Thomas Bowar Photography

While in Grand Marais on Saturday, we walked through a cool Art Gallery that had a lot of photo prints from famous Minnesota photographer Jim Brandenburg, whose work has appeared in magazines like National geographic. They also had a lot of work by local photographer Jay Steinke, who lives in Duluth.

When we got to the back of the gallery, we found a fun little project going on.

On the table were a bunch of blank pots, and many colors of glaze to choose from. You just pick up a pot, paint the glaze onto the pot and the potter would take them and fire them in the kiln for you. I think it cost about $7 for a pot (or cup, I’m not sure what you you would call them).

It was a pretty grey day in Grand Marais (I’m a poet), but the charm of the town was still there.

I was there when this mural was painted on the side of the Beaver House. Follow this link for the 3 photo series: Mural

I didn’t realize that the best donuts in the world are made in Grand Marais, MN.

More later.

This last weekend, my wife and I went “up north” to celebrate our 24th anniversary. We stayed at a place near Schroeder, MN on the North Shore of Lake Superior. This is one of our favorite places to go. Could it be because we spent our honeymoon there at Cascade Lodge next to Cascade State Park at the peak of the fall colors?

It was a little cold and rainy, but still a nice time. Despite the rain, mist and cloudy skies, I got a few nice pictures. (My wife is a very patient person, I love her so!)

As we were driving up the shore, it struck us that we had never seen so much run off from the Sawtooth Mountains (the hills above the lake). Some places that are normally just a little ravine became full blown streams, running into the ditch next to the highway and eventually down to a place where it could run through a pipe under the road and into the lake.

On Saturday we drove to Grand Marais, one of our favorite little towns. It is full of art galleries, gift shops and restaurants. These are really Minnesota kinds of trinkets.

More about our up north weekend later.

Welcome to my new blog! I plan to post about my photographic adventures, as well as other thoughts. But I don’t want to wander too far from photography. And I don’t expect to post every day, but I wanted a different platform than the old photoblog, because I didn’t want to be limited to one photo per post, I wanted the option to just write if I felt like it.

So here we go…