Hey Folks
I’ve been working on some updates on my backpacking website www.expeditionsalaska.com, and haven’t really had much time to keep up on the journal lately. I’m also working on something REALLY cool, but I can’t tell you what it is yet. Stay tuned! 🙂 Continue reading
Hey Folks,
I know I said I would stick with the Tebay Lakes Trip for now, but I’m not much of a stickler for plans – I like spontaneity. So, here’s a photo from earlier in the summer, from just near our campsite in Chittistone Pass, looking over Skolai Pass, Skolai Lake and the toe of the Russell Glacier, Wrangell St. Elias National Park. Summertime is awesome in Alaska, but wow, does sunrise come early. Not just early, but really soon after sunset. It makes shooting and keeping to any kind of regular schedule somewhat problematic. Continue reading
Hey Folks
OK – we’ve officially left Denali behind. For a while. I’m going to post some images from Wrangell St. Elias National Park, because it’s been a while .. must be a few weeks at least. This photo was taken on a backpacking trip I did this August, near Tebay Lakes. We flew in to the backcountry, after waiting around McCarthy all day for the weather to clear – we’d flown in earlier in the day, only to be turned back by a dense fog, less than a mile from our landing strip — arrgghhh – so close! Then we hiked for 10 days, and had an absolute blast. The weather couldn’t have been better – you know it’s good weather in Alaska when I’m swimming in lakes and showering in waterfalls. The blueberries were out of this world. Continue reading
Hey Folks
Few animals reign a landscape like the grizzly bear does the tundra, in my opinion. Grizzlies are absolutely awesome, in every sense of the word. Seeing one can be an amazing experience, even for those of us who’ve been fortunate enough to see quite a number of bears in our lives. Photographing in Katmai National Park is beyond words. I took my parents there this September; though reluctant to make that trip part of their journey, I was finally able to talk them into it. They both say how glad they are that we went, and how that was probably the highlight of their trip. We were also fortunate enough to see a few grizzlies in Denali National Park, even up relatively close (when we were in a shuttle bus, not hiking on the ground). This grizzly bear photo I shot on my earlier trip to Denali, with my buddy Doug from Atlanta. Doug’s an old country boy from Georgia (“born ‘n raised!”), so seeing a grizzly bear was quite a thrill for him. Continue reading
Hey Folks
I promise I’m winding down my photos from Denali this year. One more after this one. This is a cross fox, a color phase of the more commonly seen red fox. The black stripe down the back, with another one across the shoulders forms a cross, hence the name we give it “cross fox”. The animal is, for all intents and purposes, a red fox. In the wild, it’s not unsual for various color phases. They can be the typical orange-red, silver, grey, black, or a combination (like the cross fox). All red foxes have a litte tell-tale marking, regardless of their overall coloring – they all have Continue reading
Hey Folks,
Well, here I’ve finally got this image done – for now. It took me a lot of working, and a lot of learning, but I’m reasonably happy with the processing – for now. The image is a stitched composite of 5 horizontal frames, to form a big long wide skinny panoramic photo of Denali and the Alaska Range. I got a full moon in there too, which was nice. The moon was absolutely awesome – glowing like it only can glow in Alaska. As the final image didn’t really fit on this webpage very well, I just linked the thumbnail here – if you click the thumbnail it will open up a larger file. Continue reading
Hey Folks,
It’s WAY too late for me here in Anchorage – I just walked in a little while ago from this little blues bar, called Blue Central. They have an open mic night every sunday, and I was fortunate to get to play this evening for an hour or more – nice finish to my week.It was tons of fun, and the folks I played with did a bunch of different styles of music, so it was interesting. There’s nothing quite like sitting in with people you’ve never met before, and making music together. It’s all the more fun when they start playing tunes you have no idea what they are, how they go, what key they’re in, or anything else. You just have to listen closely. Continue reading
Hey Folks,
It’s a weekend, and I’ve been having a good day. I won’t ruin it by writing much, once again, but I will tell you I saw the Rugby World Cup Final this morning. Even though the Wallabies weren’t there, as I hoped they would be, it was a decent game. South Africa played England, and South Africa won, which I’m glad about. England beat the Aussies in the previous WC Final, 2003, in the tightest of games, and then beat us again in the quarter final this year – so I was kinda hoping the Springboks would win, which they did. Next I went for a short walk with my buddy Charlie, and his 2 dogs, Keba and KebaMusa . Keba is an African name, kinda like, say, John, might be here .. and “KebaMusa” means “Keba’s Wife” .. they’re awesome dogs, except Musa gets mad at other dogs on the trail, so that’s always exciting. In honor of Keba and KebaMusa, I thought I’d post another image of Denali – the link being, obviously, the names I wrote about recently. I’m still working on another image from the mountain I took this summer, and once I get it worked up correctly, I’ll post it here.
I also want to thank my friend Guy Tal, for his help. He’s an amazing fella, a ridiculous photographer, and very generous with his willingness to help out. He’s helped me enormously with learning stuff about photoshop, and computer stuff in general. He’s also super smart, and his writings are always insightful and great to read. Check his site out here if you’re not familiar with Guy – spending some time browsing his website will definitely add years to your life.
For the photo-tech stuff, this is a blend of several different exposures (3, actually) – I’ve always done images like this in the past with either a grad density filter, or manually blended exposures on the computer – this is my first ever image using the HDR processing of Adobe Photoshop. I hope you like it.
I’m off to bed.
Cheers
Carl
Hey Folks
I’m WAY too tired tonight, after working for more hours than I care to admit processing a couple of photos, and I still don’t have them done. This whole digital photography thing is neat, but it can eat my time. Particularly as I’m not very adept at it. Instead of writing anything more, I’m gunna post a picture and go to bed. This is a mountain I photographed this year, and I’ll leave it up to visitors to guess where. I’ll even give you a hint – it’s not Alaska. And most photographers who’ve been to the Rockies have seen it – I thought it looks like a primate’s face.
Cheers
Carl
Hey Folks
This year seems to be the year for snowshoe hares – they’re all over Denali National Park. What was interesting is that I made 2 relatively short trips to Denali National Park this year, one in late August and one in mid-September, and both trips I saw numerous snowshoe hares, but they weren’t at all in the same areas. In August I saw an awful lot of hares in the first 15 miles of the road into the park, particularly near Savage River. In September, we didn’t see any bunnies there, despite my assurances to my parents that would – well, we did see one, he was Continue reading