Minnesota Views: Keller Lake

These photos appeal to me on several levels, most of which are invisible to you, the viewer. Allow me to briefly explain.

I was out shooting with two cameras on a cold day in November... one camera shoots film, the other is digital. Part of Keller Lake had frozen over, part had not. I was having fun getting shots of the geese reflected on the ice when something startled them. I had both cameras around my neck, but neither one in hand at the moment, so I instinctively grabbed the film camera, manually focused as quickly as I could and caught the shot below. It has a painterly quality I really like, but was completely unexpected. Other than cropping, adding a small rotation, and adjusting the brightness slightly, this is how the image came out on the film.

My two cameras are both made by Olympus, one a film camera from 1979, and one a digital model from 2011. However, their respective lenses have different mounts. I've come across an adaptor that allows me to use the old lenses on my new camera. The old lenses are not ideally suited to the new technology. As a result, pictures come out with some graininess and other distortions which normally are unacceptable. In the following two examples, I think the flaws enhance the shot in some ways. Here are the geese reflected in the ice, just before they startled, and a look at the foot bridge at the far south end of the lake.