Saturday night at 6:30, I was settling into a relaxing evening after a long day of work when my neighbor, Amy Johnson (a talented photographer), sent me a text that the aurora was out. I stepped out on my deck and could see a faint aurora presence, but it had the looks of very subtle…
Details
That perfect lens is always elusive. I took this shot at 400mm and when reviewing it on my computer later I asked myself why I didn’t at least flip the internal teleconverter on to reach out to 560mm. But I had no answer, I must have been preoccupied in some fashion and just grabbed whatever…
Details
While interior Alaska, and specifically Fairbanks, can get brutally cold in the winter, it can also be spectacular in winter beauty. I’ve been working on building a snowpath from the cabin in the boreal forest where I live. It was perfect for photography until a big storm came a few weeks ago, but I’m working…
Details
In a few weeks I’ll be leaving for Antarctica. So in the span of a few months, I will have traveled from Alaska’s high Arctic Beaufort Sea to the Southern Ocean and Antarctica. Which got me thinking about the earth’s polar regions. So I made a few greeting cards for the Holiday season using the…
Details
While scouting a possible location for aurora photography, I came across this scene in the Brooks Range of Alaska. It has some promise for a future time, but the wispy clouds at the time added a gentle feeling to the scene so I took a moment to make a landscape photo. A very strong landscape…
Details
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…
Details
In Alaska’s high Arctic in October, one can photograph all day under beautiful light. That is, if you get the light. The north coast is often cloudy, foggy, and under the immersion of seasonal change from autumn to winter. Clouds are the norm. However, we had some great splashes of light on a recent photo…
Details
This polar bear basked in the afternoon light along the shore of the Beaufort Sea, as ice begins to form. This is one of my favorite color combinations in a photo, the blue and yellow/gold, or warm and cool tones. They work very well to deliver both contrast along with the feelings provoked by warm…
Details
Not to long ago I sent of my 2015 calendars off to the press. Meanwhile, 2014 is coming into calendar plans these days as the new year is less than 2 months away. I thought it fitting to share the first few month pages from my 2014 Alaska Profiles in Nature calendar. Thanks to those…
Details
This photo embodies one of the compelling lures of Alaska’s Arctic for me-its huge, wild, and expansive spaces. The wildlife that roam this region often have a diverse range. It is a sparse landscape and population densities are much lower than other areas on the globe. Polar bears are normally solitary animals and will roam…
Details
This is another photo taken with Canon’s 200-400 with an internal 1.4x converter. It was hand held and is razor sharp. I’m still evaluating the images I took with this lens. It is clear that it is capable of super sharp photos.
I have taken a lot of photographs of this pipeline over the years. But in spite of that, it still is an interesting challenge to find new compositions that seem unique, at least to my experience. It’s a pretty amazing engineering feat, transecting 800 miles of Alaska mountains, rivers and tundra. This view is a…
Details
After returning from yet another fantastic photo tour in Alaska’s Arctic–which always produces interesting photo opportunities–I am reviewing a few test shots with Canon’s 200-400 f/4. I’ve been curious how the lens will perform using both the built in 1.4x and then adding another external 1.4x. This shot was taken while a very friendly red…
Details
The Romanzof mountains of the Brooks Range mark the northwest edge of Alaska’s mountains. From there, the arctic coastal plains flatten out, leading to the edge of the Beaufort Sea. And this is the home of the polar bear, in my eyes, one of the most fascinating animals to watch and photograph. In the short…
Details
Having just returned from a fantastic photo tour in Alaska’s Arctic, I’m off for another duplicate journey. I was co-guiding the trip with my friend and colleague Hugh Rose, and all 8 of the tour guests came back with great pictures of the aurora borealis, arctic wilderness, polar bears, caribou and more. I wanted to…
Details
Goodbye autumn, I enjoyed you so much this year! I’m about to launch for three weeks of photo tours in Alaska’s Arctic and will return with some great experiences and hopefully some wonderful photos. The weather during this time of year is always sketchy, but always dramatic as well. I’m looking forward to the opportunities…
Details
A few days ago I received a copy of the 2014 Sierra Club Engagement Calendar, one of the most popular calendars on the market. I’ve been submitting work to them for publication for decades now, and reviewing the final pictures chosen is always interesting. This year however, I was very happy to see that out…
Details
In reviewing some photos I took in March 2013 during a trip to the White Mountains Recreation Area near Fairbanks, I found this shot that I overlooked for some reason and it was sitting in my outtakes folder. It exhibits a color of the aurora that I don’t see often, the yellow/gold, as opposed to…
Details
I’ve been working on a graphic for my eBook update and it amazes me to look at spectrum of colors in the aurora borealis. Here is a screen shot from my collection in Lightroom with 1 x 1 crops for a collage page in the book.
Details
I woke to this view yesterday morning, as the first snow dusted the ground on Moose Mountain in Fairbanks. I’ve been working on the area surrounding a quaint little cabin on my property, preparing for some aurora borealis photography with the cabin in the foreground. I took this photo last year, but there is a…
Details
Sable Pass is the first of four, nearly 4,000 ft. (1,292m) mountain passes that you cross on the 90 mile stretch of Denali Park Road. I took this picture in August while visiting the park during a very cloudy and rainy period. Denali looms off in the clouded mountain background, not visible in this picture.…
Details
One thing I love about Alaska is it’s mountains. And mountains usually mean weather, drama, wind, and all of the paradoxical beauty and ferocity that goes along with that. While it is pretty common knowledge that mountains change elevation over time, I found it interesting in the news today that Mount McKinley, locally known as…
Details
The Design is nearly complete on the children’s book I’m co authoring with Alaska writer Debbie S. Miller. I posted a previous photo of the first cover version, but that has been changed up with this recent image I took on the coast of Katmai National Park last summer. I like this version a little…
Details
Cabins in remote locations in Alaska are often vandalized by bears. If you get in the right circles of people, there are many stories to be told to verify this. So the protocol when leaving the cabin for a period of time is to bear proof it. This usually involves covering windows with plywood…
Details
Baranof Island is a large island in the Southeast Alaska panhandle, and it is home to the small community of Sitka. I made an excursion there recently for a photography assignment and am always impressed by the scenic beauty of the area. The many layers of the topography around Sitka are accentuated by the often…
Details