Place your vote (right) for the top 7 Alaska Natural Wonders. This is my third pick out of seven, more to follow. North face of Mt. McKinley (Denali), and Wonder lake, Denali National Park, Alaska. North America’s highest peak is Mount McKinley (20,320+ ft), situated in the Alaska range which arcs across Alaska’s interior. The…
Place your vote (right) for the top 7 Alaska Natural Wonders. This is my second pick out of 7, more to follow. Meares glacier, Prince William Sound The ancient mass of a glacier, particularly a tidewater glacier, that crashes into the sea is both a visual and audio phenomenon. Those who have witnessed it, won’t…
Place your vote (right) for the top 7 Alaska Natural Wonders. This is my first pick out of 7, more to follow. Northern Lights over the Brooks range, Alaska. Even though I’ve seen and photographed the northern lights many, many times, they never cease to amaze me. It is one subject listed under the 7…
In a conversation with friends the subject of travel arose, and with that, a discussion about the 7 wonders of the world. There are many categorical variations of this, i.e., The 7 wonders of the natural world, the Ancient world, the medevial world, and more. I wondered what the 7 natural wonders of Alaska might…
Red Salmon, Brooks River, Katmai National Park, AlaskaCanon 1Ds Mark III, 500mm f4L IS, 1/640 sec @f/8, ISO 1000 In reviewing some files from a trip to Katmai, I came across this image, which is the only one I kept out of many taken. It’s a much more difficult acquisition than it may appear. This…
Zastrugi: wind blown snow patterns, Barter Island, Alaska Canon 1Ds Mark III, 24-105 f4L IS, (45mm), 1/60 @ f/20, ISO 400 Zastrugi or “sastrugi” is a term used to describe patterns in the snow that coincide with the direction of the wind. In ground blizzards, snow patterns can actually serve as a compass if one…
Tamarack trees, Fairbanks, AlaskaCanon 1Ds Mark III, 500mm f4.0L IS, 1/160 sec @ f8, ISO 800 Alaska’s boreal forest is dominated by just a few species of trees, the birch, aspen and spruce. There is one conifer however that loses its needles during winter, unlike the other evergreen species of black and white spruce trees.…
Sun and boreal forest, interior, Alaska.Canon 1Ds Mark III, 700mm (500mm f4L IS with 1/4x) 1/640 sec @ f/6.3, ISO 400 Super telephoto lenses are great for tight landscape photos. I use my 500mm all the time in this manner. This was a grab shot from the window of a car after seeing the sun…
I was recently asked why many of the photographs in the recent posts were shot at 400 or 800 ISO. Do they hold up well at that ISO or was I shooting them for web resolution in mind? To answer this question appropriately involves addressing a few issues. First of all, I want to make…
Snow drifts, Barter Island, Alaska. Canon 1Ds Mark III, 500mm 4L IS, 1/13 sec @ f/32, ISO 400 This is the same scene as the previous post just looking at a 90 degree angle on the snow drifts. I used a super telephoto to compress and isolate the interesting linear dimension sculpted by the wind…