Borwn bear in the forest, fall colors, searching for salmon in a river. Brown bear (Ursus arctos) Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks

A few quick updates: though nothing is ‘final’ on the interwebs, it seems; the internet goes to infinity, I suppose.

The end of every summer/fall I’m busy with office work, paper work, reports, emails, photo editing, processing, prints, website updates, website tweaks, writing, photo submissions (Oh, how I detest that word “submissions”; yet it’s so wonderfully apt, isn’t it?) and heaven knows what else. It’s not so much fun, but (apparently) it has to be done.

Lately, here’s a few of the projects I’ve been dealing with and fires I’ve put out.  Many more to come.

• New album added  Gates of the Arctic photos
• New images added to the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park album
• New images added to the Aurora Borealis album
• New images added, and some updated design, on my Alaska Photos portfolio page
• Finally added selections to a Mt McKinley photos page

Another change I’ve made with the site, but less visible to everyone here, is I changed my email server from my web host’s server to gmail. Highly recommended move, and not to difficult at all. Gmail has a way better spam filter, and much more adept tools with their auto responder, etc, than lunarpages email server does.

I can still set up my Mac Mail program to retrieve and send emails, so it’s all handled and managed locally for me, but it comes thru gmail, rather than my webhost. Anyone having issues with spam, for example, thru their website’s email, I’d definitely recommend making this move.

One more change; I’ve disparaged coppermine gallery in the past, because they can be pretty hard to deal with. That’s putting it mildly; pita is more appropriate. I know, I know, it’s free software. But there’s no excuse to be so disrespectful toward people when they ask a question. But, the last few dealings I’ve had on their forum asking for some help they’ve been much better, and I actually was able to implement at least some of the changes I wanted to get done. So kudos to the folks at coppermine for being a little more user-friendly.

I also just had an article published, an op-ed piece on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain. The piece is driven by the recent debacle in Congress when AK rep Don Young tells an invited guest (essentially) to shut up. It’s a little outta control. The article is on Alaska Dispatch.

I won’t mention the new Alaska Photo Tours page I put up, but I will mention a lengthy article I wrote recently on “How to Photograph the Aurora borealis“; a 3 part comprehensive guide to shooting the northern lights. I think it covers most of what you might want to know about photographing the aurora.

Speaking of which, I’m about to go give it a whirl; enough of this writing already.
Heading out the door, folks.

Cya

Cheers

Carl