Category Archives: Art

musings on art, and all things art.

Print Sale – 20% off, Nov 1 – 25, 2010.

1 Reply
A dumping of fresh snow loads this young willow sapling, Wrangell mountains, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

A dumping of fresh snow loads this young willow sapling, Wrangell mountains, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. To view a larger version of this photo, please click on the image above.

hey Folks,

I just thought I’d do a quick plug here and announce my first ever print sale. That’s right, the holidays are coming on soon, and why not order your loved ones a fine art print for their wall? Better yet, order yourself a fine art print. So, Nov 1 through Nov 25, 2010, I’m offering 20% off regular prices for ALL prints. A 16″ x 20″ print (or 24″) of this image typically sells for $180. Right now, until Nov 25, that means it’s yours for $144.00.

Canvas Wraps are also available – a beautiful canvas print, laminated for protection, wrapped, mounted on a handcut, solid wooden frame and ready to be hung on the wall. Printed in Atlanta (myphotopipe.com do some of the finest Canvas Gallery Wraps in the nation), the finished product is simply exquisite. For $280.00 (+S&H), this, or any other image on my website, will be printed at 20″ x 30″ and mounted, ready for your wall. That’s a $70.00 savings!

Wildlife Photos? Take a look at the Grizzly Bears gallery for over 500 wild grizzly bear photos. Elk, whitetail deer, bald eagles, you choose. Landscape photos and scenics on sale as well, such as the snow-laden willow sapling here, taken one winter in the Wrangell Mountains, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Also, note this offer includes any image posted on the blog here that is not yet posted to the gallery section of the site. Browse the website, decide which images you might like, or your friends and family might like, and place an order. 3 or more images and I’ll cover S&H .. just use the Coupon Code “Go-Ahead-‘n’-Get-Ya-One”.

In order that I can get all prints finished and shipped in time for the holidays, the sale ends Nov 25. Waiting until later can mean your print likely won’t arrive in time, so please go ahead and place your order asap.

Credit Card orders welcome.

Cheers

Carl

Grizzly Bear and Fall Colors

3 Replies
Grizzly bear and fall color, standing in warm afternoon light on the edge of a salmon stream. Ursus arctos, brown bear, Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Grizzly bear and fall color, standing in warm afternoon light on the edge of a salmon stream. Ursus arctos, brown bear, Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click the image to view a larger version of the photo.

Hey Folks,

As I mentioned in a post a few days back, I am pretty excited about some of the grizzly bear photos I took on this most recent trip to Katmai National Park. Over the years I’ve spent so many weeks there, shooting and re-shooting photos of grizzly bears, that it can be difficult to really bring home some new images. This photo is one I was super happy with.

I took, of course, countless images of bears eating salmon, chasing salmon, catching salmon, standing around, sitting down, sleeping, fighting, playing, etc. But what I really wanted to capture was some dramatic images in dynamic weather or dynamic lighting situations. We were fortunate to have an abundance of both, Continue reading →

Internet Radio Interview

2 Replies
Male grizzly bear, brown bear photo, Katmai National Park, Alaska.

Male grizzly bear, brown bear photo, (Ursus arctos) Katmai National Park, Alaska. Please click on the thumbnail to view a larger version of the photo.

Hey Folks,

Just a quick note here to say if you can, check out this online radio interview (GONE) Tuesday, May 4, 2010, at 9pm EST. I’ll be talking with photographers Greg Downing and E.J. Peiker, of Naturescapes.net, and  host Dave Warner, from Lensflarelive. It should be a lot of fun to do, and hopefully interesting and useful as well. I know I’m excited about it, Greg and EJ are great photographers whom I’ve admired for a long time, and it’ll be nice to talk with them.

Well be talking about wilderness photography, backpacking and hiking and photographing, as well as some environmental/conservation topics that might be relevant to nature photography. Greg also had the idea of present a few images online and we can discuss those and present a little more context about the work. I’m not really sure all of what we’ll talk about yet, but the show is open to call in, and it’d be great to hear from you on air. Hopefully the conversation will be interesting.

The broadcast can be heard live here. If you miss the show, it will be edited and available as a podcast soon after – I’ll add a link to this post when that becomes available.

I hope you enjoy the show,

Cheers

Carl

The art of nature

13 Replies
Silhouette of a bald eagle, Kachemak Bay, Homer, Alaska.

A bald eagle headshot, silhouetted against a glowing sunset, Kachemak Bay, Homer, Alaska. Click the image to view a larger version of the photo.

Hey Folks,

I read a great blog on art yesterday, by Paul Grecian. The subject was a play on the aural equivalent of the old adage, ‘if a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it does it make a sound’. Paul takes the viewpoint that art is a human pursuit, and exists only when it has a human audience. “If there is no human to perceive it and translate the experience into an emotion, then there is no art” – I’m not so sure I subscribe to that idea, for a number of reasons.

I think art is a verb; art is something we do. The results of that process might be nice to look at, or not, or nice to listen to, but the essence of art is creating. The act of creating is where art lies, not the products of that process. And we are not at all the sole creators. An American Tree Sparrow calling the tune of the alpine country is as artful as Joshua Bell playing a Beethoven concerto. The dance of the Japanese Red Crowned Crane is glorious. A Bower bird’s building her nest? The song of the wolf pack over the frozen night air is as spell-binding as Aretha or Stevie on a good day, no? What distinguishes human art from the performances of our fellow creatures, other than our own ability (and endeavours) to relate to it?

Art is essentially play. Continue reading →

Manufactured Landscapes – a film review.

6 Replies
Colorful duplex and garden, Orsono, Chile.

Colorful duplex and garden, Orsono, Chile. Please click the image to view a larger version of the photo.

Hey Folks,

I’m depressed. I just watched “Manufactured Landscapes”, (2006) and if you haven’t seen it, I recommend you do. It’s a pretty intense documentary, featuring amazing photography by Edward Burtynsky. Burtynsky creates some powerful imagery of some of the most unlikely subjects – largely industrial wasteland. Coal mines, dams, factories (the opening shot shows the inside of a factory over three quarters of a kilometer long), parking lots, construction sites, destruction sites, you name it. It’s compelling stuff – the beauty in his photos is moving, yet discomforting. The reality he brings to the viewer is a bit overwhelming; this stuff IS our world, today.

The film is set in China, largely, though the narration points out that this industrial development is global; almost all of the products being pieced together in factories throughout China consist of raw materials shipped in from around the globe, then shipped back off to meet demand overseas. The stark reality here is that China’s environmental problem is our problem; insatiable demand from the “developed” world is altering not just the landscape, but the land itself. Continue reading →

Quaking Aspen bole blurs

6 Replies

Careful panning of the camera, during a long exposure, blurs the boles of these aspen, Wrangell-St. Elias national Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Quaking aspen, Populus tremuloides, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

I was looking through some older images tonight, and found this one from last fall. This is from a little stand of Quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) that I’ve photographed a few times. I’d actually been looking for some wildlife to photograph, but was thwarted yet again in my quest, so, as the light faded, I headed for this stand of aspen. I had photographed them a number of times, but never really played with the camera panning technique here before. This was a situation where digital photography was a real help; I could take an image, review the frame on the LCD on the back of the camera, and see what I liked, or disliked, and figure out what I needed to do in order to create the kind of image I was looking for.

Now, generally I don’t post the ‘photo techs’ on images, because I think to do is largely useless information. Continue reading →

Grizzly Bear Chasing Salmon

7 Replies

A slow shutter speed blurs the speed of a grizzly bear chasing a Sockeye Salmon in Brooks River, Katmai National Park, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

One of the photos I wanted this year was some slower shutter speed blurs of grizzly bears chasing spawning Sockeye Salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) up the river. This kind of image is difficult to do with grizzly bears; well, not difficult to do, but difficult to manage a photo that works. More so, I think, than with most other animals. The result of this is that it seems to take about 5 times as many attempts to get a decent ‘panblur’ of a grizzly bear than it might, for example, of a caribou or wolf. What I’m calling a ‘panblur’, for those of you who aren’t certain, is a technique of slowing down the shutter speed when shooting movement, so that the subject becomes blurred, rather than crisp and sharp. You can see in the image above the spashing water and the legs of the bear are not to sharp at all. By panning the camera along with the bear as it races through the water, Continue reading →

Winter’s comin’

6 Replies

snow swept hillside in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

Winter’s right ’round the corner, so I thought I’d post a shot from last winter. High on a mountainside in the Wrangell Mountains the wind had swept the snow into some really cool patterns of ridges and valleys. I loved the curves in this scene, and with some nice dramatic side-lighting right before sunset (around 2:30pm), this scene was cooler than cool. Cooler than being cold, in fact. For scale, you can see a lone spruce tree in the background, shaded by the rising ridge beyond it.

Funnily enough, the temperature up on the hillside was markedly warmer than down at the Shack. Everytime I ventured up on to the mountains, the temperature was noticeably warmer. Folks tell me the inversion is simply because warm air rises and cold air drops, so down into the Kennicott River basin it goes. T Continue reading →

A new day on the way

7 Replies

Northern Lights over Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

I can’t overstate the import of what the world saw this past week. For the first time ever the people of the US elected an African American president, Barack Obama, and the value that such a moment carries is immeasurable. A bare 40 years have past since Bill Russell became the first African American head coach in the NBA. 10 years ago the world saw the first black CEO of a Fortune 500 company (how ironic is it that Franklin Raines became CEO of — wait for it — Fannie Mae!!!!) There are innumerable examples of things like this all highlighting the magnitude of this moment. But perhaps none more than this one; Continue reading →

Aspen boles, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska

4 Replies

Aspen boles, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

Here’s an image from my most recent venture into the park. I’ve never really tried this kind of technique with photography too much, but I kind of enjoyed the results. Some of them, anyway. It was interesting to me to edit this series of photos – abstract images emote so differently, and I’ve not a lot of practice in that field, so I felt I wasn’t really sure what I was supposed to be looking for.

The technical aspect of photos is so dominant in more orthodox imagery, so editing become somewhat rote; check sharpness, exposure, etc. But abstract imagery requires a different process, and I find it hard to edit Continue reading →