Last fall I took an autumn trip into the northern part of Minnesota and decided to concentrate on drone exploration and photography of the many dozens of lakes in the region. Before leaving, I first studied Google Earth to see which of these very many lakes interested me most and then mapped out a five-day trip to visit the lakes I had decided on.
Each day I would drive to various lakes, explore them, and then decide which one I would return to and camp beside to photograph in the late and early light. On this day I picked northern Minnesota’s Cascade Lake to return to for sunset and sunrise, as my scouting showed that it had very promising potential for several different compositions if the light was what I was hoping for.
I got very lucky, as the sunset turned out to be a rare one. I have occasionally photographed sun pillars before, but almost always at sunrise. This one was at sunset and the most intense and tallest one I have experienced. It was strong enough to even show its reflection in the lake.
Sun pillars occur when sunlight interacts with flat, hexagonal ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere in high-altitude clouds like cirrus or cirrostratus. These ice crystals act like tiny mirrors, reflecting sunlight vertically. The crystals tend to orient themselves horizontally as they fall, and the collective reflection from millions of crystals produces the appearance of a vertical column of light.
A good trip plan and a healthy dose of luck made this trip a success.
