Miners Beach at Michigan’s Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Image: David Marvin
Editor’s note: We asked Great Lakes photographers to send us some of their favorite or toughest Great Lakes shots and a bit of a story behind the picture. This image and explanation are by David Marvin.
The tiny waterfall at the northeast edge of Miners Beach at the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore often goes unappreciated.
Aside from appearing in one of the Pure Michigan advertisements, trying to find any information on the falls generally leads to details on the many larger waterfalls in the area with no mention of these petite, yet beautiful, ones. The falls tumble down a shoulder-high cliff on the edge of the sand beach at a point where the Pictured Rocks really start looking like the picturesque scenes in travel materials.
They empty directly into Lake Superior and make a splendid subject for photographs just about any time of year. The falls even look good on an ethereal foggy evening like the one pictured here. The higher level of Lake Superior this year can be witnessed as the high water mark extends nearly all the way to the base of the falls where it has been several yards away in prior years.
This photograph was taken using a tripod for the long exposure needed to capture the motion of the water. A variable neutral density filter was used to control the light entering the lens in order to allow the longer exposure without over exposing the picture.