Shipping season returns with the opening of the Soo Locks on Friday, March 22. That means Scott Bjorklund will be back to one of his favorite hobbies: photographing the salties and lakers coming and going from the Port of Duluth-Superior.

Bjorklund is the assistant museum director at the Lake Superior Maritime Visitor Center in Canal Park and picked up the photography habit in 2017.

“Because of my background, I know a lot about the cargoes, the history of those ships. I love studying maritime history, so there’s a lot more to it for me,” Bjorklund said. “So I can look at a photo and give a really good description of what it’s doing, where it’s going.”

He posts his work on Facebook and Instagram, and became a Destination Duluth contributing photographer in 2022.

His favorite time to take photos of ships is in the winter when it’s below 0 and the vessels are covered in ice.

Destination Duluth has been sharing photos like Bjorklund’s for 11 years now.

“We’ve actually had people move to Duluth and take up photography and have become some of our best photographers because they’ve seen what these photographers are doing, and it inspires them. It compels them,” Jerry Thoreson said.