Since I’m a native Mid-Westerner, I often visit the area to see family and since Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, the Dakotas, and other less photographed states were mostly overlooked by other professional landscape shooters of the day, I often worked in these states. Maybe someday I’ll be able to add something from my home state of Iowa to this list, but for the time being, I’m focusing on Lake Superior, one of the coolest places in Mid-America.

This Great Lake as portrayed in famous poems and Gordon Lightfoot songs (is it Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot, or Gordon Lightfoot by Edmund Fitzgerald?) is a moody and stunning subject, and can hold its own with great Western landscapes.

It began with shooting the waterfalls that crash down to the lake, the amazing fall colors, the lighthouses, and rock walls that rear up along the western and southern side of the lake in Minnesota.

It continued as I drove across the country in winter to try to shoot the other-worldly ice caves in Wisconsin’s Apostle Islands, but even with a wind chill of 70 below zero, it hadn’t been cold long enough to safely freeze the lake. Perhaps I’ll try that again some time, although my winter treks are now more often to the Bahamas than Duluth.

Pictured Rocks is another place I visited in winter.

Then there are the amazing Porcupine Mountains in Michigan, the first place I saw and shot real fall color, with reds and yellows another step beyond anything I had seen before.

Photo tours are now available that ply the best fall color areas near here, and I have tried to fit one in my schedule because I think they would be great, but no luck so far.

Where will Tom head next? Check back next Friday to find out.