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Matanuska Glacier, Alaska.

With a nice stretch of weather hitting Alaska earlier this week we made a quick over night trip in search of Fall colors.  This was at sunset Monday night.

As you can see here, there were some nice patches of color, along with plenty of areas that were just beginning to change.  The higher elevations around Eureka were already past.

More troubling were the number of trees that were going from green to brown – reminds me of what is happening to areas of Colorado.  Stretches on the Kenai Peninsula, Eagle River, Mat Valley and even in the mountains along the Glen Highway that normally turn bright yellow were going straight to brown.  Don’t really know why, but I would be interested in hearing if others have noticed the same thing, or is my memory of past years a bit skewed through my rosy glasses.  🙂

Humpback Whale, Fredrick Sound, Southeast Alaska.

This one is from the previous morning to my whale with moon image.

Both images were captured with a new Canon 5D III and a 70-200 f/2.8 with a 2x converter.  This image was at 400mm, f/5.6 with a shutter speed of 1/2500 of a second at ISO 640.  That was more then enough shutter speed, I could have dropped my ISO or gone to f/8.  As the sun peaks above the mountains in the morning, the amount of available light changes rapidly.

Humpback whale in the Fredrick Sound, Southeast, Alaska.

I had an exciting trip to Southeast Alaska last week.  I rented a 22 foot aluminum boat with the hopes of photographing humpback whales in wonderful light.

The trip got off to a rough start – wind, waves, low clouds and fog – then hit the prop on a rock ($190 mistake).  My plan was to sleep at night on the folded down seats, but after that first day I couldn’t wait to get back to dry land and a hotel room!  After that things went far better thanks largely to an improvement in the weather.  I’ll probably never forget my first night anchored up in a remote cove listening to a pack of wolves howling on shore just 50 yards a way!  I never did see them despite the light from a nearly full moon, but evidently they are frequently seen in the area.

This was from my final morning when everything came together – whales, great light and a nearly full moon.  The hard part was getting all three in the same frame!  I found that the further away from the whales I was, the easier it was to include all three elements – if you are too close when the whale surfaces, then just 20 feet left or right prevents me from including the moon.  It was a thrill and a relief to have all the elements come together in one frame!