Spring 2024 Photography
Hello readers! Spring has passed and we have arrived at our unofficial start of Summer! Compared to spring’s of years past, this year has certainly been extra busy for me photographically. While some of this season was well planned and organized, other parts of the season took me by surprise. This is certainly a Spring for the photography record books.
So without further ado, here are the photography highlights for the Spring of 2024!
If you are interested in a print of any of the images in this blog, check out my pricing for standard print sizes, and contact me to place an order or receive a quote for special printing requests.
One of the joys of the changing seasons, is the return of thunderstorms!
I am definitely one of those people who loves the feeling of sitting by the window, listening to the rain while reading a book. But before I’m doing that, if there is a hint of flashing lights on the horizon, I’m outside for as long as I can manage, trying to capture photographs of lightning before the rain gets too heavy or the lightning too dangerous. To the right is my lucky result of the first storm of the season.
As we move back into Spring, I also prepare myself for art show season again. In this age of smart phones and technology, it’s so common for us to snap photos willy-nilly, and then eventually forget about those sights and memories as they disappear into the history and storage of our devices. I love printing my work, because it’s not meant to be stored on my computer and phone. Photos are meant to be printed and placed in a frame and hung on our walls. There is a notable difference in looking at a physical printed image vs. looking at it on a phone screen, whether you believe it or not, there is.
If you are interested in a print of any of the images in this blog, check out my pricing for standard print sizes, and contact me to place an order or receive a quote for special printing requests.
My Annual Visit to the Meijer Garden Butterfly Exhibit
In mid-March, I made my annual trip to the butterfly exhibit at Meijer Garden. Its a tradition for me to go to this exhibit, not only for the chance to photograph butterflies that are not native to North America, but also as a test for myself to see if I can create some different and hopefully better photographs from year to year. It’s good practice for me to see how or if I’ve improved throughout the years.
First off, I do sometimes take shots of the plants in the conservatory while looking for the photo opportunities. This year I really decided to fill the frame of each shot when I found plants that I liked.
And of course, there’s always the butterflies:
With that, I’d say that’s an another good visit to the exhibit in the books.
A Surprise Snow!
The weekend after the butterflies, and mainly due to my inattentiveness to the weather forecasts, I was pleasantly surprised by a winter snow storm on the next Friday. I was working that day so I didn’t get out for photography, but fortunately it snowed heavily for the majority of the day. The amount of snow we got was perfect for a Saturday morning outing, so I made sure that was my first activity of the day, as the sunshine was quickly melting the snow. Here’s what I captured that day from that brief winter wonderland.
Now after this little blessing of fun in the snow, I took a short break from photography the following Easter weekend, because after that I have finally made it to the event that I’ve been waiting for for years!
Eclipse Chasing in New York State
What started as a loose plan originating back in 2017, in April I added New York state to my portfolio in my attempt to capture the total solar eclipse. Granted, I could have gotten into the path of totality by traveling to Indiana or Ohio and stayed closer to home, but I decided to go to New York so that on the chance that the Eclipse wasn’t visible due to weather or cloud cover, I could add another state to my portfolio and plan some other excursions to see some new locations that aren’t doable as a day trip.
Given the magnitude of this trip, I don’t want to flood this blog post with an onslaught of stories and photos that eclipse (pun intended) the rest of the Spring season, we do also have Tulip Time in springtime after all, so the New York trip will get it’s own blog post, as well as it’s own portfolio on the site of which I will add future photos to when I eventually add the big city to my portfolio.
Click here to see my blog post designated to the trip itself, adventures and eclipse shots and all.
Click here to see the Portfolio page for the New York landscapes specifically.
To tide you over until you visit the trip blog and New York portfolio, here’s a test shot I took with my special solar filter a month before the eclipse for practice.
Tulip Time 2024
Unfortunately for me this year, while I had an incredible time photographing New York and the eclipse, I dropped the ball on Tulip Time. With the lackluster winter we had, the tulips bloomed early this year, so by the time the festival was upon is, the flowers were mostly stems, or they looked very poor with wilted or spotty looking petals. So sadly I didn’t get a lot of photos this year.
When the Unexpected Actually Happens
With the disappointing tulip crop this year, nature herself more than made up for it at the end of the festival. On that Friday, I started seeing reports that the KP Index was really high, foretelling a high chance of seeing the Northern Lights in our area. At first I just brushed it off since in past experiences when the news would talk about it, either it was only slightly higher than normal and the chances would go from 0% to maybe 25%, or the cloud cover wouldn’t be conducive to viewing them anyway.
But as the evening progressed and the sky darkened, the skies were clear, and I began to think, “Maybe there’s a chance?” I got my camera and tripod ready just in case, and then at around 10:30pm, Facebook started to explode with excitement and I went outside.
At first glance to my eye, it looked like your typical night sky, and we (my parents and I) were a little irritated because of course there were farmers working in the nearby field with the brightest spotlights known to man blasting from their equipment. Fortunately they pulled out and were leaving shortly after I fired off my first shot. What to the naked eye looked like a typical starry night, my camera recorded everything I wasn’t seeing. It revealed a glow that enveloped the entire sky with a rich lavender hue. I see that sometimes when photographing lightning, but this was different. It was like God cranked the Saturation meter to 100. Not long after that, the lights really started to burst forth. I could see them with my eye, but it looked like a faint light that looked almost like a straight line cloud at times. It was thru the camera that the rich greens, reds, and yellows came alive.
Image Right: Dancing Lights
As the sky exploded around me, I swear it was like living in a dream. I know there’s ways to explain this phenomenon with science, but to me, this is miracle of nature that points straight to God. You can’t look at this and tells me this just happens, to me this is yet another amazing example that shows that this event, world, and universe was designed by our creator and not just pure happenstance.
Going on my first Solo Camping Trip
This year I tried something new, I went camping as a means of a photo trip! Now, some of the people who know me may say “Jason, what are you talking about? I know you’ve been camping before!” True, but that was in a trailer in a campground with electricity, pools, and with my family. This was tent camping in a National Forest campground with no electricity, vault toilets, and no showers. Being my first time trying this, I did a 3 day weekend trip near the Au Sable River on the upper east side of the state. I wanted to try a cheaper option for staying farther away from home in order to capture photos in a new area, but also have the luxury of only being 3 1/2 hours away from home so if the camping part didn’t pan out, I could either tough it out, or leave earlier if I discovered I wasn’t cut out for that style of camping.
Upon my arrival to the campsite, the host immediately warned me of ticks, coyotes, and bears! But fortunately, the only one of those I encountered was one tick, and it was only on the eventual drive home at the end of the trip and it wasn’t on me and easily disposed of.
But before I get too far ahead of myself…
I set up my meager campsite for the weekend. It was very bare bones, just my tent, a sleeping mat, inflatable pillow, sleeping bag, and a lantern for reading my book. I didn’t set up a fancy picnic table arrangement or lit any fires in the evenings, the purpose of this site was purely for sleeping and changing my clothes in private. The remainder of the trip I basically lived in my car, at least when I wasn’t on the hiking trails.
After getting set up, a passing thunderstorm was actually going through the area. While I was fortunate not to get rained on, I took the opportunity to explore around the campground and get a few shots in the forest and along the AuSable river as the storm passed by.
After that, I ventured out to capture the locations I had planned for the first day of the trip, Oscoda Beach Park, and the Tuttle Wildlife Marsh area. As is my want, I didn’t do much scouting in advance as I like to be surprised by what I find when I’m in a new place. Unfortunately, while both places were beautiful with the landscapes and stormy skies, they were very quick visits for me. So I didn’t get any blow-your-socks-off shots at either location, but they were worth the visit and the adventure for sure.
After the marsh visit, the day was still young and I was slightly cursing myself for not planning a little better. But, as I was going to these places, I drove past some placed that I had photographed before back in the autumn of 2020. To fill in the rest of the day, I decided to revisit these places and get some spring/summer-y landscapes of the Lumberman’s Monument site and Iargo Springs.
Lumberman’s Overlook (2024)
With that, day 1 of this trip came to a close. I returned the site after stopping for some food and got ready to bed down for the night. Unfortunately for me, in the campsite next to mine I was “blessed” with a group of college-aged kids also on a weekend trip, and they seemed to have difficulty understanding the Quiet Time hours of the campground. Maybe the jello shots and other forms of libations I’m sure they were partaking in had something to do with that. Needless to stay, I was up until 2 AM listening to their revelry and probably didn’t fall into a deep sleep until 3 or 4 AM.
Then of course as it tends to happen when I’m sleeping anywhere other than my own bed, I woke up the next day around 7 AM. Rather than attempt to get a few more minutes of restless “sleep”, I powered up on copious amounts of Diet Coke (my only source of caffeine since I’m not a coffee drinker) and hit the road for a full day of hiking and photography.
The day started off with thick fog, so I took another walk around the campground trails for some foggy woodland shots, but I narrowed the selection down to one shot as the fog was actually thicker in the campground in the gaps created by the road looping through the site vs in the actual woods. From there, my first stop was Harrisville State Park. Which I had hoped was a big park with lots of hiking trails, but instead was basically another campground on the shores of Lake Huron.
The next stop was actually a spur of the moment add on as I saw I sign for Sturgeon Point Lighthouse as I was leaving Harrisville. I also stopped here back on that 2020 trip, so I felt the urge to stop again. Unfortunately the fog was still heavy at this time of the day, so it wasn’t the prettiest view of the site this time around.
From there, the rest of the day was basically a bunch of stops at various nature preserves and parks. All in all, there wasn’t much variety between the locations, I mainly hit them all up so that I could have some locational shots for my mosaic project that I’m working on. But I was fortunate enough to have a few hidden gems reveal themselves to me throughout the remainder of the day.
I drove from place to place and hiked the day away until eventually it was time to drive back to the campground before it got too dark (didn’t want to have to take out an insurance claim for hitting a bear with my car in the dark, lol). Then as I half expected would happen and half hoped wouldn’t happen, my neighbors where repeating their raucous behavior from the night before, so I again only received about 3-4 hours of sleep on the 2nd night of my camping trip.
The next morning was the day to pack up and check out of the campsite. I could have stopped for some more photography on this day before going home, but after 2 nights of little sleep, lots of hiking, and no showers, it was time to go home. Aside from the tick I smushed as it crawled across my dashboard, the drive home was safe and straightforward with no stops along the way. I wouldn’t say this trip yielded any award winning photos, but it was fun, I got a lot of exercise, and now I know I’d definitely do this again with a few tweaks to my preparations next time for some improved comfort and safety (such as bear spray and ear plugs for noisy neighbors, lol). And of course, at the end of it all, the best reward was the feeling of that shower when I got home, and crawling into my bed that night after 2 nights in a tent. Heavenly!
The Final Pop of Spring
As Memorial Day approached and the unofficial start of summer was almost upon us, I took my mother on an outing to visit the poppy field down in Fennville, MI. My Aunt had called me the day before to tell me that they were looking good, and given my luck with the tulips this year, I didn’t want let this opportunity pass me by either. It had also been a couple years since I visited the field, so I wanted to take a crack at it to see how I’d view and capture the flowers now compared to how I did it in 2017. So to close out my spring photography adventures, and also this blog post, here are my shots from the field this year.
I hope you enjoy this recap of my photography this season. Now we dive into summer. Be sure to follow me on Facebook for daily photo postings, as well as timeline posting of my photography adventures as they happen.
Thanks for Reading!
Bible Verse Images of the Season
If you are interested in a print of any of the images in this blog, check out my pricing for standard print sizes, and contact me to place an order or receive a quote for special printing requests.