Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Travel”
Caribou and Fall colors, Alaska.
Back from a quick trip across parts of the state in search of fall colors. We found some nice stretches along the Denali Highway – a road often confused with the road into Denali National Park. This is an old dirt road that years ago provided access to the National Park. It traverses a beautiful area, and in some years, the fall colors can really be amazing up there – endless stretches of bright, rich reds, yellows and oranges. This year we found some nice patches, but nothing like what we have seen in the past. Fortunately, this caribou choose to stand in one of the best patches!
Mt. McKinley, better know up here as Denali, Denali National Park, Alaska.
Unfortunately, I have never seen a photo do the shear size of this mountain justice, but on those rare days when the mountain is out like this one earlier in August, it sure is an amazing sight!
I probably won’t be able to post to the blog until some time next week as we head off to photograph Alaska’s amazing fall colors.
Seward, Alaska.
This is my awesome little hometown during some nice weather last week! Since I was flying in a helicopter with the doors off on my way to Bear Glacier, I thought I would grab a few photos of my favorite town. I kinda like this photo as it shows not only the town, but the boat harbor and the trail up Mt. Marathon – two things that really help define this coastal community. For those that don’t know, the 4th of July race up and down Mt. Marathon is the second oldest foot race in the United States, second to only the Boston Marathon – and a huge visitor draw to Seward each year. Once upon a time I used to run the race, now I save the mileage on my knees for packing camera gear.
Wild lynx, Denali National Park, Alaska.
This is one of those moments in nature where you think, wow, I wonder what is going to happen next? I had been sitting on the ground watching this young lynx hunt in the alders for about 20 minutes – I also saw a couple of snowshoe hares make a lucky escape when they saw it coming. Then, without warning, it turned and began walking right towards me like a curious house cat. The image above was captured with a 100-400 on a full frame camera. Gosh, I could have had head shots if I still had my 600 and converter on!
So what happened next? A vehicle of Park Service employees came around the corner – needless to say they were thrilled to see such a rare animal and when they pulled up and began photographing, the lynx turned around and went back to hunting in the alders. The group of us were able to watch and photograph this young lynx for another 15 minutes – definitely a thrill!
Wild wolf, Denali National Park, Alaska.
Finally getting a chance to share some more of my photos from my trip to Denali earlier this month. Look at the difference in the appearance of this beautiful wolf in two photos taken just 7 seconds apart. The first one looks nice a friendly like a family pet, the second one…
Wild wolf yawns, Denali National Park, Alaska.
This wolf was passing by me at a fast pace – I didn’t think I had too many options except maybe a pan / blur when all of a sudden she stopped and laid down in some really sweet light! The bottom photo was taken at f/13 thinking I would be panning, the top one was dialed down to f/4 so that I could limit the depth of field, and improve the background and foreground by blurring the distracting elements.
Ocras, Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska.
Last week, the day following my trip to the amazing Bear Glacier Lagoon, I went back into Kenai Fjords National Park for about a 12 hour boat trip – the highlight had to be the two hours we spent with a large pod of orcas, also known as killer whales. I captured a lot of photos of them I liked, but this one with the mountains in the background was one of my favorites.
Bear Glacier Lagoon, Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska.
Can you see the kayaker? I paddled around this massive iceberg to include Janine on the far side of the old tunnel to put the scale in perspective. She was well back from the arch and the iceberg, so that exaggerates the appearance of scale a bit, but it wasn’t safe getting any closer – but still, this thing was huge!
This amazing place is less then 15 miles from Seward – I have been trying to get in there for years and was finally able to this week, and all I could keep thinking was wow! The icebergs are mammoth. Hundreds of feet long, and maybe 50 feet tall – maybe more. Truthfully, those are just wild guesses because I have no sense of scale out there. The place is amazing! The place is also crazy dangerous. Icebergs would roll or break without warning – we watched 6 seals get thrown unexpectedly into the lagoon when a berg they were resting on rolled. The 34 degree water coupled with the fact we were the only two people in the whole area just adds to the risk.
Gosh, I had more bear and puffin photos from Lake Clark National Park I was going to post, then we went to Denali, I still have a number of wolf photos from there I wanted to share, but now I have had a couple of great days in Kenai Fjords to share! It has been nice to have a really productive couple of weeks since I really didn’t get too much photography done in the first half of the summer – I did get a ton of office work done, but being in the field is way funner!
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