Below you'll find a list of all posts from August, 2010
Sunset over the Teklanika River valley, Denali National Park, Alaska.
This was a wonderful, long lasting sunset last Friday night in Denali!
For those of you familiar with the movie or the book Into the Wild (Great book and movie by the way) this is the river that Chris McCandless wasn’t able to cross to escape from the bus – this spot is maybe 15 miles upstream from his location.
A couple of bull moose in front of Mt McKinley, Denali National Park, Alaska.
It seems weird to call it Mt McKinley since no one, including myself ever calls it that in conversation, but I guess that is the official name.
Anyone who has hiked on tundra can tell you how hard and slow it is to move on such soft, uneven ground. Well, now I can tell you it is even harder to run on the tundra, especially in Xtra tuffs boots, but that is what I had to do to keep “The Mountain” directly behind these massive moose. They would take 10 steps to the right, I would have to take 50!
I knew the moose would still be in velvet during this trip. That initially was disappointing, but in hindsight it did make exposing for them much easier as I didn’t have to worry about blowing out the exposure on the racks which is so easy to do.
Normally I would use a two or 3 stop hard edge graduated neutral density filter here, but I had left mine back in the truck. So I auto bracketed exposure, and I used Photo shop to manually combine two images captured two stops apart after I returned to the office.
Wild lynx, Denali National Park, Alaska.
I love these rare animals! The crazy hare population boom in Denali has definitely crashed, and from all I have read, the lynx population will follow a similar trend with a year lag – so I thought this might be one of my best chances to get more photos of a lynx at least for many years to come – so I was thrilled to spend about a half hour with two of them in Denali last week. I have a similar image with it looking right at me, but I think I prefer this version with it looking off into the brush.
I had an awesome trip to Denali. Along with lynx, I had wonderful close up experiences with wolves at least every day, saw huge moose, great sheep, bears, nice sunsets and sunrises, and even had the mountain out a couple of times!
Grizzly bear sow and cub, Denali National Park, Alaska.
This is a photo from my trip to Denali earlier this summer. It was a great trip -lots of bears and wolves, two of my favorites as you probably know by now.
I pre-scheduled this as I headed out the door early yesterday morning to make the long drive back up there for more photography. I’m not taking a laptop, so this will be the last post until Tuesday.
Former Alaska Senator Ted-Stevens weighing salmon at the Seward Silver Salmon Derby, Seward, Alaska.
This photo dates back to 1998 – a couple years before I became a professional photographer. I walked down to check out the Silver Salmon Derby action with my camera and flash, and was surprised to see Senator Ted Stevens weighing salmon as a volunteer. It wasn’t a figurehead kind of role for show, he was actually handling the salmon just like myself and all the other people who would volunteer there during the week – no media, photographers or film crews in sight.
I thought it was pretty cool to see one of the most powerful people in the United States volunteering at our little town’s salmon derby – I had to get a photo. When he saw me positioning myself for the photo, he turned and pretended to throw a salmon at me – that is the photo above. He stopped at the last second holding on to the fish – gave me a quick smile, then proceeded to go about his business.
When I read about his passing yesterday I thought about this moment – dusted off and scanned the old slide and decided I would post it here. Rest in peace Senator Stevens.
Cover - Endless Vacation Magazine
It is an honor to have an image on the cover of Endless Vacation – a large travel magazine based in Mexico, so I thought I would do a little shameless self promotion blog post to share the news.
Las Vegas – this has got to be the polar opposite of photographing brown bears in a remote Alaska camp!
Brown bear cub, Lake Clark National Park, Alaska.
This little cub might look like he has a headache, but after watching him off and on for the last 4 days, I can say he has a pretty fun life of climbing logs, playing with sticks, playing with mom, nursing and eating – I don’t think he has a headache!
I just returned from my 4 day Alaska bear and puffin photo tour and I had a blast! I knew we would have lots of bears – males, sows, cute cubs and even puffin, but I didn’t know I would have such a fun group. Great stories and lots of laughs, it was really a fun time!
I will be offering two, 4 day tours with a limit of 6 people each next year around August 6 through the 12 with the possibility of doing the entire time for someone who would like more time with the bears. Stay tuned for more details in the upcoming weeks.
Richard, Mike, Irene, Pam, Wilson and myself and the end of a fun tour.
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