An Early Winter at Amnicon Falls State Park

In mid November I stopped at Amnicon Falls State Park. It has been snowing most of the week so I expected to get some black and white photos with the dark trees and white snow. As it turned out the tannin colored waters and snow created some beautiful colors so I stuck with color photography for the day.

Covered Horton Bridge

People sometimes ask me why I keep going back to the same places to photograph. This day reminded me why. I don’t recall ever seeing Amnicon Falls with as much tannin colored snow and ice. It was a beautiful visit.

Snake Pit Falls

Amnicon River

Spring Melt and Amnicon Falls State Park

It was a warm day last Thursday so we drove over to Amnicon Falls State Park to see how the spring melt was coming. There was still some ice along the shores and across the river in a few places but the river was flowing nicely.

 

Late Winter at Amnicon Falls State Park

The last week of winter we drove over to Amnicon Falls State Park to check on late winter conditions at the park. There had been a 6 inch snowfall overnight and we were the first ones to arrive at the park that morning. The sun was not out yet although it was trying to peak through the clouds.

Winter at Amnicon Falls State Park

It snowed over the weekend so we decided to stop at Amnicon Falls State Park and check on conditions. It was beautiful with fresh snow covering the Amnicon River and wet show hanging from the trees. There were a number of strange ice hollow formations rising up out of the river. It looked like someone had inserted a stovepipe in the river.

Horton Covered Bridge

Ice Formation

Horton Covered Bridge

The Influence of Place on my Photography

Maroon Bells

I was thinking the other day about the influence of place on my approach to photography. In my early years I spent most of my time in Colorado, Washington State, and traveling the world. At that time I concentrated on landscape photography. More recently I made many trips to the Badlands and Black Hills of South Dakota as well as a number of trips to the Canyonlands of Colorado, Utah and Arizona. I continued to photograph mainly landscapes.

Bee

After I retired I started to spend more time photographing around my 80 acre farm. There were no grand landscapes to photograph. In fact, I live amongst a pine and hardwood forest so I’m lucky if I can see the  sunrise and sunset. This has definitely had an impact on the way I see things to photograph. I’ve become much more engaged in looking for and photographing what I call intimate nature.

Winter Flowers

I started out documenting what I saw as a walked around the farm. The more I spent walking the farm the more interested I became in photographing small objects. This lead to the purchase of a Macro lens so I could better photograph insects, small flowers, leaves and other small objects. This interest has carried beyond the farm. As I travel I find myself spending more time in intimate nature photography. Rather than photographing entire waterfalls I spend just as much or time photographing small sections of the waterfall to capture water running over a rock or the sunlight reflecting off  a small portion of the falls.

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

I also spent more time watching birds. The more I watched them the more I became interested in photographing them. I purchased a 200-500mm lens so that I could get more intimate photographs of them in their natural environment. This led to a greater interest in avian photography in general and I started adding wildlife areas to my travel destinations.

Lower Falls Amnicon Falls State Park

Covered Horton Bridge Amnicon Falls State Park

After a year of photographing around the farm I realized that what I was doing was documenting nature throughout the seasons in one small place on the planet. This also influenced the my approach to photography as I visited other sites. I started visiting the same sites at different times of the year so I could capture the site as it changed throughout the seasons.

The farm has also influenced the way I organize my entire website. Generally photographers organize their website by topics such as waterfalls, fall colors etc. I’ve arranged my website by location and as I continue to visit many of the same sites at different times of the year I’ve also started to document them by seasons. I would like to feel that viewers of my website can use it for planning trips during various times of the year and be able to see what they might find when they visit the location at a particular time of the year.

You can see more of my photography at Philip Schwarz Photography.