hey Folks,
Here’s the best of the duck opportunities I had. A Barrow’s goldeneye. A male and a female were hanging out at this small pond, and I spent a number of hours there trying to get some images. ducks spend a lot of time floating around on ponds with their head tucked under the wings sleeping. ‘Dabbler’s they’re called – well these ducks did more sleeping than dabbling.
Cheers
Carl
Hey Folks,
It’s been a fun week so far .. the birds are back in the north country, and that means lots of time wondering how I can sneak my way close enough for a photo of one of them.
Ever try to sneak up on a bird?
It’s a tough gig. They have ‘eyes like eagles’ funnily enough, and always know exactly where you are – and how close they let you approach seems to correlate precisely with how well they fit in the frame of your camera – as they get more than half the viewfinder, they fly away – regardless if you’re shooting an enormous bald eagle or a sneaky little robin.
But it’s fun, and it’s so great to have them back in the north.
The woods literally come alive every morning with the various songs and calls of the migratory birds, all getting their groove on and nesting and breeding before summer. I hadn’t realized how much I dig their many sounds until they returned.
Here’s an osprey photo. I was set up in my blind trying to get some duck photos – with no luck. This osprey appeared and I tried to get some images of him/her. It was ridiculously hard, as I was sitting on the ground, kneeling in fact, with my tripod about 1 foot off the ground.
I had the 500mm and a teleconverter mounted on it, and this osprey appears, flying around looking for something to eat. So I’m literally flopping about on the ground, on my back shooting up at this osprey, swinging my camera and lens around like a militiaman and his gattling gun.
I didn’t get much in the way of sharp images, but it was pretty cool – especially what happened about 10 seconds later.
I was sitting on my blind waiting on some ducks to approach (they never did – ducks are among the sneakiest of all birds) and this osprey started flying overhead.
All of a sudden out of the woods comes this Goshawk on the attack .. it was all over pretty quickly. The osprey, far larger, had it’s butt kicked all too soon, and took off from where it came. The Goshawk disappeared back into the woods once the osprey was gone. They must have a nest I there somewhere, but I never saw it.
Cheers
Carl
Hey Folks,
Here’s a male Northern Shoveller, photographed from my tent blind on the north side of Wrangell St. Elias national park, Alaska. I had little luck with these birds, but a ton of fun. And lots of sitting, hidden in my little blind, waiting for them to come close.
Cheers
Carl
Hey Folks,
Who said bald eagles only eat fish. This one has a snowshoe hare and seems to be more than happy with it.
So far, I’ve seen my first grizzly of the year, my first black bear of the year, bull moose, cow moose, beaver and some other white thing that raced across a road in front of me, that I have no idea what it was .. larger than a housecat, with a tail, snow white, and running for it’s life.
A mystery.
That’s the mammals. None of which I photographed. I do have, however, some bird images. You’ll be seeing a number of birds on this blog over the next week. Continue reading
Hey Folks
It’s getting to that time of year (again) when the blog slows down?
Why? Because I’m not gunna be away from the computer. I’ve been catching up a bunch of keywording and editing, and so forth, from the winter, which is a poor way to spend the spring.
Here’s a photo from a month or so ago, when the northern lights were rockin’. They came on just as sunset faded – kinda of like a double-header at the movie cinema, although I can’t think of a movie that is a awesome to watch – maybe “Crash”. The lights dimmed not too long after this, before it got really dark, and I thought the show was over. They came back out again around 2am, and I was fortunate to get up and get some more images, one of which I posted here a month ago.
I’ll be slowing down a lot with posts over the summer, as I’ve got a full schedule booked, which I’m super excited about. I’ll try to get a trip report done for each trip between trips, but don’t want to make any promises. In the meantime, take care of yourselves, and drop in from time to time and see what’s new here.
Cheers
Carl
Hey Folks,
Here’s an image I shot a few weeks back, of a ridgeline of Steamboat Hills – their real name is Hanagita Hills, but everyone I know calls them Steamboat Hills. I converted the image to black and white on the computer, using Photoshop.
Cheers
Carl
Hey Folks,
I just saw this article on CNN’s website. From the first paragraph, ‘President Bush said Saturday that the Saudis’ modest increase in oil production “doesn’t solve our problem,” ‘ – The whole tone of the article is an acknowledgement that such a relatively small increase in oil supply, for the US, is meaningless. This increase could bring gas online to the American market almost immediately. At the same time, the current US administration is arguing for the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil and gas extraction. The US Govt’s own studies yield a mean peak in oil supply from the Refuge of under 900 000 barrels a day. That peak would arrive about 10-12 years AFTER the oil supply came online – and the oil is expected to take 10-15 years to come online after any legislation allowing drilling their might be passed. In other words, it is expected, under optimal conditions, to be 25 years before that peak in supply is reached. So if the Govt decides next year to open the Refuge to drilling (fortunately the US Senate just voted it down, again, for this year), we could hope for fewer than 900 000 barrels a day to come forth in the year 2033.
The second point about this is that one of the lines being touted most strongly for drilling in the Wildlife Refuge (ANWR): Continue reading
Hey Folks,
Here’s an image from last September – I was basecamped in Skolai Pass, and one morning had some nice light to shoot a variety of images.
Skolai is an amazing place with a variety of photographic subjects that is seemingly without end. Wildflowers can be amazing there, landscapes as grand as the immense Russell Glacier and Mt Bona and Mt Churchill, 16 550′ high Mt Bona, and 15 638′ high Mt Churchill towering in the background, ice patterns and crevasses in the glacier, lakes, waterfalls, streams and cascades, shorebirds, raptors, songbirds, and mammals ranging in size from tiny voles and arctic ground squirrels to foxes, marmots, Dall sheep, caribou and grizzlies.
I’ve even see wolf tracks along the air strip up there.
Hole in the Wall is a massive escarpment of peaks similar to Moraine Lake, only bigger and Hole in the Wall feels more primordial, with no trees, the moraine and glacier are still intact, rather than the revegetated montane alpine country and the deep blue lake of Wenkchemna. Hole in the Wall has 7 peaks, rather than 10, and they stand almost sentinel like over Skolai Pass. Continue reading
Hey Folks,
Here’s another image from Chile, the Futaleufu River.
This rapid is called ‘Casa de Piedra’, which translates in English as ‘House of Rock’. See that big huge boulder smack in the middle of the river? The one with 4 small trees growing on top of it.
THAT’S the rock.
It’s huge – I’ll try to dig up an image that might give a sense of scale here – the rock is easily bigger than a regular house – a huge boulder that crashed down to the valley floor centuries ago, and now resides in the Futaleufu River.
Casa de Piedra is a Class V rapid, and a really technical run.
Guides would often not let some guests run the river, if they weren’t strong enough paddlers – once you enter the rapid, from just upstream and to the left of the rock (which would be ‘river right’, facing downstream), it’s a non-stop run for over 200 yards of holes and waves and pour-overs.
Usually we’d stop a few miles upstream, and decide who wanted to go on, and if they were up to it. If we cold round up a boat full of people, they’d consolidate into one or 2 rafts, and head off downstream. The last few miles were pretty sweet whitewater, with Más o Menos (‘More or Less), a huge wave train of Class IV and V water, some smaller rapids, and then Casa – the wickedest rapid on the lower Continue reading
Hey Folks,
I’m sure you’ve heard of the volcano eruption in Chile this last week – down at Chaiten, a massive eruption has devastated the towns of Chaiten and nearby Futaleufu – ash up to 12 inches deep covers much of Futaleufu. Geologists say the volcano hasn’t erupted in nearly 10 000 years.
The volcano is still erupting, a week after the initial explosion, and wind is carrying the ash and dust east and over the town of Futaleufu. The poor little coastal town of Chaiten has been totally rocked, and Futaleufu is hurting – so far all but a few people have left town. A National Geographic vulcanologist has said this particular type or eruption is the worst kind, and could easily continue for months. Continue reading