Monday, October 20, 2008

Moored for the night

Door County, Wisconsin is my favoritest place to be. And autumn is my favoritest time to be there. And the locals that I spoke with while I was there this past weekend say that this year's fall colors are the richest in recent memory. And yet some of my favoritest pictures taken this past weekend of this favoritest place at this favoritest time of year had nothing to do with fall colors. Go figure.

Yes, I shot plenty of trees and colorful leafy scenery while up there, as the previous photo can attest. But I also shot some twilight and night photos and some pretty bodacious Lake Michigan surf - onshore winds on Sunday gusted well above 30-40 mph, kicking up some pretty impressive tubes and at one juncture, threatened to blow me off a rocky crag at Cave Point. I'll go into that later.

But today I'll go with something a little more on the tranquil side. The photo above is of the Anderson Dock in Ephraim on the Green Bay side of the Door peninsula. This shot was taken about a half hour after the sun had set. The sunset itself was pretty dull - the clouds you see in the photo pretty much obscured the view. But I thought that the clouds themselves were interesting enough to risk sticking around to see what would happen as the light faded.

What happened was an interesting juxtaposition of the dark swirling clouds and the calm mirror-like surface of the water in Eagle Harbor. It's as if the safe haven of the dock makes the moored boats immune to the turbulent forces of nature which lurk above. I remember feeling that way when I was a young boy. A storm outside our house may have raged, but all was well because my dad was not afraid.

This was also a poignant weekend because it was one year ago that the raging storms of life claimed my father. He passed away after complications following a kidney surgery. Now it's my turn to stand calm in the storm as my family sees the trees bend and hears the wind howl.

I had a good role model.

Click on this post's headline for image exposure data. Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2008 James Jordan.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

beautiful photo, jim.
such a fitting picture to your words about your father...

Wanda said...

What a touching post....the picture and your narative brought such emotion to my heart.

Anonymous said...

Funny enough people here in CO have been saying that the colors this fall have also been the best in years.

Anonymous said...

Beautiful pictures. Do you sell any of your photos? -john

James said...

John, yes, I've sold a number of prints of my photos. They're custom printed one at a time on high quality photo paper in sizes up to 20x30. I recently sold two to a psychologist in Georgia for the waiting room of her two offices.

Anonymous said...

James, I would like to learn more about purchasing photos. What is the best way to communicate with you without posting my email address? Thanks, John

James said...

John, drop me a line at jjrdns6[at]aol[dot]com.
Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Saw this on Photo Friday.

I too shoot a lot in Door County, and have a slew of the Warehouse photos.

This is a great perspective though. Your patience on the timing really worked with spectacular results.