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Craig Goodman

On fire with the light of the setting sun, waves explode like fireworks against rocks lining the Ludington South Breakwater. Lake Michigan's energy never ceases to amaze and excite me.

Autumn Arrangment

Right after making this image, I found a dirty diaper in the dunes. I was outraged that a parent would be that irresponsible and would litter on the beach at the Ludington State Park.

Beach House Aglow

Before my mother-in-law, Sharon Verduin, passed away from cancer, I remember her telling my kids that when they couldn't fall asleep at night that instead of counting sheep, they should count their blessings. I loved that idea and have done it several times myself and it always makes me smile.

Dancing In the Dark

A Great Night

Over the last few years, my dad and I have made some many great memories with Team Reed and other workshop students on the beach at the Lake Michigan Campground in the Manistee National Forest. Tonight, we had our Heaven on Hamlin students out there shooting the sunset. It was a gorgeous night.

The Sable River Outlet is one of the most beautiful and popular spots at Ludington State Park. Hundreds of people flock to the river mouth on a hot summer day. But it is during quieter times, like this early May evening that it calls to me the most.

I wish you could see the photograph I took of this scene five seconds earlier, before the sun broke through the clouds; that image is very flat, boring, and ordinary. However, when the magic light appeared, the view of this dune at Ludington State Park with Hamlin Lake in the background became extraordinary.

The sand along the Lake Michigan shoreline looks like liquid gold tonight. It is incredible how a late September sunset can transform the appearance of the waterfront.

Golden Sand

I will forever be grateful that I was born and raised in Ludington and that I can live, work, and play as an adult in my beautiful hometown. Listening to the sound of Lake Michigan waves slowly brushing the sand along the shoreline at the Ludington State Park tonight, I was also grateful that my kids are now getting to experience the magic of Ludington as their hometown.

Golden Sand - panoramic

Keeping On

Anyone lucky enough to be standing on the storm-flooded Lake Michigan beach near the Second Curve on October 18, 2007, at 6:49:21 p.m., would have been overwhelmed by the scene before his or her eyes. This was an incredible moment in time, obviously a beautiful, powerful view. But there was something more: an unreal, out-of-this world quality, a feeling that comes to me only when I witness some of the most rare natural phenomenons. A meteotsunami (meteorological tsunami) had flooded the beach.

The Lake Michigan shoreline can change in a blink of an eye. Tonight, at the Lake Michigan Campground in the Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness Area between Manistee and Ludington, I was amazed at how quickly the sand on the left of this image was being undercut and caving in. The small outlet was growing in width before my eyes.

Lake Michigan Afterglow