Caribou migrating in Alaska’s arctic

Polar bear symmetry

While her cubs were off playing, this female polar bear curled up on the snow and dozed off occasionally. The posture makes a beautiful, symmetrical pose. It is a cropped version of an image taken with a Canon 1D Mark IV, 500mm + 1.4x extender, which translates into a focal length of 910mm. That is a long reach, but it is still very sharp.

As Fairbanks awaits a chilly minus 50 degree temperature this weekend, it is amazing that these bears survive in the chilly arctic waters. They are incredibly well insulated with up to 4 inches of fat under some of that white fur. Ian Sterling reports in his book on Polar Bears, that aerial infrared heat sensing equipment can’t detect the actual bear, just the warm air exiting their mouth when trekking across the ice pack.

I’ll be processing more images from this folder over the next week and will share a few keepers on subsequent posts. You can see more polar bear photos on my website.

 Full curl Dall sheep ram

I took this shot a few months ago while traveling through Alaska’s Brooks range. Dall sheep rams with a full curl are generally pretty wary due to hunting pressure which has increased in the region over the last decade. Due to the breeding season, a few rams were mingling with a flock of female sheep which were accessible to photograph along the winter, snowy tundra north of Atigun Pass. Shadowed conditions are pretty common in this steep mountain country during late October and November due to the lack of daylight, and the sun that seldom shines into the steep valleys. For this reason, the light is often flat, and minimal. The classic white on white requires about a +1-1/2 or a little more exposure compensation, in order to render the whites white.

Visit my website for more dall sheep photos

]]> http://www.alaskaphotographyblog.com/2012/01/dall-sheep-ram-with-full-curl/feed/ 0 http://www.alaskaphotographyblog.com/2012/01/katmai-brown-bear-stitch-from-4-images/ http://www.alaskaphotographyblog.com/2012/01/katmai-brown-bear-stitch-from-4-images/#comments Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:46:09 +0000 Patrick Endres http://www.alaskaphotographyblog.com/?p=4912 To to see large photos view the original post.

I’ve been digging through some files from that latter part of 2011, doing some clean up work and getting folders in a completed state. Occasionally I will shoot a series of images which are to be stitched into a larger file in post production. I do this for panoramas, and sometimes to increase the overall resolution due to focal length and/or scene restrictions. This is one of those made from four images. I was set up along the beach in Katmai National Park and knew that the bears make this morning journey. I missed a few chances for simply not being ready, but this time, I had set my focal length to 35mm, anticipating the basic composition of the bear. After I shot the series of the bear walking along, I kept the camera on the tripod and shot three images in a vertical direction, which includes the tree and sky. This affords a nice, high resolution file very suitable large publication.

Polar bear in Alaska's arctic

I found out that the new year started with one of the photos published in my new 2012 calendar “Alaska: Profiles in Nature“, was featured on the search website: www.bing.com. It was a polar bear picture that I took a few years ago in Alaska’s arctic. Pretty cool.

Happy Holidays to you all

and thanks for another year of expressing interest in my photography.

Happy Holidays

Brown bear shakes off water, Katmai National Park, Alaska. Canon 1D Mark IV, 50mm f/4L IS, 1/800 sec @ f/5.6, ISO 200

With high water in the rivers in Katmai this year, brown bears did a lot of swimming and snorkeling for fish. This resulted in a lot of shaking off the water once emerging from dives. Backlighting offers some interesting contrast in these situations. This shows what a shutter speed of 1/800 does for that kind of motion. It does not completely freeze the water, but enough to reveal a slight tail on the water drops, which capture a little more backlight. Not like I thought this completely through at the time, but it is a pretty good setting. 1/1600 sec would have frozen the drops pretty good.

Bush plane on approach. Katmai National Park, Alaska. Canon 1D Mark IV, 500mm f/4L IS, 1/800 sec @ f/8, ISO 200.

If you have traveled at all in Alaska, it is likely you have been in a bush plane to access many of the remote regions throughout the state. Whether it is a plane on floats or tundra tires, they are critical for getting to many great photo destinations. I have photographed extensively from the air (see my Alaska Aerial’s gallery) but the planes themselves are fun to photograph, as they fly through dramatic landscapes. The cloudy skies add some interest to the background space in this shot, as the plane banks on approach to land on a lake hidden behind the trees in Katmai National Park.

Kejulik mountains, Katmai National Park, Alaska. Canon 1D Mark IV, 500mm f/4L IS, 1/400 sec @ f/5, ISO 200

On a morning walk in Katmai last fall the clouds were rolling, growing and dissipating quickly over the Kejulik mountains in Katmai National Park. While I don’ t normally use the 1D Mark IV for landscapes, I wanted the focal magnification factor that the 1.3x offered, turning my 500 into a 700 mm. It was happening fast so I grabbed a few frames of the clouds behind the jagged ridge of Mt Katonlinat. The photo was taken about 10:00 am. In a few minutes, the clouds were gone and without that white background to outline the ridge, the rock definition became difficult to see from such a distance. Clouds–when you see them making an interesting scene–shoot quickly.

Katolinat mountain enshrouded by clouds, Naknek lake, Katmai National Park, Alaska. Canon 1Ds Mark III, 100-400mm f/5.6L IS (180mm), 1/80 sec @ 7.1, ISO 200

The very narrow window of time between my last two trips did not afford the chance to share many pictures from my trip to Katmai. I’ve had a moment to look at a few that I’ll share in the next few posts just to give a little break from snow and polar bear bears.

This image epitomizes to me why I like being in nature. One dramatic view can fill the soul with immeasurable pleasure. It is this particular scene alone that is enough to lure me back to Katmai National Park. Take water, mountains, clouds, color and throw in some drama and the scene is alive with emotion. Alaska is so loaded with scenes like this that I’d feel slightly lost not being able to partake of their beauty. They certainly are not all tied to sunrise and sunset, but many of them are. It is a reward for the early riser. In this picture, a little bit of steam rises from the lake as the cool air and warmer water makes that mystic moment common to an autumn morning.