Sunset at Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge, Bloomington

It is almost end of April but we Minnesotans may have to still wait for spring. Yesterday (April 27, 2018), if you were in Duluth or North of Minnesota, you would have experienced the snow fall. Amazing, isn’t it? This is Minnesota for you dear, and I love this place. By the way, cheer up, for the spring is on its way.

Yesterday, it was bit cloudy, with sun playing hide and seek behind the clouds. It was windy as well with little drops falling off from the heavens, which made the weather chilly. I was pretty excited seeing the clouds and its game. Of course, this meant that if clouds persisted till evening, we might see a beautiful and gorgeous sunset. Keeping this in focus, i completed my regular activities at home (and procrastinated others), making myself ready for the evening photo shoot. Picked up my Google Maps, and I finally zeroed down to Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge in Bloomington, which i had visited several times. But this particular spot in the refuge, and on this particular trail, this would be my first time. Remind you that Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge stretches for several miles along the Minnesota River. There are several spots and trailheads in the city of Bloomington itself, apart from other cities.

I was racing against the time, and started on the hike. After having hiked down the hill for only 0.2 miles, I realized the trail was closed due to flooding. There was hardly any time to pick up another trail, and was slightly cursing myself for having not scouted my spot in advance or atleast looked up on the website for flooding alerts. Just to let you know that many rivers including Minnesota River is flooding currently due to melting snow. I was disappointed for few seconds and was frantically looking around the woods when i found this spot with little puddle of water. Sigh of relief, and an evening well spent with my Canon 7d Mark II and Sigma Art lens 18-35mm f1.8.

This is the HDR shot, with 5 bracketed exposures, blended in Photomatix Pro 5.1 software and little post-processing in Adobe Lightroom. Aperture Priority Mode, f/11, iso 100, EV -2, -1, 0, +1, +2, focal length 18mm, shutter speed 1/13, 1/6, 1/3, 0.6, 1.3 sec. On tripod

Thanks for your visit. Today’s post is the contribution for this week’s Photo Challenge: Lines. Visit my instagram page here.