Category Archives: Alaska

Photos and notes on all things Alaska.

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

Polar bear cub photo

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Polar bear cub, ANWR, Alaska.

One fat young polar bear cub, sitting back on his haunches, totally chilling. It’s great to see a happy polar bear. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

hey folks,

Just thought I’d wrap things up for the year with another polar bear photo. This one I took a couple of years ago, but I ran across it this evening doing some editing and so on and thought I’d post it. I just love the pose and feel of this shot.

Due a cancellation, I have some space on my 2016 polar bear trips. Please let me know if you’re interested, the few spots for this trip typically fill up early.

Hope you all had a good year, and wish you all the best for the holiday season and the coming year.

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. Continue reading →

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 Continue reading →

Alaska Wood Frog

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Alaska Wood Frod in Wrangell St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska

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

Hey Folks,

Quite a break from the blog. Lucky me!

Here’s a cool photo of a critter we don’t see a lot of in Alaska; the Wood frog. Taken along the coast of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park near Malaspina Glacier. We saw quite a few of these wood frogs, and literally, thousands of tadpoles. I haven’t seen a tadpole in 25 years. Way too cool.

Cheers

Carl

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.

Hey Folks,

We’ve had some pretty great weather here through the month of February, and that means, a great time to get out and look for northern lights. Working on my own project, rather than photo tours, I was able to hit a few destinations I wanted to shoot that are a little more hit and miss; less reliable than some others, but places I wanted to shoot nonetheless.

One of those places is Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. Inevitably I’d be in the wrong place at the wrong time in a place slightly larger than the country of Switzerland; I’d head off in one direction and then have fog and haze cloud up the skies, or I’d head off in another direction, and the lights display would be directly behind me. The mountains in front me being what I want to shoot, and the lights behind me. Not a great mix.

But, such is what happens when you have specific ideas in mind; it’s important to be flexible in nature photography, and particularly so when shooting the northern lights, but part of working on a project involves fulfilling your own ideas. Spontaneity is great, and I’m all for it. But I’m also interested in trying to make a photo of something I envision ahead of time, and working toward that.

It’s a rewarding, but often frustrating endeavor. Continue reading →

Editing some old images – what to keep, what to toss

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A young male brown bear walks up a salmon stream fishing for Sockeye salmon in Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

A young male brown bear walks up a salmon stream fishing for Sockeye salmon in Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of the photo.

Hey Folks,

So far this winter, I’ve spent a good bit of time editing old images from my hard drives. Mostly, cleaning up the hard drives and deleting images I don’t wish to keep. I’m trying to be a little lot more ruthless in my editing lately, and really have been cleaning up the storage space. I cleaned out over 50GB of space last week, and I’m still only a fraction of the way into that 1TB drive. I’ll probably cut it in half by the time I’m through.

It’s difficult to know exactly what to keep and what to drop some times.

Here’s a brown bear image I recently had a sale inquiry about, of a brown bear from Katmai National Park and Preserve. A beautiful bear, don’t you agree?

So when this bear came walking up the river towards our group, I shot a number of images. 22, in fact. Mostly, poorly frame photos where a branch disturbs the background, or the bears ears are back or he’s looking out of the frame or some such things that distract from the image. Maybe 3 or 4 are keepers from the sequence. I’ve processed and uploaded 2 to the website; here’s the other photo I uploaded to the site. The rest of the sequence really aren’t images I’m likely to sell. Continue reading →