Great Horned Owl Chick, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

Great Horned Owl chick (owlet – Bubo virginianus), in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. The chicks were just flegding, and learning to fly. This little guy had landed on the grounded, and before long flew off to a nearby white spruce tree in the boreal forest. Great Horned Owl, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image to view a larger version of the photo.

Hey Folks

Just a quick photo for the weekend. A Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus) chick in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. The young owls were just fledging, learning to fly, and this little guy wasn’t quite sure what to make of the weird guy with the camera, laying prone on the ground nearby.

Have a great weekend all.

Cheers

Carl

Facebook is now bigger than Yahoo

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Miles from Facebook; Ross Green Lake, fall, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click the image to view a larger version of the photo.

Hey Folks,

Remember this post a few months ago, comparing Facebook with Walmart? In that post I pointed out that Facebook had more than 300 million registered users. Well, now, just 4 months later, Facebook has over 400 million registered users, and in January apparently surpassed Yahoo in traffic numbers, making Facebook the 2nd most heavily visited website in the US. Google, of course, is #1 (Skolai Images is #5 or 6, depending on if update the blog or not). But yes, that’s right, Facebook is now bigger than Yahoo. Until 2008, Yahoo was the #1 website in the world. News article here.

Google apparently love their #1 ranking, and have just released Google Buzz – if you haven’t already, you might want to click on my Buzz profile, Continue reading →

Manufactured Landscapes – a film review.

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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 →

Cross country skiing photo – Wrangell St. Elias

The Baker River and Bob Marley

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Waterfalls, Baker River, Rio Baker, Patagonia, Chile. Click the thumbnail to see a larger version.

Hey Folks

“How many rivers do we have to cross, Before we can talk to the boss, eh?” – Bob Marley, “Burnin and Lootin'”.

Today, Feb 6th, 2010, is the 65th anniversary of Bob Marley’s birthday. Bob is one of my highest musical heroes, and this tune, of all his great songs, is probably the one that I love the most. So, in honor of the great Bob Marley, here’s a version of his classic ‘Redemption Song‘ that I recorded a few years back with my friend Steve on vocals.

[display_podcast]

I thought this photo would be a fitting accompaniment. This photo is of the waterfall on the Baker River, beginning of a series of Class 5 and Class 6 rapids through an unbelievable canyon. Continue reading →

Photo sale to the CIA

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Winter snowshoeing, boreal forest, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Click the image to view a larger version.

Hey Folks,

All photo sales are unique, but this one was pretty weird. My phone rings around 5:30am, I kinda half open my eyes, clasp for the phone, miss, knock it off the table beside my bed, try to catch it, bang my head on the guitar standing against the wall, drop the phone, and it crashes to the floor. My go-to response in this situation is pretty simple; I curse. It’s a sin, I know, but it’s a hard habit to break. So I curse again, and then pick up the phone.

Surprisingly, the person on the other end of the phone is still there. I gurgle a quick greeting;

“hello, this is Carl.”

“hello, this is special agent ——– ………. “ Continue reading →

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

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Snow covered spruce trees in the boreal forest, Wrangell St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

This photo from my most recent trip to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, over the Xmas- New Year. The note below was penned one beautiful evening last winter, by candlelight in a tiny cabin in the Alaska. There’s nothing quite like the silence and the cold of the boreal forest in an Alaskan winter.

The Paradox of Silence and the Cold
Silence is the aural equivalent of stillness. Both appear related to time, or at least our perception of it. Winter in the north seems to be abundant in both. The northern winter, often so harsh and unrelenting, is also the time when the place becomes still and silent. Continue reading →

Blogs, Social Media, Tweets and Gibberish

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Caribou herd on the coastal plain, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska.

Caribou herd feeding on the coastal plain, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska. Click the thumbnail for a larger, more epic, version.

Hey Folks

Recently I read a photographer ask the following question:

Now I know that blogging gets your profile closer to the top of the heap and web traffic will probably go up. The question is have any of you actually seen a raise in the amount of sales as a result? Is it all worth the amount of time that it takes to do all this stuff?

Now, I hope the photographer doesn’t mind me mentioning his name, but I only do so because this guy is a total BAD-ASS. Readers, meet Mr Adam Gibbs. Adam is an amazing photographer, and I don’t mean ‘amazing’ like ‘oh yeah, cool’ – I mean like his images are simply gorgeous. If this photo doesn’t make you cry, you’re computer is broke. If this photo doesn’t move you, it’s time for you to retire from your position as CEO of Exxon-Mobil, Mr Tillerson.

Anyway, the discussion that ensued revolved, as suspected, around blogging, facebooking, tweeting, etc, etc. Is it “worth it”? Continue reading →

Hole in the Wall, Skolai Pass, Wrangell St. Elias National Park, Alaska

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Skolai Pass, Hole in the wall rock formations, glaciers, Wrangell-St Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. The flowers you see here are (white ones) Mountain Avens (Dryas octopetala) and Dwarf Fireweed (Epilobium latifolium)

Hey Folks,

It’s always nice when a magazine editor wants your photo for their story, and you get published. But it’s WAY nicer when you get published in a magazine you enjoy, read and value. This image posted here is in the current edition of backpacker magazine, page 65 – full page vertical, which is nice. The image accompanies an article on backpacking “the Goat Trail”, in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. This was the first route I ever hiked in Wrangell-St. Elias, and definitely a favorite of mine, so having my image chosen to accompany the story represents much more than just another published photo and a check to me.

It’s also cool for me because a few of my friends are published in the same edition of the magazine. It’d be remiss of me not to mention Ron Niebrugge, also a photographer I admire. Continue reading →

Here Comes the Sun

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Dawn touches Mt Sanford, Wrangell St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Click the image to see a larger version.

Hey Folks,

After the George Harrison classic song of the same name – Abbey Road is such a great tune. This song is actually the first Beatles tune I ever learned how to play on guitar. it struck me when I learned it how similar it was to a classic song my favorite band at the time, Cream. The song ‘Badge’ has a similar intro-guitar riff. Come to find out that George Harrison actually co-wrote the Cream tune with Eric Clapton, for the Goodbye album, and it was that same song-writing session that produced “Here Comes the Sun” for Abbey Road. On the record, Harrison’s song-writing name was “L’angelo Mysterioso”. Sly devil.

This photo is of Mount Sanford, as the peak reaches high into the cold night air to meet the first light of the coming morning. The light gracefully kisses the mountain top good morning, and comes down to say hello to my cold fingers an hour or so later.

Cheers

Carl