Category Archive

Below the bowl on the backside of the race portion of Mt. Marathon, Seward, Alaska.

The plan was to continue posting photos on the blog from our recent trip to British Columbia, as I worked hard in the office.  Well, the weather turned so nice, we couldn’t stay inside!  So yesterday afternoon we grabbed the backpacks, tent and camera gear and headed for the hills!  This was captured just before sunset last night – unfortunately the sky didn’t light up, but it was a great place to hang out!

After photographing sunrise, we were still back home by 9:30, so we had a nice night in the field, and can still get some office work done!

Here are more Alaska photos.

Coyote, Chugach National Forest, Alaska.

I spotted and photographed  this coyote last night – I think it was the same one I often spotted while skiing last winter.

Shortly after finding him, the coyote found a spruce grouse family with very small chicks.  The mother spruce grouse did an amazing broken wing acting job the the coyote compelty was fooled by.  The coyote took off chasing the mother bird some distance down the road, and she managed to stay enticingly close, but just out of reach.  Unfortunatly one the the chicks froze motionless right in the middle of the road!  I went and stood by the chick  so that it wouldn’t get hit by any passing vehicles.  Eventually, it moved back into the forest.  Nature sure can be fascinating to watch!

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!

A young moose feeds in a pond, Chugach National Forest, Alaska.

I captured this a couple of nights ago, 15 minutes past 11 p.m.!

Paradise Peak, Chugach National Forest, Alaska.

I returned to this pretty patch of lupine for sunset Wednesday night.  I’m pretty much standing in the same spot as I was in the image I posted earlier this week, but facing a different direction, just as the stormy weather cleared.  It is interesting how the same location can produce such different results in such a short period of time.