Photos Posts

Selective Focus: Fall Colors 2022

The annual biochemical process is underway in Duluth and surrounding areas. Progression of fall and peak leaf colors can be tracked with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ Fall Color Finder.

Featured here are select images from Instagram showcasing nature’s palette.

Lake Superior Aquaman of Duluth Minnesota

I’m just saying.

Selective Focus: Labor Day Weekend Aurora

This past weekend was aurora galora as the northern lights danced across Minnesota skies. Collected here are select images from Instagram.

Selective Focus: Duluth Boudoir Photography

© Mad Chicken Studio

Duluth Boudoir Photography is a gender inclusive photography studio dedicated to helping humans build confidence and see themselves in a new light. Led by Jes Hayes, a Duluth Boudoir session provides clients with hair, makeup, dress, full studio and safe space to feel sexy.

Paddling Blatnik

Is Duluth, Minnesota really paradise?

Selective Focus: John Keefover

John Keefover poses with the Northern Terminus sign after completing his thru-hike of the Superior Hiking Trail.

John Keefover is the Duluth-based nature photographer behind the photography business Keefography. This June, Keefover thru-hiked the Superior Hiking Trail, sharing photos, videos and journal entries along the way. Keefover used this adventure as an opportunity to raise funds for the Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center.

Selective Focus: Festival of Sail

A smattering of images via Instagram from the weekend’s Festival of Sail in Two Harbors.

Mystery Photo: 1962 State and Sectional Champs

This photo was acquired at the Ellefson Estate Sale in the Upper Cody part of West Duluth in 2019. It shows a youth baseball team with players wearing different jerseys, suggesting perhaps it’s an all-star squad or the team had multiple sponsors. The sponsor names on the shirts are: Kelley Duluth, City Bottling, YOT (Young Old Timers), Gately’s, West Arrow Chevrolet, Moose 1478 … and one looks like it might be M&J Super Value (the bottom word is blocked by the players forearms). Two jerseys are plain white; those players have an M on their caps while the other players have caps with no lettering.

The writing on the back of the photo gives the biggest clue: “1962 State & Sectional Champs.” But the names of the players and coaches are lost to history unless a nerd or two step up and solve the mysteries.

Lake Superior Whale Shark

 

Duluth: Bird City

Raptors: The sight of a bald eagle stirs a person. I used to live in more southerly climes where they were less common, so it has been a treat to see one every now and then up here. I saw them a lot after my divorce, when I had to drive halfway through Minnesota every two weeks to exchange my daughter like a prisoner. I pointed out bald eagles to my child on these drives, barely able to contain my excitement, while she did that kid act of being bored with everything. Later I visited her at her mom’s house in a rural Winona valley. There was a field of tilled earth on the dirt road to their home, and it was positively overrun with bald eagles. As I drove past, I saw fifty of them together walking around in the mud with their dirty talons. I said to my daughter, “Now I understand why you’re never excited to see a bald eagle — you see so many of them every day, they’re like rats here.” She said, “Yup.”

Hawk Ridge overruns with bird nerds. Hawks soar over the city alone or in twos and threes, or by the dozen during migration. Cold air off the lake hits the warm hillside, a clash of airmasses creating lift — they love that. Unimaginably high with laser vision watching for unwary pigeons or rabbits, eating them on the roofs on people’s houses. I saw feathers raining past my window one day. By the time I figured out a hawk was eating a pigeon on my roof, it was gone.

Duluth’s Ideal Market

This photo, credited to Clarence Sager, is dated June 18, 1972 — 50 years ago today. The Ideal Market was located at 102 W. First St., the present-day location of Lifehouse.

The store opened in 1921 and closed in 1999. The Duluth News Tribune Attic has photos and stories from its last days.

Recent Aquaman banners from PDD’s Facebook page

 

Selective Focus: Grey Days

Foggy, rainy, cloudy … but not necessarily gloomy. May was a lot like April. Collected here are select images from the past month, via Instagram.

Duluth aerial photos, then and now, compared and combined

Sometime back, I included an aerial photo in a PDD comment and realized that because they are taken from straight overhead, the photos on Minnesota Historical Aerial Photographs Online can be matched up pretty easily with Google’s current aerial imagery. And then I put that thought aside for quite some months until I finally came back to it and put together this seven-part series of aerial photos showing places in Duluth that have changed somewhat dramatically over the past decades.