Matthiessen State Park

With the deep freeze we've been in lately, I have been trying my best to stay inside. Seriously! To the point of grabbing extra smokes from my truck so I don't have to walk outside "tomorrow"! LOL But, in looking for a silver lining, the below freezing temps and snow we've had in the past week or two was sure to have the waterfalls frozen up at Starved Rock State Park and Matthiessen State Park. So, when the forecast for this past weekend called for temps actually above freezing, I thought it would be a good time to head up that way (before everything melted away).

We took a trip to Matthiessen State Park on Saturday. It was a nice little trip, and for Winter shooting, it really couldn't have been much better! Good thing we went on Saturday, because, by Sunday afternoon, nearly all the snow was melted away, and the ice was already iffy in some spots on Saturday (though we did see a couple of guys ice fishing).

Here are a couple of pictures I got from the trip:

First, this is of the main falls in the upper dells area. On top of these falls is the pond where the guys were ice fishing. I used a pretty small aperture to try to lengthen the time the shutter was opened to get a nice soft/silky feel to the actual falling water down the middle.


Next, this shot is of 3 or 4 smaller cascading falls that feeds what is known as Giant's Bathtub. There really wasn't much color anyway, so I scrapped what little there was and went with a black and white processing. I really like the way it turned out (and am looking forward to a Spring/Summer shot from the same place).


There are a couple more shots on my flickr site if you're interested.