Below you'll find a list of all posts from July, 2009
Janine in Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada.
This is a larger version of a photo I posted here last winter – I think this has got to be one of the most amazing geological features I have ever stumbled across.
I posting this again as a lead in to say Janine is done updating our main website with photos from our winter travels, and we now have updated sections for Valley of Fire State Park, and Las Vegas.
Sunset over the Seward Boat Harbor, Alaska.
Colorful sunset skies like this are fairly rare in Seward. Thanks to the beautiful surrounding mountains, it takes just the right combination of clouds, and they need to be relatively high to light up like this. Usually they are too low and the sun isn’t able to illuminate the bottom of the clouds.
I captured this photo about a week ago at the beginning of this amazing stretch of weather. Unfortunately, with the hot dry weather has come forest fires – there are now over 70 burning in the state. Today, you can barely make out the shape of that distant mountain you see in this photo, even though it is just a couple of miles away.
We looked at flying down to Glacier Bay as it was one of the few places not effected by the fires, but now I see new fires in the Yukon have inundated that area with smoke as well. So instead of broad landscapes with fields of flowers, I will probably be sticking to closeups and maybe more underwater salmon photos. 🙂
I believe this is Mountain Harebell, a member of the Bluebell Family, Seward, Alaska.
I captured this last night up on Mt. Marathon. I thought the rock was a strong enough subject without the wildflowers, but the flowers were a nice colorful bonus!
Between office work, photographing porcupines and Mt. Marathon, it was a busy day yesterday, but with this amazing stretch of weather we are having – it is hard to stop!
Great news on the baby porcupine in yesterday’s post. Last night it was spotted reunited with it’s mother! I understand the mother was about 5 times the size of this little guy.
A baby porcupine, near Seward, Alaska.
I’m just in from photographing this cute little guy! I want to thank the wonderful owners of Log Dreamin Bed and Breakfast for tipping me off on this youngster.
I have never seen a baby porcupine, I think it is a fairly rare sight. As exciting as it was to watch such an animal feed and wander about, a part of me couldn’t help but be sad. Typically, the single off-spring of a porcupine female stays very close the it’s mother, and isn’t fully weaned and able to leave the den site until October. The adult porcupine typcially seen in this area hasn’t been spotted in weeks – I’m not so sure this one isn’t now on his own. seeing such a young, typcially nocturnal, forest dwelling animal out in the open during the day is probably not a good sign – it probably isn’t learning these things from its mother. I hope it makes it!
Update: Later this evening, this little guy was reunited with it’s mother! I was told the adult was about 5 times the size of the baby.
Mount Alice, from Seward, Alaska.
I captured this last night at sunset from within the city limits of Seward, looking towards Mt. Alice and the Chugach National Forest. I was hoping for a bit more color in the sky, but that’s OK, I think it is still a pretty scene. I think I have more photos of Mt Alice then of any other subject!
Anyone visiting Seward this past weekend (and there were many) must think this is an amazing place. We had perfect temperatures in the mid-70’s, beautiful scenery in every direction, and if that wasn’t enough, two very active humpback whales, keeping visitors and locals alike, entertained as they worked their way back and fourth along the towns coastline.
I have always felt that on a nice day Seward is the most beautiful place I have visited. Unfortuantely, thanks to 65 inches of average annual rainfall and 80 inches of average annual snowfall (according to The Milepost), weekends like this don’t happend often enough. But when they do, it sure is easy to forget about those rainy summers, and dark winters!
A Jumping Red Salmon, Alaska.
Thanks for the great feedback on yesterday’s post!
It was cloudy this morning, so I decided to try again – this time with less wide-angle (58 mm), and using the waterfall as a background. It is interesting, photographing the waterfall from this angle with a fairly high shutter speed really changed the appearance of the falls – they make for a background that is a bit busy for my taste.
The photos in today’s and yesterday’s post will probably never make it our to our main website, or into our portfolio, but I thought I would still share them here so that you can see my experimentation process.
A Red Salmon trying to leap up a waterfall, Alaska.
OK, here is another setup I have been attempting to fine tune this past week. This is also captured by a remotely fired camera via a Pocket Wizard, along with a very wide angle lens set at 20mm, and some fill flash.
Since the salmon were often landing where I had my camera setup, I decided to use an old camera (5d), and an old barely functioning tripod, along with an equally old, seldom used lens – glad I held on to that stuff! Even though I had the whole setup tied to the bank with rope, I really didn’t want to take a chance of losing my main gear into the pool of water!
So what do you think, does this “work”, is it worth pursuing?
Here are my thoughts. The uneven lighting doesn’t help – I hope to try again on a cloudy or overcast day. I think 20 mm might be too wide – the salmon looks a little small in the frame even through it is just a couple feet from the camera – maybe 24 would be better. I might try a different composition, one looking back towards the waterfall – this might help keep the camera dry – I had to constantly dry the front of the lens thanks to splashing salmon!
I need to work on my reaction time – about 100 of my 120 photos contained only a waterfall because by the time I clicked, the salmon had already landed!
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