Minnesota's North Shore of Lake Superior stretches 150 miles from Duluth, Minnesota to the Canadian border.  By acreage, the bedrock shoreline is one of the state's most rare ecosystems - pockmarked during the summer with pools full of tadpoles and supporting unique plant communities of lichens, sedges, and wildflowers.

Superior's surface area, of around 31,700 square miles, makes it the largest, freshwater lake in the world.  Winds whipping across this vast expanse create huge waves, which beat upon the shoreline and continue the sculpting began by the glaciers.  Twenty-seven major streams tumble down the Sawtooth Mountains in cascades and numerous spectacular waterfalls.  Several species of fish struggle up these streams to spawn.  Fall colors have two seasons stretching for over a month.  Maple leaves on the inland ridges are the first to turn, followed by  birch and aspen along the shore, where Superior's huge volume of summer-warmed water extends their growing season.  During the winter months, ice formations can change daily as sheets blow about and break into millions of shards, often piling high against the shore.

In 1984, Craig Blacklock began to focus his career on making large format images that reveal the hidden, as well as the spectacular facets of Lake Superior.  He circumnavigated the lake in his kayak in 1991, gathering some of the photographs for his first major work on Superios - The Lake Superior Images.

This book includes photographs made over two decades.  During the final two years, Craig worked with a digital camera, allowing him to photograph many subjects impossible to capture with his 4x5 inch view camera.  His quest as a photographer is to create images that distill the large and complex into something small and comprehensible, which can be turned in the hand and mind.  The resulting images evoke Zen rock gardens or Haiku poems - they are ours to ponder and immerse ourselves in, again and again.

An ardent conservationist, Craig is not content to show us these splendors.  In the epilogue he asks us to join with him in protecting the North Shore for future generations.