Photos and stories about digital photography in Alaska by professional photographer Patrick Endres
Category Archives: Photography Procss Male Walrus, Svalbard During my recent visit to Svalbard, on the Polar Pioneer icebreaker with Cheeseman’s Ecology Safaris, I logged some amazing lifetime wildlife encounters that will last as unforgettable experiences. One of them was some interaction with a curious group of male walrus that swam over to our small group along the shoreline. They…  Selecting cameras and lenses for a photo trip usually takes me longer than anticipated. If I’m working from my car, that’s a different story, since I can take everything I need, and pick and choose a subset of lenses or camera’s based on the day or moment’s activity. I own a lot of Canon lenses,…  F/8 and be there is a common phrase among the photography community, implying that half of the job is being somewhere at the right time. And it is true in many respects, but there is often a lot more that goes into a capturing a creative image. I’ve admired photographers that successfully employ some degree…  Some hate sitting at a computer working on images, which is a dislike I can understand in the context of time, and the value of time. However, it is this very aspect that completes the circle for me, and affords an additional layer of artistic expression to any given image. Do you think Ansel Adams…  To date, my digital specialist Andrew Johnson and I have photographed a broad spectrum of assignment based subjects. From hotels to jewelry to bowls of hot soup. It is not the bulk of our work, but does break things up a bit and offers a chance to peek into the world of what other people…  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…  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…  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…  Turnagain Arm in south central Alaska is a shallow inlet which drains at low tide to reveal an ever changing landscape of channels in the mud and silt. Surrounded by the Chugach mountains, there are many picturesque views along the rather busy Seward Highway, which borders the Arm. At sunrise one morning in September, I… I left the world of direct, on-camera flash some years ago, and its a needed step to take for creative and interesting lighting of subjects. In the past, I’ve used Canon’s ST-E2 Infrared Transmitter (Or a Canon 580 serves the same function when set as master), which would trigger off camera flashes through a infrared… 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… Photography in Alaska’s arctic, particularly in the snowy months, presents many subjects and scenes filled with white, and often a white subject on a white background. While traveling with a photo tour group, one of the sharp-eyed guests (thank you Skip) spotted this arctic fox curled up in a snow drift on a frozen lake…. Nature photography as a profession may be described by all of the above. My friends have told me that my job is one big vacation, and I’ve quit trying to persuade them otherwise. The benefits of the self-employed life are many and they come with the intrinsic cons as well. For a nature photographer the… 
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