Polar bears in black and white

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A black and white rendition of this young polar bear approaching the camera. Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska.
A black and white rendition of this young polar bear approaching the camera. Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

Sometimes I wonder if anyone’s still here.

These days, when I do blog, it’s mostly over at Expeditions Alaska. I definitely recommend you check it out over there, if you’re interested, and click on the “Get It By Email” link to stay connected and updated with all the goings on.

I simply found keeping a couple blogs going not worth the time. Maybe I’ll post here from time to time when I get bored, LOL.

Anyway, here’s a polar bear photo from this past fall. We spent a couple weeks in the arctic, again, and had some great photography opportunities with the bears. Never ceases to amaze me how fascinating it is to observe and photograph these incredible creatures. I’ve never really found another animal quite like the polar bear.

I converted this photo to black and whit to see how ti might come out and was pleasantly pleased with the results. What do you think?

Cheers
Carl

Free Polar Bear eBook

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Hey Folks,

Here’s a free ebook, available only to subscribers of my Expeditions Alaska newsletter. And, even better, here a bunch of absurdly great reasons why you want this ebook.

  1. It’s free
  2. It’s a great eBook
  3. Over 80 polar bear photos
  4. My newsletter is awesome
  5. Polar bears are super cool, and
  6. Nobody should need more than 5 reasons for this eBook.

So what is it? It’s a collection of photos of polar bears. Over 80 of them. I’ve written a piece or two about the bears as well. I think it’s a pretty cool little project. Download a copy and let me know what you think. I’d love to hear your review of it.

Just click on the image below.

Polar Bear photo ebook by Carl Donohue and Expeditions Alaska

Thanks so much,

Cheers

Carl

7 Reasons Not To Use Numbered Lists in Your Blog Post Titles

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The northern lights soar above the mountains in arctic Alaska.
The northern lights soar above the mountains in arctic Alaska.

7 Reasons Not To Use Numbered Lists in Your Blog Post Titles

1) Numbered lists are overdone. 2003 is long, long gone.

2) Write something worthwhile reading, then you don’t need to use stupid click-bait headings to draw an audience.

3) The world has enough spam already.

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Top 13 Secret Reasons You Didn’t Know the 5 Myths that the 3 Top Pros Won’t Tell You The 7 Unkown Locations Why You Need to Click on This LINK to Read More

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Aurora borealis photo, over Fireweed Mountain, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska
Aurora borealis photo, over Fireweed Mountain, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska

Hey Folks,

It’s true. This post is the key to your success. This article is THE factor that will drive you to become the most popular, most retweeted, most faved, liked, mentioned and copied Photographer of All Time In The World Ever (and we all know how well those retweets and likes will pay your mortgage).

We’ll start here

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Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and the Northern Lights

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Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and the northern lights, Alaska.
Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and the aurora borealis photo, or northern lights, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Here’s a shot of the northern lights, or aurora borealis, I took from just near McCarthy, in Wrangell St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

I was guiding a photo tour into the park, and we were late leaving Anchorage, due to delays with one of the guest’s flight to Alaska.

What Are the Northern Lights?

Wikipedia says this about the northern lights:

“Auroras are now known to be caused by the collision of charged particles (e.g. electrons), found in the magnetosphere, with atoms in the Earth’s upper atmosphere (at altitudes above 80 km). These charged particles are typically energized to levels between 1 thousand and 15 thousand electronvolts and, as they collide with atoms of gases in the atmosphere, the atoms become energized. Shortly afterwards, the atoms emit their gained energy as light. Light emitted by the Aurora tends to be dominated by emissions from atomic oxygen, resulting in a greenish glow (at a wavelength of 557.7 nm) and – especially at lower energy levels and at higher altitudes – the dark-red glow (at 630.0 nm of wavelength). “

Make sense? There you have it folks – the northern lights are tiny little things in the air, like dust, so small we can’t even see them, that glow because they crash into other tiny little things we can’t see. How cool is that?

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Facebook Page Metrics

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Metrics from a post on Facebook

Performance metric data from a post on Facebook.

Hey Folks

I’m sure any of the photographers out there who might chance upon reading this post have themselves what is called a “Facebook Page”. For those non-photography folks who use The Face simply for personal use, a ‘page’ is akin to your profile, but it’s designed for a business, or an artist, etc. Businesses are not allowed to have a profile, but must have created a ‘page’ if they wish to have a Facebook presence. My Facebook pages are here and here, if you’re interested, one for my photography (Skolai Images) and one for my guiding business, Expeditions Alaska.

Pages, over profiles, have the nice benefit of what they call “insights”, where the calculators at Facebook show you how well you’re doing with your Facebook marketing, branding, promotion, engagement, and so on. They have information available like how many visits your page has, how much “engagement” is has had, and even (kinda) where some of that traffic has come from. This data are called Performance Metrics. Continue reading →

Alaska Polar Bear Video

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Hey Folks,

I thought I’d share this video on my site here. I wrote the tune, a number of years ago, and recorded it with some friends in Atlanta, GA, when I lived there. Great musicians all of them, and it was a treat to record with them. I played the guitar parts.

The video and stills I shot in 2013 on my Alaska Polar Bear Photo Tour in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. One or 2 of the clips were shot by clients on the trip, and thanks go to Sue P and Munir K for their permission to use their clips. See my collection of stock polar bear photos here.

Cheers

Carl

Polar bear photo and sunrises

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A young polar bear on the prowl, silhouetted at sunrise, on the frozen ground of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), Alaska. Polar bear, Ursus maritimus, Alaska.
A young polar bear on the prowl, silhouetted against a colorful sunrise, on the frozen ground of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), Alaska. Polar bear, Ursus maritimus, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

Everyone loves a great sunrise or sunset, right? And everyone loves polar bears; seriously, does anyone NOT love polar bears? So who loves the 2 together?

We set out this morning with high hopes, clear skies and the beginning of color on the horizon. Everyone hoped for a nice sky and some polar bear activity. Hoping, and getting are two different things.

So how does it play out? The sunrise turned out to be, in a word, spectacular. The morning itself, frustrating.

We found some polar bears relatively soon, but they weren’t really in a great location. On top of that, they were asleep. certainly, polar bears are so photogenic that even asleep, they make a great subject. But they were sleeping just below a short embankment, with the colorful sky above and beyond and so we couldn’t find a way to really make it work. One option might have been to shoot multiple exposures, steadily, and then blend the 2 together to properly capture detail in the foreground and the background. I shot a couple of images like this, but even as I was photographing, I knew it wasn’t really happening. OK stuff, but nothing grand.

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