A French settler, Monte Diamond, named the community after the area’s limestone bluffs. The unincorporated community of Diamond Bluff is located along highway 35, the Great River Road, on the mighty Mississippi River.
Looking West from Diamond Bluff. Treasure Island Casino and the Prairie Island Nuclear Plant is off in the the distance.
Looking East at Diamond Bluff
Mid-river views
Vertical panorama, up river with post sunset colors on the horizon
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Off in the distance, a front was drifting by Red Wing Sunday evening as the sun was setting. The sun was still shinning brightly behind the clouds; shooting rays into the sky. [click on images to enlarge]
A bit later I shot two more panoramas to capture the full length of the cloud bank (21 frames each).
I then combined them both together into a 42 frame panorama
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Pool 4 extends from Lock & Dam 4 located near Alma, Wisconsin upstream to Lock & Dam 3 located near Hager City, Wisconsin.
Unlike the Lower Mississippi, much of the upper river is a series of pools created by a system of 29 locks and dams. The structures were authorized by Congress in the 1930s, and most were completed by 1940. A primary reason for damming the river is to facilitate barge transportation. The dams regulate water levels for the Upper River and play a major part in regulating levels on the Lower Mississippi.
Navigation locks allow towboats, barges, and other vessels to transit the dams. Approximately 1350 kilometers (850 mi), from the head of navigation in Mile 858, Minneapolis, Minnesota down to Cairo, has been made suitable for commercial navigation with a depth of 2.75 meters (9 ft) The agriculture and barge transportation industries have lobbied in the late 20th and early 21st centuries for a multi-billion-dollar project to upgrade the aging lock and dam system. Some environmental groups and advocates of budgetary restraint argue that the project lacks economic justification.
Each lock and dam complex creates a pool upstream of it. There are 29 locks on the Upper Mississippi maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers—from Upper St. Anthony Falls upstream to Chain of Rocks downstream. The locks provide a collective 123 meters (404 ft) of lift. ~wikipedia
These photos were taken just downriver from Lock & Dam 3 at Everts Resort. The sunset and clouds were fantastic this last Friday.
Looking downstream towards Everts Resort
Everts Resort
Looking upstream at Lock & Dam 3 off in the distance. You can see the steam rising from the cooling towers at Prairie Island Nuclear Plant right below the sun.
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A return to Pine Creek this last Thursday evening produced some nice light. I have hoped to capture a decent sunset panorama in the valley – a mix of color and clouds, but no luck yet. The weekends in March haven’t yielded such a situation. It was better than total gray like previous visits. The melt has been on and the water is high again.
Panoramas from a previous trip; you can see how high the water was.
PINE CREEK PANOS – Maiden Rock, WI #aerialphotography |
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I’ve been waiting for the month of March to get here to create some Pine Creek Panos. The sun sets for the entire month over Frontenac State Park; it lines up perfectly with the valley that Pine Creek emanates from.
The first attempt at capturing an aerial sunset from this valley was cloudy unfortunately. Hopefully one weekend this March will yield some amazing color.
This is a really beautiful spot. A very picturesque valley. I am looking forward to capturing more seasons from here.
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The conditions were favorable and I was able to get home at a reasonable enough time to get out and enjoy a midweek sunset. Maiden Rock, WI is another favorite spot; mostly for sunsets given the angle of sunrise throughout the year not being as favorable in this location. There are typically large ice heaves just off the shore, but not this year. Plenty of cracks and other interesting designs in the ice though.
Fellow photog, Jeff Marcus, joined me this beautiful afternoon. We had the beach all to ourselves this fine January afternoon.
The ice on Lake Pepin was smooth and had no snow cover. There were a handful of ice fishermen trying their and people ice skating too all over the bay.
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River Terrace Prairie Scientific and Natural Area at sunset Friday January the 11th, 2019.
Even viewed from a mile away, is a striking feature on the landscape. This site was protected as an SNA for its dry sand – gravel prairie (Southern subtype), which is ranked as an imperiled native plant community in the state. It occurs here on glacial outwash atop an isolated terrace of the Cannon River that rises sharply 30 feet above the surrounding lower terrace.
~MN DNR
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I was a bit late getting home from work and was not so quick to change and load up my photo gear. The sunset forecast for this evening was not great; however the weather was so nice (40+ degrees on the 18th of December). I decided to venture out anyway.
I didn’t have enough time to get where I wanted to. Alternatively I found a n area on top of a bluff along a road with an area of wide-open space. If I wasn’t going to see an resemblance of a sunset, it could be viewed from here.
When the conditions are not necessarily what you are hoping for in a typical sunset, there are options. Abundant clouds in motion are perfect for time-lapse. I only wish I had gotten there sooner and had more time. Just under and hour of shooting yielded 5 whole seconds of video.
I used the Syrp Genie Mini Camera Motion Control – Wireless to achieve the rotation. An excellent way to introduce motion into your time-lapse sequences.
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A landscape photographers constant wish is just the right amount of clouds to make the scene interesting. When that happens, consider yourself fortunate. Today was not one of those days. The scene that can unfold can still be beautiful…if you wait for it. The skies could not have been any more clear or bright.
Just like sunrises with the best color coming before hand, so goes sunsets with rich color happening after the set.
It took a few minutes after sunset for the color to change and pop.
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