I’ve scheduled a few posts to be made while I’m off the grid on another photo venture until the first part of September. For those not familiar with the seasonal calendar of Alaska, late August and early September comprise the time frame in which the autumn colors flourish in the alpine tundra highlands. The boreal…
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I’ve had a few recent posts on panoramas, so I will continue in that format. In the near future, I’ll share my protocol for shooting panoramas, and the process of stitching them together. If I’m shooting a scene that merits a panorama format I try to capture it. With landscapes, this is a bit easier,…
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Alaska’s big landscapes are hard to fit into a 35mm 2:3 ratio format. Sometimes, they beg for a 3:1, or more commonly referred to as a panorama format. I used to use a Fuji 6x17cm film camera especially designed for this, but now I simply blend images with a stitch program. Currently that is Photosphop…
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I watched the summit of Mt McKinley (Denali) slowly clear off one evening in Denali National Park, while the lower portion was still enshrouded in clouds. So I set my telephoto lens up on a tripod and thought I’d shoot the summits. Many are not aware that there are two summits to the mountain, the…
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It can be a challenge to photograph in the late morning on a sunny day. The light gets hot and harsh. However on this morning, the sunny foreground was complimented by some dramatic cloud action in the distance and the perpendicular lighting, although contrasty, made for some drama in lighting. At 10:30 am, this bull…
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On a short visit into Denali park early this week, I had the good fortune of some clear skies revealing that amazing mountain top–Denali. In this particular scene, the clouds slowly cleared from the peak as the morning unfolded. And as you may know from my previous posts, I like some clouds for art and…
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The Grant Creek wolf pack in Denali National Park has maintained a high profile along the road corridor, giving many visitors and photographers an opportunity to watch and photograph the social dynamics of a wild wolf family. If you are new to this blog, you may want to check out a couple posts I made…
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Photo gallery from my July 2010 float trip down the Marsh Fork of the Canning River, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Veterans of river travel know that waterways can be a creature of movement in more ways than one. In mountain country, rainfall in the hills all goes downhill by gravity and ends up ocean-bound via the river system. In Alaska’s arctic specifically, most river flow is dominated by snow melt or rain, unlike many of…
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Contrary to what many non-photographers think, the bluebird day, cloudless skies are generally not welcomed by the landscape photographer-not me anyway. They might ensure first and last light upon the land, but there is little art in the sky without some shapes and lines offered by broken clouds moving dynamically overhead. It is these latter…
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During a raft trip down the Marsh Fork of the Canning river, a long day hike up into the mountains led me to some vociferous plovers that nest in the region. While I have a number of Plover photos that I consider better than this one, I did photograph the bird because of the specific…
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I mentioned my trip into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in a recent post, and I have a few more photos to share from that journey. In a land that exhibits dramatic and distant vistas, it is not surprising to find compelling subjects close at hand as well. While hiking along the Marsh Fork of…
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On Sunday, July 25, my eyes slowly opened at 4:00 AM. The temperature read 33 degrees. If you have spent any time in the outdoors in Alaska, such a chilly temperature in July is a telltale sign that the skies above are clear. I checked the sky (the first thing every landscape photographer does upon…
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On the final evening of my Marsh fork/Canning river trip in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, after a wild and windy storm squall of rain passed through, the skies cleared to the north and that long sought after golden summer sunshine poured across the landscape. The mosquitoes however, were abusive. After setting up camp in…
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I spent 11 days in July floating the Marsh fork of the Canning river, which is one of the many rivers flowing north out of the Brooks Range and into the Beaufort Sea. The Canning river marks the western boundary of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which is substantial in size at 19 million acres.…
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In June I spent 8 hours flying across the Brooks Range mountains in transit to specific locations for photography trips. While this time was transport-oriented and not dedicated to aerial photography, I was able to grab a few shots off along the way. I was in a de Havilland Beaver flown by Dirk Nickisch of…
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I’ve had a canister of bear pepper spray for a long time and fortunately have never used it. Before replacing it with a new one, I decided to see what kind of spray range it retained. It functioned surprisingly well, although I did not test the efficacy of the solution. The new one came with…
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This last June marked my second visit to the National Petroleum Reserve – Alaska, a monstrous 23 million acre area on Alaska’s north slope. It was originally set aside by president Harding as an emergency oil supply for the US Navy. The average person knows little about the region, and it is huge. Some consider…
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A photographer’s schedule in June, in the arctic, is a complete function of weather and daylight. The blue cloudless skies become a curse, at least until about midnight when the warm wash of light drips across the landscape, and even then, some sort of cloud action helps grab some color in the sky. I unfortunately…
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My blogging has been slim due to a 12 day river trip in the arctic, and now with time in the office I can play catch up on a few stories and photos worth sharing of my recent ventures…. Utukok Uplands, National Petroleum Reserve Alaska. While treading the homeland of grizzly bears, a shrewd and…
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There is much to write about regarding my late June trip to the arctic, and little time to do so due to another scheduled photo trip in which I’ll float a river out of the Brooks range in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. More about that upon my return. Looking back on the last week,…
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The day after my return from a photo trip in Alaska’s arctic, I quickly switched gears from grizzly bears and caribou photography for a scheduled commercial assignment job for a local utilities company in Fairbanks (Friday June 25). Portraiture was the primary focus, which presented employees doing their work in a respective context to the…
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My trip to the high western arctic unfolded broadly under the never setting sun. With a short turn around between another venture back to the arctic for a river trip, I’ll have some photos to share but little time to write. The birds nesting in the tundra region were continual companions in a very solitary…
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Going off the grid I’m preparing for a 7 day solo, fly-in trip into Alaska’s remote western arctic. It is the result of many planning iterations, previous ones including more people, but this is what shook out in the end. While I have a preference for working solo, since I feel I do the best…
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The road that transects Denali National Park crosses 4 mountain passes and many river drainages. This is astonishing for a road that is only 90 miles long, and one of the reasons that majestic views are not lacking on that journey. And, this lends to photos of wildlife contextually placed in this wilderness mountain setting.…
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