Cold weather photography in Alaska.
As a mammal, the polar bear is the lord of the Arctic. Powerful, solitary, beautiful. This is one of my favorite photos from the 2013 photo tour last October. The bear pauses while walking across ice recently frozen in a bay, as the Romanzof mountains of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the Brooks Range…
A few hundred miles north of Fairbanks is a high rocky ride known as Finger Mountain. It is often windy along this treeless landscape. The moisture content in the air was perfect for the formation of hoar frost, which covered the rocks and shrubs in the area. Fog and low clouds contributed to a fairly…
I took this photo on Sunday afternoon at 3:16pm, and it reveals the very last hint of light falling on the mountains about 50 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The sun will be gone in a day or so and won’t appear again until sometime in later January. The colors in the sky at…
ATT 2011 Calendar For 25 years AT&T has had a tradition of publishing a calendar that is distributed freely (and download-able as a screen saver–I’ll share that link when it is available). I’ve had my work selected for some of those calendars, and this year, they took a slightly different angle by selecting a wildlife…
I just took this photo of a beautiful sunrise over the Alaska Range, from my house in Fairbanks. Actually, I was in my house when I took it. Another reason why I like winter so much. It was minus 7 degrees at my house and a little colder in downtown Fairbanks. Sunrises this time of…
Finger mountain, on the Dalton Highway is a notoriously windy place. It is more of a broad hill with an expansive view than any sort of real mountain. Granite protrusions dot the landscape and make for some interesting features. I grabbed this photo on a very quick stop during one of my arctic photo tours,…
While I spend my share of time traveling to exotic locations to photograph, I still contend that photographing in one’s backyard is viable for the average photographer. Now I confess that I have a fine backyard for this–8 acres of boreal forest, and not all backyards are the same. But, you don’t need acres really,…
According to my GPS coordinates for Barter Island, Alaska on Oct 12, 2009, the maximum high angle of the sun is a mere 9 degrees. This is part of the magic of the arctic at this time of year, having a low angle of light for the entire day of shooting. However, photos can continue…
Truckers travel the Haul road north of the Brooks range, arctic, Alaska.Canon 1Ds Mark III, 500mm f4L IS, 1/500 sec @ f8, ISO 400 The James Dalton Highway was built as an access road to the Arctic ocean during the days of the of the Trans Alaska Pipeline construction. It still serves the main purpose…
Bull Muskox in blowing snow Canon 1Ds Mark III, 500mm f4.0L IS, 1/500 sec @ f7.1, ISO 400 I just returned from a week of photography in Alaska’s arctic. Surprisingly, late March and April still deliver significant sub zero temperatures in the far north, even as the sunlight rushes back at a rapid pace. I’m…