Photos and stories about digital photography in Alaska by professional photographer Patrick Endres
Monthly Archives: November 2009 I’m guilty of tight compositions. It’s a by-product of the school of thinking that frowns on cropping and feels that a single image needs to be self contained and compositionally defined when you push the shutter button. It’s a school of thought I no longer adhere to, but won’t get into that subject right now….  I sold a photo for the second time recently, which prompts me to make a few comments about the potential life that lurks under some very seemingly dead digital captures. One day while driving the Dalton Highway in northern Alaska, I saw a bow hunter just a few yards off the road waiting for a…  Prior to 2009, the last time I went in search of mountain goats I carried a gun in my hands. That was 26 years ago. After climbing precipitous rocky cliffs for an entire day in pursuit of a billy, I almost gave up many times, thinking surely I would kill myself if I fell or…  While I spend my share of time traveling to exotic locations to photograph, I still contend that photographing in one’s backyard is viable for the average photographer. Now I confess that I have a fine backyard for this–8 acres of boreal forest, and not all backyards are the same. But, you don’t need acres really,…  Adobe introduced a digital photo workflow program a while back called Lightroom. Since v1.0, it has improved considerably and although v2.6 has room for improvements, it remains my software of choice for grading digital imagery (FYI, a beta version of Lightroom 3 is available for download. I’ve been experimenting with it a little and look… Time to take a little bend in the road of still photography and explore some of the newly bundled features in today’s quickly evolving digital cameras-HD video. Since the inclusion of HD video in the Canon 5D Mark II, I’ve enjoyed playing around with it a bit, with an emphasis on “playing”. It is less…  For a few years now I’ve had some photos on display at the Alaska Coffee Roasting Company in Fairbanks. If you are passing through Fairbanks, they have fresh daily roasted coffee and it some of the best I’ve encountered, and that includes many locations around the nation. In November of each year, I refresh the…  Instead of photographing for the past few weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of staring at digital files. I’ve upgraded to a new computer with Windows 7 and upgraded my second monitor to now equal my primary monitor, so I’ve got two 30 inch monitors side by side. There is a little bit of learning,…  Snow is falling in Fairbanks right now, and autumn drifted by a few strong weeks ago. The change of seasons brought this photo to mind. Some argue that Alaska has two seasons, some argue three, few argue four. Spring happens very fast, as does autumn, and the leaves can burst forth in spring faster than…  Finding the all-round vehicle that suits multiple purposes, including photographic adventures, is not only difficult, but ultimately a compromise somewhere. I decided to own just one vehicle due to a proclivity towards minimalism (I’ll save breaking that rule for camera gear). In my search for a car there were a few important aspects I looked…  At the turn of the last century, a very forward thinking man made some prophetic comments regarding Alaska’s beauty and economic future in these compelling remarks: “The Alaska coast is to become the show-place of the earth, and pilgrims, not only from the United States, but from far beyond the seas will throng in endless…  The day the cell phone became more than a phone, is the day I started to desire one. The phone itself, is my least favorite part of the device. In a nutshell, the IPhone is a movement toward a micro computer, and as such, is host to an abundance of software applications spawned in our…  What are the best night sky conditions in which to photograph the northern lights? It is a question that can be answered in variations, but I’ve resorted to the simplest answer…whenever the northern lights are visible! Brushing that comment aside, I really don’t think there are “best conditions”, it really depends on your interest. I’ve… 
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