Category Archives: Aerial Photos

Aerial photos, photos taken from planes, helicopters, balloons, etc.

What’s a blog

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An aerial photo from the St. Elias Mountain Range, converted to B&W in photoshop. Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

An aerial photo from the St. Elias Mountain Range, converted to B&W in photoshop. Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of the photo.

Hey Folks,

Someone asked me recently, “What’s a blog?” And after  I got over the initial shock and wonder, repeatedly asking myself “is he (yes, he) for real?”, I tried my best to answer.

Seriously, what IS a blog? I guess it’s a journal or diary. Or a news outlet. Or a discussion forum. Or about a million other things.

Technically, the root of the term comes from the longer word “weblog”, meaning a log, on the web. Log like a record of some kind.

But what IS it? For me, it’s a double edged sword; a chore and a hobby. It’s work, sometimes, and sometimes it’s great fun. And sometimes it’s a pain in the a&&; especially when I have nothing of interest to write about, or when my blogging platform, wordpress, causes me no end of headaches and pain and grief as I try to solve some problem I’m having with the site. A site without a dynamic component, like wordpress, can be MUCH easier to handle than a blogging platform. If you folks out there had any idea how much of my life has been wasted as I’ve sat and stared at a screen wondering ‘now why the hell doesn’t it work’, you’d send money. Or drugs. Or money and drugs. Or, well, something. It’s ridiculous.

But I digress. Which is fine, of course, because it’s a blog, and it’s my blog, and I’m allowed to digress. Continue reading →

A Year in Alaska Photos, 2011

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Hey Folks,

It’s that time of year once again. Thanks so much for stopping by to read the blog here and view the photos, I appreciate it.

Here are my pick of images (34) for 2011. I hope you enjoy them.

You’ll find a great list of photographers’ photos of the year on Jim Goldstein’s blog. Check it out.

Thanks

Cheers

Carl Continue reading →

Mount Saint Elias Photo

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Mt. Saint Elias photo, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

Mount Saint Elias, 18 008′ high, stands tall in the evening light over an unnamed glacier, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska – aerial photo. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

Well, just back from 2 weeks to photographing brown bears in Katmai National Park, and I’m off again already; I’ll be gone for some time on this trip, 4 weeks down along the coastline of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, where I will meet up with Erin and Hig, of Ground Truth Trekking. They’re spending 2 months in the area,  finding out

“what would it be like to live on ice? In the fall of 2011 we will set out to spend two months living on the shifting, melting surface of North America’s largest glacier, along with our two young children.

Trekking between a series of camps on the Malaspina Glacier, on Alaska’s remote and harsh Lost Coast, we will explore this dramatic and wild landscape, weather the fall storms, and document climate change in action.”

Pretty cool stuff. Continue reading →

Wrangell-St. Elias aerial photo

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Wrangell Mountains, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Wrangell mountains, fall colors, sedimentation rock layers ad striations, aerial photo, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

An abstract aerial shot of the Wrangell Mountains, with a little fall color thrown in. Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

I’d actually asked the pilot to fly us up in this area in the hope to find a particular glacial scene I wanted to reshoot, but the great patterns and colors along the ridges above the glacier were more interesting; in part because we didn’t find what I was looking for anyway.

Aerial photography is an exciting challenge; trying to see compositions that work in camera from such an unusual perspective is harder than one might imagine. The sensory overload of flying through such magnificent scenery, Continue reading →

Erie Mine, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

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Erie Mine Bunkhouse, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Erie Mine Bunkhouse and the Wrangell Mountains, fall colors. Erie Mine is one of three mines that made up the famous Kennecott Copper Mines, Kennicott, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

From the aerial shoot we did in September; this one is of the old bunkhouse at Erie Mine, one of the 3 Kennecott Mines, in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park.

It’s interesting to me how much money, time and investment the National Park Service put into Kennecott, an old abandoned Copper Mine. The basic tenant of the Park Service is “don’t take stuff out of the place, and don’t leave your trash behind”.

It seems odd to effectively celebrate an organization that did quite the opposite of that. The mining company, like most mining companies, took what they wanted from the landscape, and left all their sh** behind when they were done. Now, what they did is revered.

But, such are the ways of the NPS; sometimes they’re hard to follow.

Cheers

Carl

Fall colors in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park

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Fall colors, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Fall colors in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Aerial photo. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

Here’s a quick shot from a flight we took over the park last week; the weather wasn’t so awesome, but the flight sure was. I’d shot this valley before, and knew it would have some nice color.

Now, back to packing gear for the grizzly bear photo tour.

Cheers

Carl

Glacial Stream, Root Glacier, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park

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Glacial Stream, Root Glacier, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Glacial Stream and ogives, Root Glacier, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

From my most recent trip to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and beyond. This is an aerial photo from above the Root Glacier, near Kennecott and McCarthy, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. The small stream is made up largely of runoff water from Stairway Icefall, a massive 7000′ vertical wall of ice that effectively form the “headwaters” of the Root Glacier.

This is an image I’ve wanted to capture for sometime now; I’ve seen various similar images of this same stream from a few photographers, including my friend Ron Niebrugge, and often thought it would be a cool subject to shoot. Indeed it is.  Continue reading →

Mount Saint Elias Photo

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Mount Saint Elias, 18 008' high,catches the last of the sun's rays for the day, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska | aerial photo.

Mount Saint Elias, 18 008′ high, catches the last of the sun’s rays for the day, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska – aerial photo. The rocky islands, or outcroppings, in the foreground are called Nunataks. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks

Mount Saint Elias is possibly one of the great unsung heroes of American mountains, possibly all the world. Towering 18 008′ tall, the mountain rises right from sea level to its lofty summit. The Saint Elias coastal range are the world’s tallest coastal mountains, and Mount Saint Elias is their crown jewel. It’s also the crown jewel of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, the nation’s largest national park, and finest preserve of wildness and wilderness.

From the north, Mount Saint Elias is bordered by the Bagley Icefield, largest non polar icefield in North America at nearly 130 miles long. There is simply no end to the superlatives for this massif.

This photo is from the end of an amazing flight-seeing trip to the Saint Elias range. Absolutely jaw-dropping stuff. We didn’t arrive back to the landing strip until dark; super was late this night. But the chance to be in the presence of such magnificence is a treat to be savored as long as possible. I was pretty glad to have had the opportunity.

Mount Saint Elias is the 2nd tallest mountain in the nation, the 2nd tallest mountain in Canada (it sits right on the border). I’d be surprised if more than the smallest fraction of visitors to the region ever even see the mountain, however, simply because so few people make the trip. It’s not a roadside venture at all. But oh wow, oh so worth it.

More photos of Mount Saint Elias and the Saint Elias coastal Range region of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve.

Cheers

Carl

Kuskulana Glacier

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Winter in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Kuskulana Glacier, Alaska.

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Wrangell Mountains and the Kuskulana River, Kuskulana Glacier, near Nugget Creek mine. Winter, Alaska. This photo is a closer look at the ice wall on the Kuskulana Glacier, from the photo I posted last week. I probably spent about an hour or 2 here, checking out this fascinating place. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

My friend Guy Tal posted (as usual) another great read on his blog; “Photography and the Environment”. I urge you to read his treatise; it’s a solid piece. Guy has a great knack for writing on particular topics without seeming to offend those who disagree with him, which makes his a powerful voice. At the same time, he’s not wishy-washy. that’s a hard line to toe.

One question Guy asks in the article is “Will another photograph on a web site in a stock library truly change public opinion? How about another thousand? Another million?”

I’d suggest, however, that this is the wrong question to consider. Continue reading →

More from the St. Elias mountains and the movie Mount St. Elias

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Vertical frame of a steep wall of the St. Elias mountain Range, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Fluting and deep power on the St. Elias mountains. Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Click on the image for a larger version.

Hey Folks,

As promised, more photos from the St. Elias mountains. An aerial I shot on one of the most gorgeous days I’ve ever been out shooting. On the subject of the newly released film, Mount St. Elias:

Few people realize just how special these mountains are. Everyone knows Denali, of course, and the Himalayas, but the St. Elias mountains just don’t seem to have caught the public eye like these others. I suspect it’s because they’re full of  “seconds”: 2nd highest mountain in the US (Mount. St. Elias, second highest mountain Canada (Mount St. Elias, also known as Boundary Peak 186, sits on the US/Canada border), 2nd highest mountain in North America (Mt. Logan in Canada is in the St. Elias range). We’re a culture of competition, and there really ain’t no second prize. Continue reading →