didn’t want to be obnoxious in the campsite with a flashing tent. I walked around the site to get the best composition, and then set up my tripod.

Shooting:
It would be very easy to get all of this (and more) in frame with a lens on the wider end of the spectrum. This was my first instinct; however, my first peek in the viewfinder reminded me of a very real issue: when shooting below approximately 50 mm, background objects appear increasingly smaller as compared to how they are viewed by the human eye. In other words, at 18mm, everything is in frame, but there is a huge tent and a tiny bridge. This is no good.

The solution to this problem is to go telephoto. Above 50mm or so, objects in the background appear larger than they do to the human eye, and the greater the focal length, the closer one will get to a point where background and foreground are nearly identical in perceived size.

The telephoto presents a second issue though, and that is that I could not back up far enough to get everything in frame. We have a technological solution to this though, and a relatively easy one to execute since I was on a tripod. I started on the left and took an exposure, then I panned until I had about 2/3 of the frame as new stuff and I took another exposure. I repeated this process until I had everything covered, with a decent amount on either side in case I had to crop due to my technique not being perfect.

My exposures were at f/11, ISO 400, for 30 seconds.

The Lightroom Editing:
The first step was to stitch everything together, which is easily accomplished in Lightroom. Then I cropped, and made simple exposure and contrast adjustments, as well as some color corrections.

The Photoshop Edit:
This was the time consuming bit of the edit. I’m just going to list everything that I did.

Using content aware fill, I removed the branding from the tent
Using luminosity masks, I did the following
- Corrected some exposure issues in the bridge and water
- Brushed noise reduction into the shadows
Using a high pass filter, cloned and emphasized texture in the tent
Using the camera raw filter, I added vignette and other minor finishing touches

So that’s how I got the shot. It’s not perfect, but I think it tells a great story and I learned a lot. I am confident that the next time I am in this kind of situation I can come out with something even better.

Date Taken:
June 26, 2016

Thank you for reading. You can see my best work on 500px and can also find pictures of the “trying my hardest to be good at this” type on Flickr or Pixoto.

Also, be sure to like the Go See Do Facebook Page, and follow Ashleigh on Instagram and Flickr! Check out our Gear page to see inside our camera bag!