The northern lights soar above the mountains in arctic Alaska.
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
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
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
Trying something different – the northern lights and a little motion. Click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.
Hey Folks,
Just trying a little something different; hoping to give a little sense of motion to the northern lights the other night.
Not that I’m bored shooting the northern lights, or anything; just trying to see what else might work.
Thoughts, anyone? Works? Awful? WTF?
Cheers
Carl
Photo of the aurora borealis over the Wrangell Mountains and Copper River, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.
Hey Folks
Shoot Your Passion
…
If you don’t, who will?
Cheers
Carl
The northern lights over the broken boreal forest of arctic Alaska. Please click the image above to view a larger version of the photo.
Hey Folks,
Sorry for not keeping up with the blog these last few months. Blogging regularly is hard; really hard. Sometimes I’m busy, or behind with my image editing, and sometimes, to put it simply, I’m just not that impassioned about it.
I’d like to be more disciplined about posting regularly, and more inspired to keep up with my own photography more consistently as well as that of others I enjoy, but sometimes, I think, the world of the internet is so overwhelming it’s easier to switch off and disengage than try to keep up and follow everything that flies by. I’ve probably missed hundreds of great posts around the web, I’m sure, but if that’s the worst of my recompense, well, things aren’t too bad I suppose.
Here’s a photo of the northern lights from last March. Ya gotta love the northern lights, no?
Cheers
Carl
Aurora borealis, or northern lights, over spruce trees, White Mountains near Fairbanks, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.
Hey Folks,
Apologies for the long delays in getting back to the blog. I’ve been busy working on a new website (details coming soon enough, I hope), and then the last couple of weeks over in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park for a snowshoe trip, and then a week in central Alaska looking for the aurora borealis.
Now I’m back for a couple of brief days before heading out again to the park for another trip, snowshoeing and photographing. So I won’t be around much at least for another week or so.
This shot was from last night in the White Mountains, just north of Fairbanks. The aurora rocked all night long. We got back in the cabin at a little after 5, then up at 9, breakfast, and on the road back to Anchorage. I was hoping to go back out tonight, but I don’t see that happening at this point. I’m tired.
People tend to underestimate how difficult it can be to shoot the aurora. It means long nights, and often little sleep. And very often, very little good photographic fortune. But sometimes we get lucky.
Hope you enjoy this image of the aurora.
Cheers
Carl
Hey Folks,
What’s your page rank? How many friends do you have? Retweets? Have you shared anything today? What’s your title tag? Incoming links? How’s your website rank?
Now that summer is over, and it’s officially “office season”, you’re probably spending your time doing much of what I’ve been doing lately; website work, photo editing, marketing and promotion via the sticky, tricky and infinite webs we call SEO (Search Engine Optimization) & Social Media (making me wonder what, exactly, Anti-social Media might be).
SEO is a pretty tricky beast. It’s a lot of research, reading, re-reading, web-coding, overhauling, reviewing, more research, re-coding and hair pulling. It’s mostly a lot of trial and error; it’s not a given, for example, that what works for one site is applicable and relevant for another. And it’s almost certain that what works on the article you just carefully absorbed will not work on your website. So, it’s mostly guesswork.
Sometimes the results are what we hoped for, and we pat ourselves on the back, and think how clever we are. Sometimes, despite all out best efforts, the old googles kick our superbly optimized page to the bottom of page 11 on their results; this really hurts when you see some trashy, 1993-styled geocities looking webpage showing up on the first page of rankings. Continue reading
Northern lights, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.
Hey Folks,
Here’s another image from a recent sojourn to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park to see and photograph the northern lights, or Aurora borealis. It was a treat to have a moonlit night to shoot by, providing plenty of ambient light to capture the fall colors as well as the northern lights.
This trip was a wild ride. A mad run from Anchorage to the Glennallen area Continue reading