You may recall that a few weeks ago I left my “photo babies” at a medical facility in Grand Marais, Minnesota, along the shores of Lake Superior. (For a refresher, read this post.)

Russ and I were able to visit my babies earlier this week at an afternoon reception for the photographers and artists whose works are featured on the walls of the facility. I was excited to visit my images and see where they were hung. They seemed well cared for and happy in their new surroundings. My four large images were together on one wall and the other smaller ones lined a different wall farther down the hallway.

For a while, I stood near my images, a fly on the wall listening to peoples’ comments about my photos. Hearing their compliments and theories was fun. Meeting members of the medical facility board and the other artists was an added benefit.

This was my first reception, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. We struck up conversations with several photographers who proudly took us on hallway tours of their works. There were a couple ladies from Duluth who I hadn’t met before.

When I was in the reception room enjoying snacks and a PowerPoint show of the images, several reception-goers approached me, wanting an explanation of how I took one of my photos. We walked back to where the large images hung and stopped in front of “Catching a Wave.”

Before I told the three ladies how I got the shot of a wave splashing off a rock on Madeline Island in Lake Superior, I wanted to hear their theories. All of them thought I used a tripod and that I took multiple shots.

Surprise crossed their faces when I told them I just sat on a rock with my feet dangling over the water and hand-held my Nikon. I took the image when I was on the island for my first-ever photography class. This image was from a class outing in a park along the lakeshore where we roamed. I thought it would be fun to try and “catch a wave” with my camera.

As I sat on the rock, I pushed the shutter in the moments after a wave hit the rock and sprayed. I only took a couple of shots, not even bothering to look at what I had in the field because it was hard to see my playback viewer in the sunshine. Instead, I hiked down the trail to the next viewshed.

But when I returned to my room after our class outing, I knew something was different with the rock splash photos when I scrolled through them on my camera. “What the heck?” I recall saying to myself. My wonder turned to pleasure after I downloaded the images to my computer and took a closer look. I’d caught the wave perfectly in two of them!

The ladies at the show pointed out a couple things about the photo that I hadn’t noticed before, plus some patterns in my other photos that I had not seen. Then we walked down the hall to view their images and they described the trials and tribulations involved in taking their shots.

Once the reception was over, Russ and I headed out to a local restaurant for supper. We planned to stay overnight and wake at dawn the next morning so that I could have a photo outing at a scenic spot on the town’s harbor before we left for the two-hour drive home. We may have been there for the photo reception, but why not turn it into a photo expedition, too?

As it turns out, that was a capital idea! I’ll share those images in my next post, but here’s a sneak peek:

To see a slide show of the other photos I took during my Madeline Island photography class, please visit this post. If you’re interested in purchasing “Catching a Wave,” it’s available on canvas (24” x 36”) for $150. Since I took the class and that image as part of my day job, profits will be donated to the Wisconsin Sea Grant Program, which provides research and education programs about lakes Superior and Michigan. To see my other work, please visit my photography webpage.