Lake Michigan … crystal cave II, photo by Ken Scott Photography
“My creative eye is always on. It doesn’t get bored. A lot of people get stuck on seeing things only one way, like the wide view or closeup view … but there’s everything in between. Boredom would come when you’re getting stuck in seeing things only one way. You just have to shift it a little bit and it can open up a whole other world.”
~Ken Scott
Kudos to Michigan in Pictures regular Ken Scott, whose photography of last winter’s ice caves on Lake Michigan is featured in the Huffington Post today. They write:
Scott’s documentation of the ice caves last year on Facebook drew likes, attention and, eventually, the book deal. In Ice Caves of Leelanau, he shows numerous views of the caves, blue ice, volcano ice, pancake ice, the large sheet of anchor ice along the shore, and the rounded and smoothed chunks of ice known as ice balls. Meteorologist Ernie Ostuno captioned Scott’s photographs for the book, and nature writer Jerry Dennis introduced them:
The caves were the surprising thing. Many of us had seen similar structures during other winters, but never many of them, and never this large. These were big enough to stand in — for a dozen people to stand in — and as elaborate as caves in limestone. They were domes and keyholes and grottos. Wave spray and intermittent thawing and freezing had embellished them with columns and pillars. Their surfaces were so smooth they gleamed in sunlight, and from their ceilings dripped hundreds of daggers of clear ice, like crystal stalactites.
George Leshkevich, a researcher with the North American Ocean Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, noted that last winter was particularly severe for the Great Lakes, resulting in unique conditions where ice reached peak thickness two separate times in the season.
Different kinds of ice formations occur because of a confluence of reasons, Leshkevich explained, including meteorological conditions, the physical location and wave action, so they’re hard to predict and will vary widely along the shore.
Click through for more great photos. You can check out a short video or a long one from this particular formation, and definitely get a copy of Ice Caves of Leelanau if you can!
PS: I hope all this ice caveyness isn’t bothering you – I’m so happy to see Michigan getting some wintertime love.
Michigan in Pictures 