Photo gallery from my July 2010 float trip down the Marsh Fork of the Canning River, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Veterans of river travel know that waterways can be a creature of movement in more ways than one. In mountain country, rainfall in the hills all goes downhill by gravity and ends up ocean-bound via the river system. In Alaska’s arctic specifically, most river flow is dominated by snow melt or rain, unlike many of the glacier melt rivers of the interior. So when the rain comes in abundance while on a wilderness river trip, vigilance is prudent. While on the Marsh Fork of the Canning river in July, plenty of rain fell in the mountains of the Brooks Range, creating a swollen river. Note the two pictures below which reflect the rapid change that can happen as a result of heavy rains.

Contrary to what many non-photographers think, the bluebird day, cloudless skies are generally not welcomed by the landscape photographer-not me anyway. They might ensure first and last light upon the land, but there is little art in the sky without some shapes and lines offered by broken clouds moving dynamically overhead. It is these latter conditions that attract me most. It may require waiting around for a while until the light spills in the right spot, but it renders a landscape of continual change.

When traveling through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in July, it rained 9 out of 11 days, and a few of those were thick and gray. Most days had a little sunshine however and the clouds that formed offered some good photography opportunities.

The dynamic range can present a challenge in these scenes and in some cases, especially when the sun is included in the picture, I will blend two exposures to manage tonal values (as well as lens flare management). I rarely do “Merge to High Dynamic Range” or HDR blends in Photoshop, but sometimes they can work well. In general, I find them a little on the edge of realism. Not that I don’t like them or find good use in that method of handling dynamic range, just a preference of mine. Whenever possible, even with the use of a split graduated neutral density filter (which is often obvious) I try to present an image that looks somewhat realistic to what the eye would see. This is not always perfectly achieved, but it is a generalized goal in my work.

Here are 10 frames that accentuate the drama of some very cool clouds in the Brooks range of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. All images below were processed in Lightroom 3 as single files, without blending or merging additional images.

During a raft trip down the Marsh Fork of the Canning river, a long day hike up into the mountains led me to some vociferous plovers that nest in the region. While I have a number of Plover photos that I consider better than this one, I did photograph the bird because of the specific location in the ANWR. But what is surprising to me and the reason I’m including it here, is that I did a little experiment and shot the picture with a lens configuration that I don’t normally use. Generally, I would have my trusty 500mm lens but I hiked 4000 vertical feet, so I packed light and chose the 100-400mm lens for versatility. 400mm is not really powerful enough to pull in many birds, and just for grins I thought I’d try it with a 1.4x for a little more reach. The 5D Mark II camera will not autofocus with this lens configuration because the aperture is f/8 at the widest, introducing a challenge of its own. However, I was very, very surprised at the sharpness of this image, all things considered. The camera and lens were mounted on my tiny gitzo tripod, and shot in less than ideal conditions. There are obvious limitations to this configuration, but some obvious benefits also, and based on this real-time-field-test, I’ll be doing some more experimenting with that set up in the future. I’ve included a crop of the original capture to show the sharpness of the image.

I mentioned my trip into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in a recent post, and I have a few more photos to share from that journey. In a land that exhibits dramatic and distant vistas, it is not surprising to find compelling subjects close at hand as well. While hiking along the Marsh Fork of the Canning river, the elegant paintbrush was a very common wildflower present, and a beautifully colored and textured one at that. Because I was traveling light while backpacking, I chose to leave my 100 f/2.8 macro lens behind. As an alternative, I took the Canon 500D close up filter which is a magnifying glass filter that screws onto the outside of a lens. While there is a slight loss in quality, it is pretty minimal and easily worth the trade in weight for this kind of travel. The 100-400 lens offers versatile framing functionality for the tedious composition often intrinsic to macro work. I chose 1/200 sec. exposure due to a slight breeze that was blowing along the river bar, and it therefore captured a sharp image. The medium depth of field for macro adds enough eye focus control, but lets the main blossom be interpretable. Selecting a position that renders a fairly clean background can be a challenge, but the pink distant flowers work well in this picture. I used a tiny gitzo tripod with an RSS mini ballhead.

On the final evening of my Marsh fork/Canning river trip in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, after a wild and windy storm squall of rain passed through, the skies cleared to the north and that long sought after golden summer sunshine poured across the landscape. The mosquitoes however, were abusive. After setting up camp in a pair of shorts that I had worn on the river all day, and doing a crazy mosquito dance for about 5 minutes, I dove into my tent and considered staying there for the night. But that buttery light, along with a hunger pang, lured me out quickly.

I used my bug shirt (a necessity for travel in this region), and while it makes photography a bit difficult looking through the mesh net, (especially shooting into the sun)  it offers the gift of relief. Managing bugs requires more than your own bug net however. The swarms were so bad that they crowded my camera and lens and were constantly in the picture. I resorted to using my 10 second self timer, then slowly backing away from the camera, luring the cloud with me so the actual shot would contain fewer bugs. It worked pretty effectively, although I still had to stamp out a few bugs that showed up as blur streaks in the picture.

We found the bull caribou antler along the river bank and threw it our raft to use as a photo prop along the way. But when the river rose overnight early on during the trip, it washed the antlers away. Fortunately, we found the same set of antlers downriver on our very last day of travel. Both of these frames are single exposures, although I shot a variety of images in which to blend for better dynamic range and detail management if necessary.

I spent 11 days in July floating the Marsh fork of the Canning river, which is one of the many rivers flowing north out of the Brooks Range and into the Beaufort Sea. The Canning river marks the western boundary of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which is substantial in size at 19 million acres. It seems that all ventures in Alaska’s arctic tap into the extremes that even mid summer can offer. One moment you are wearing every piece of clothing you brought, and the next moment you are baking in hot sun along a tundra hillside. Plenty of rain fell during the trip, and in a heartbreaking way, pumped the normally beautifully aqua blue river to bank busting brown. When you see water flowing through dwarf fireweed, then you know it is high water! I did most of the trip in a little pack raft, what amazingly fun little water wizards.

For a change of pace, when flying in we had our gear dropped off down river, and our pilot gave us GPS coordinates to find the goods. It was a mild 14 mile hike in clouds and rain and we arrived to enjoy a clearing evening and pleasant sunset (I take that back, the sun does not set, but it did dip behind a mountain). We spent a few days at this camp spot as a base for day hikes. About 2:00am, while sipping on some Black Box red wine around our campfire, a lemming dashed across the gravel bar in front of us and jumped right into the swiftly moving river. I thought…little guy…you are toast, that current will sweep you downstream in an instant. I was wrong. That amazing little animal paddled itself right across the current with amazing alacrity. I’ve been commercial fishing in big seas and the waves to that little guy must have been the equivalent of 30 footers!

I took an amazingly few photos on the 11 day journey, and barely dented the batteries of my camera. But there were a few nuggets along the way and I’ll share more in upcoming posts. This frame is a single RAW exposure and I used split-graduated ND filters in Lightroom to balance the foreground and sky tonality. I included the original flat, RAW capture to show what a pre and post Lightroom tweak looks like for this scene.

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 than a perfect device to use as a video camera, but it takes amazingly good quality clips. I must confess however, that video capture is somewhat addictive, and herein lies the problem and the tension between stills and video. Since I’m heavily vested in still imagery from a professional and business perspective, my foray in video has been something to play with only when I don’t feel I’m loosing out on a great still image.

Let me also mention that the video included here, although it captures some fun action, is by no means done to any technical perfection. Heavy winds, a large lens, super magnification, and serendipity all contributed their respective influence. On this trip I had in tow Canon’s new 7D, which also sports an HD video mode. Actually, I had the 5d mark II, the 7D and a 1Ds Mark III– each camera body housing different buttons with live view functions in different locations. This array of camera gear is not recommended for efficient and fast shooting. It is confusing to say the least to operate three cameras when quickly changing between them. And it complicates things further when a pair gloves steal the finesse between you and the tiny operation buttons on the camera. But I did want to experiment with the 7D and therefore welcomed it as yet another camera in the line up. I’m looking forward to the 1D Mark IV, which will put back in my hands two bodies with the exact same build, buttons and operations–at least really close anyway. Better yet would be the 1Ds Mark IV, and get rid of the “S” for studio. How about a 1Dw for “wildlife” full frame, 21MP, 8fps, great autofocus and video. That would do it for me. But that is embarking down another road–back to the bears…

At one point when the bears were quite some distance away, I put the 500mm with a 1.4x on the 7D and shot a few video scenes at 1120mm, in the pelting wind so common to Alaska’s arctic coast. A female polar bear with two cubs were engaging in all sorts of play on a small barrier island north of Barter Island, in the Beaufort Sea, on Alaska’s north shore. This polar bear spent a fair amount of time rolling around in the snow cleaning her fur. They are amazing to watch and great fun to photograph. Watching the video again makes me want to go back already.

My last post about the Brooks range reflected the common frustration of photographing in Alaska’s interior with summer forest fires. In early June, I had the chance to fly across the Brooks range through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge doing some aerial photography. This was before the smoke and fire season build up in the interior, and, I thought it a timely to post a few of those images in light of my last failed attempt.

Flying over the Brooks range will forever readjust ones mind in respect to wilderness, vastness and sheer rugged beauty. It’s really hard to process such giant spaces; mountains ridges, then rivers, then more mountains, then more rivers, and on it goes, all without habitation. My flight was about 2 hours from the Arctic ocean to Coldfoot, with the back door off the Dehaviland Beaver. The pilot, Dirk Nickisch and his wife Danielle (www.flycoyote.com), run a flight service out of Coldfoot. Dirk knows what he is doing and I always feel safe flying with him.

On a more techy note, upon reviewing the digital files, I was reminded that a high shutter speed is so essential. I’ve done aerials from many different planes, and in many different conditions and have eeked by in some circumstances with a shutter speed of 1/250 or so, but given all the factors that come into play, about 1/800 sec is a good minimum. Even at 1/400 sec, I had some motion blur (not vibration blur) of foreground mountains when flying by.

Below are a few scenes from this fantastic region.