Tag Archives: Wildlife

Free Photos – bull elk photo

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Bull Elk bugling, Jasper National Park, Canada.

Bull Elk bugling, Jasper National Park, Canada.

Hey Folks,

I had another photo request for free use of my images today; they come in pretty regularly, it seems, particularly for wildlife and landscape photography. We nature lovers obviously love what we do, and so must have a desire to give our work away for free. How can we not?

I’ll be the first to admit it folks; these are tough times, for buyers and sellers alike. There’s no denying that truth. I thought I’d try to find some kind of compromise here. I always like to develop a relationship with someone who may potentially pay for my work, and I also wanted to help these people out – theirs is a just and worthwhile cause. And hey, maybe helping these folks out might provide the impetus for some real economic activity in the world? I hoped to do my bit to help the economy get rolling, my own little stimulus plan, if you will (I still can’t believe the government got away with labeling theirs a ‘stimulus package‘). At the same time, I didn’t really want to give away my work for free. What to do?

I tried to explain to the person on the phone; I listened closely, and sympathized – “yes, I realize you’re a non-profit organization, but  my business, on the other hand, is NOT a non-profit“. This didn’t clarify things, apparently.

A different tact:  “Well, you see, my rent doesn’t go down according to the charity work that your business does, and the food I eat doesn’t become free simply because I did a good deed for the day“. We got nowhere. Continue reading →

Brown bear, Katmai National Park, Alaska.

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Grizzly bear walking in a salmon River, Katmai National Park, Alaska.

A young brown bear (Ursus arctos) walks through a stream hunting for spawning Sockeye Salmon. Grizzly bear, or coastal brown bear, Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click the image for a larger version of the photo.

Hey folks

5-6 more weeks and the bears are running around the woods again!!!

I’ll be in the woods for the coming week, but I thought I’d post a brown bear photo, and schedule a couple of other blog posts for while I’m gone.

Catching this young blonde colored brown bear in some nice light was quite a treat. That’s the benefit of spending time in the field. Most wildlife photography, it seems, is done in places where the subject is pretty much a given; places like Homer for bald eagles, Yellowstone for elk, Churchill for polar bears, and Katmai National Park and Preserve for grizzly bears, or brown bears. So what makes the differernce? Light. Continue reading →

Bear Claws; black, polar and grizzly bear claws

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Comparison of Grizzly bear, black bear and polar bear claws

Comparison of Bear claws – black bear claws (Ursus americanus), polar bear claw (Ursus maritimus), grizzly bear claw (Ursus arctos) and Kodiak bear claws. Please click on the image for a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

I thought I’d post this shot, as it might be of interest to some folks. A photo showing the different size and shapes of claws from various species of American bears. From left to right, the claws are: black bear, polar bear, grizzly bear, coastal brown bear or Kodiak bear.The polar bear is the only true carnivore out of those species, but it’s claws are but a fraction of the size of those belonging to the great grizzly, and in particular, the coastal brown bear.

Bear claws, and particularly the grizzly claws, were long revered as a symbol of power, both physical and spiritual, to many Native American Indian cultures; wearing the bear claw was often only an earned respect. Anyone’s who’s seen such fearsome weaponry up close can attest as to why.

The relationship of the polar bear and the grizzly bear is interesting. Continue reading →

Male Pine Grosbeak photo, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

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Male Pine Grosbeak (Pinicola enucleator) perched on a spruce tree, Wrangell St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

A male Pine Grosbeak (Pinicola enucleator), perched on a small spruce tree in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click the image to view a larger version of the photo.

Hey Folks,

Here’s a photo I took last spring of a male Pine Grosbeak. I had set up a couple of feeders around the Shack and these gorgeous birds would come in every day and have a good ole time. Other regular visitors to the buffet were Black-capped and Boreal Chickadees, Common Redpolls, Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers, Gray Jays and, of course, the effervescent Red Squirrel. Ravens came by, from time to time, but rarely dropped down to the feeder.  The Pine Grosbeaks were my favorite though.

The grosbeaks are actually a finch, the largest of the boreal finches. A group of these birds together is called, wait for it, a ‘gross’ of grosbeaks. They’re such a cool bird, and very tolerant of my puttering around the cabin; they’d generally ignore my comings and goings.

I grabbed a small white spruce sapling that some snow-machiners had run over and destroyed, and used it to set up the perch. For a background I hung a fleece blanket up and positioned it for a nice clean background. It’s a little bit ‘contrived’, but hopefully it works OK. Continue reading →

The art of nature

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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 →

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

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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.

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

Photos of 2009

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Dawn rising over Mount Blackburn, elevation - 16,390 feet (4,996 M), winter, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska

Dawn rising over Mount Blackburn, elevation – 16,390 feet (4,996 M), winter, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska. Click the image to see a larger version and to browse the rest of the gallery.

Hey Folks,

I thought I might make a blog post, the first for the new year, with a quick presentation of my favorite images from the past year. Not necessarily a “best of”, but just a collection of 12 images, one from each month, each of which mean something to me. Some of these have appeared on the blog before, some have not.

The first one is my favorite image of Mt. Blackburn I’ve taken so far, taken one cold morning a year ago. One of the primary reasons I wanted to spend winter in the McCarthy area was this particular scene. I knew the mountain would get great light in the winter, though I’d only viewed it from here in the summer previously. During the summer the great light is on the northside of mountains here in Alaska, so I’d never really viewed this scene in the great alpenglow you see here. A couple of winters in a cabin in the woods rewarded me in many ways, and I consider this image a nice memory of those days. Good times.

The 2nd photo Continue reading →

Is Facebook the online version of Walmart?

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A beaver (Castor canadensis) hauling willow back to his lodge, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Beaver, (Castor canadensis), hauling willow back to his lodge for the winter, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

You undoubtedly heard the news; today’s bling is Social Networking. You need to be on Facebook and you need to Tweet (loud and often). You need people to Digg your Flickrworld, you need to be Linked In, Hooked Up and Decked Out. You need to do this because you can’t afford not to, because everyone else is doing it, and because if you want to get ahead in life, to succeed, you need to do what everyone else is doing. Right?

It’s true, so I jumped right in. In the last few months I’ve opened the pages of Facebook and Tweeted my first Tweet, and just this week started a Flickr photo account. Additionally, my guiding business, Expeditions Alaska, is now Linked In. Social networking, I’ve been instructed, is the key to my future success and now, after wrapping up a summer of hiking and backpacking in the mountains, I’m giving it a shot.

It’s an interesting and somewhat challenging process. You don’t need me to write about the ways in which successful folks engage this ‘social networking’, as this has been covered elsewhere far more effectively than I might manage. The topic here is the pervasive, engulfing nature of such sites as Twitter and Facebook, etc. According to their stats page Facebook has more than 300 million active users (irony of the term ‘users’ duly noted). Continue reading →

Grizzly bear and fall color

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A grizzly bear stands poised beside Brooks River, vibrant fall colors in the background, as he fishes for Sockeye Salmon. Katmai National park and Preserve, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

As I said in a recent post, on my recent trip to Katmai National Park and Preserve I really hoped to make some images that featured not only the great grizzly bears, but also the awesome fall colors of the boreal forest . The Black Cottonwoods of the area provide the perfect background for photographing grizzly bears, but rarely do photographers seem to combine the 2. Most folks come up to Alaska and shoot the bears in the summer, and I think they’re missing out. The classic shot of a grizzly bear fishing for salmon at Brooks Falls is nice, and only generally possible mid-summer, of course, but there are a lot of other opportunities around in the fall that can be equally exciting. Great fall colors make stunning backdrops, and can really bring a vibrancy to the image. Stepping back, zooming out, and letting the scene dictate the photos is often the key.

In this photo I enjoy the sense of relationship between subject and environment – the dichotomy is largely only a function of our thought processing. The idea that the “environment” is something other than everything is a little peculiar; the subject IS the environment, as equally as the environment is the subject. There is really no difference between the bear and his habitat. Continue reading →

Grizzly Bear Chasing Salmon

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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 →