Category: photograhy

the must-have shot

short on brains and bug spray,

i waltzed into the bog;

i had to get a picture of

the dead trees in the fog,

when suddenly, the sky was filled

with skeeters, through and through;

they got into my ears and nose–

behind my glasses, too!

and as I did the swatting dance,

i must have looked so weird

with those crumpled

little corpses strewn

across my once-white beard,

and yet i got the must-have shot

despite the bugs and mud–

and the feeling like i was low

a quart or two on blood,

so now, on my adventures,

i bring bug spray by the ton,

for i won’t soon forget the morn

that skeeters almost won.

–photos by me

Loon Feeds Loonlet

I walked down to the lake this morning and had the pleasure of watching a mother loon feed breakfast to her fluffy little loonlet (yes, that’s what they’re called).

She’d dive down and disappear for half a minute or so, and it didn’t take long before she came up with a fish. And another. And another.

Here, she’s “handing off” a crayfish (we used to call them crawdads when I was a kid) to her little one. Whenever she came up with a crayfish, she would knock it around and whip it back and forth to subdue it before feeding it to the youngster.

–Photos by me

Shot of the Day 7/9/24

A blue heron is dwarfed by the world’s largest floating loon on Silver Lake in Virginia, MN. The loon, unlike the heron, is tethered by a cable to the bottom of the lake, and only comes out of the water in winter.

I don’t know what it is about us Iron Rangers, but we also have the world’s largest hockey stick in Eveleth, a couple of miles from here.

–Photos by Aaron