This is a little bit of the Ice Age Trail (Grandfather Falls segment) that I love. It’s choked in roots and rocks that will break your ankle if you’re not careful. It’s always dim here because of the tree canopy - balsam fir and white cedars mostly, with the occasional yellow birch thrown in for kicks. There is a lot of runoff from rains and snow melt on the left side and the river is not far on the left. It’s a very popular spot and so the paths are worn and packed and the roots shiny and bare of bark. Mosses are lush and mushrooms abound. Deep snow transforms the landscape dramatically, so there is something interesting in every season.
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As trail shots go, it’s a little odd since the path itself is sort of obscured with the roots and rocks, but that’s what I love about it so … does it work?
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
Tripod w/CPL
Lr processed for some lens correction and a little crop to eliminate edge issues. Worked with color sliders to manage balance and tonal ranges. Graduated and radial filters to manage tonalities and focus attention throughout the image.
It works for me! I feel I’m right there on the trail, with my vision a little distracted from the grand scene by trying to keep my eye where I’m stepping, which makes the image very dynamic, I think.
Thanks @Diane_Miller - Yup, that’s exactly it on this part. You have to stop to look around you. Plus there’s the river going between and over some huge rocks and it makes a hell of a racket. This is a view off trail looking along a seam of bedrock turned on its side. I’ve been photographing this little bit of woods for years and do it almost every time I walk here. Sometimes I zoom in to the leaning trees, but this time it was all about the leading line and the things crossing it.
In the second image I get more of a sense that I am looking upward toward the end of the bedrock seam, whereas in the first one, I feel as if I am being forced to look down even though the trail is winding upward. I guess in this sense, I am experiencing what a hiker would in watching where I stepped, but I also find it a bit disconcerting because I want to look up first. In both scenes, squatting down a bit further with the tripod would still allow for the foreground rocks to lead the eye into the scene without 'forcing" the eye downward then upward.
I had to google earth to see this Ice Age Trail and being a southern boy, Wisconsin seems odd to be mid-west as I always think of Iowa, Nebraska area as mid. That’s what I get for thinking.
Personally I don’t get the whole mid-west thing. It isn’t mid-west, it’s just plain mid. Lots of us here don’t think of ourselves as mid-westerners, but Great Lakers. 2 of the great lakes border Wisconsin and a third border is made up of two rivers; the St. Croix and the Mississsippi. The border to the south is just a line on a map.
I tried getting down to shoot these and the perspective is too flattened for me. You lose the trail almost completely and since that’s the only organizing element present, it’s a tough loss. The Ice Age Trail basically follows a giant glacier moraine that created distinctive geological formations. The last glacier, the Wisconsin Glaciation, covered most of the state, but the Driftless Zone was untouched, hence the name. It is spread over WI, MN & IA and is VERY different to the rest of the state geology.
Living in a virtually flat as an ironing board environment, I rarely have your issue. In fact, quite the opposite in building a decent lead-in foreground for Milky way shots, etc. I’ve visited up around Taylor’s Falls on the St Croix River and got my first taste of a deer fly bite, which I shall never wish upon another human being. I have friends in Skokie, and Green Bay and Madison so if I ever go for another visit, will make this Ice Age Trail a must.
Come on Kris, you were from New Hampshire, you know anything west of New Jersey is the mid-west
I like the composition, the sense of depth, and I think your processing of color, and contrast is right on the money. But the perspective distortion of the 13mm makes worry that that trees are falling over to the left. I suspect you went this wide to get as much of the scene in as you could down the path, which is good. But I would try some perspective correction to at least get the center tree more straight.
This works just fine for me Kris; in fact this does a beautiful job of taking me down the trail and into the scene. I like the fact that the trail disappears as it winds it way behind the trees and it makes me wonder about what is just around the bend. The lean of the trees doesn’t bother me as much as the darker one along the upper left side. I don’t know how much work it would be, but I would try and clone it out if possible. I also enjoyed the background story on the geology of the area.
Thanks @Chris_Calohan, @Ed_McGuirk & @Ed_Lowe - was out on a different segment of the IAT yesterday and even only a few miles away, the change in terrain was pretty big. Just about any segment has something going for it. An old cellar hole featured yesterday.
The trees do lean, actually. When I go this wide I always check my level and use distortion correction in post to try to combat the strangeness. It’s true about everything west of Jersey though.
It’s a cool trail and leads from the penstocks and the turbines back up to the main dam. The boulders and ledges are impressive. Tough to shoot, but great to take in with the roar of the water filling your ears.
