I could watch clouds all day long. For my soul, being able to see the big sky is like what oxygen is to the lungs. And Alaska, with its epic vistas and prolific mountains create weather that is frequently dramatic, sometimes treacherous, and commonly spellbinding. Cloudless days are boring. During my recent trip in Denali Park, stormy weather gave way to some crazy cloud drama and here are a few examples:

The wet autumn season in Alaska has coughed up only a few clear sky days. My nine day stint in Denali Park during Aug/Sept saw many dark gray clouds and rain. However, there were a few moments of brilliance, with an emphasis on the “few”. The fall colors in the park were magnificent, vibrant and almost painful to look at. They don’t last long however, in Alaska’s short autumn season. I’ll be sharing some images from that journey in the upcoming days. I’ll start with this shot, my only morning session with the big mountain known as Mt McKinley or Denali, (the Great One).

I know its been shot a million times, and I myself have many in my collection. It still is a lure however, and has a face that changes continually. I particularly like the low-lying fog over the lake, which is a common phenomenon when the air temp is cooler than the water temp. The trumpeter swan and ducks in the foreground offer a interesting wildlife element to the scene, but they also destroy the flat calm water and mess up a reflection. I waited until they wandered further away from me and the ripples dissipated for a more clear reflection. When I first arrived, it was flat calm and the swan was resting on the shore, but the morning light had not yet tipped the mountain. And, as the story goes, when the light came, the birds went swimming.

I used the 70-200mm f/4L IS, and made sure to turn off the Image Stabilization for an exposure as slow as 1/4 second. Failure to do so can introduce IS blur. The low contrast, pastel colors are a pleasing combination.

One Giant Salad

Bull moose in August are finalizing their summer season of gorging themselves on vegetation to fuel the growth of their massive antlers which will serve them in establishing dominance during the autumn rut (or mating season). I photographed this bull moose browsing on alder leaves along the drainages in the tundra landscape of Denali park. Upon reflection, I once again deviated from my own advice to shoot wide for stock photography. Shooting through the 500mm(f/4) was so bright and beautiful compared to the 100-400mm (f/5.6)  that I favored it. I did shoot some wider, but it is amazing what kind of viewfinder brightness variation is found in just one f/stop-from f/5.6 to f/4.  It’s twice as much as light coming through and one reason why lenses with large apertures are preferred.

I’ve scheduled a few posts to be made while I’m off the grid on another photo venture until the first part of September. For those not familiar with the seasonal calendar of Alaska, late August and early September comprise the time frame in which the autumn colors flourish in the alpine tundra highlands. The boreal forest, a little lower in elevation, peaks a little bit later depending on the northern latitude. This means, besides the fact the snow is coming soon, that it a very colorful, picturesque and busy time of year for photography. I’ll have some autumn photos to share later on.

The sheep photo here must rank up there with the least amount of physical exertion I’ve ever spent to acquire a nice shot of one of these mountain dwellers. They are creatures of the highlands where they find protection from predators. While this location is high, about 4000 feet, it is also along the Denali park road in Polychrome Pass, a place that sheep are commonly observed. Some wolves had chased them to this rocky ridge which is situated just 30 feet from the road. The background, distant mountains are especially well suited to a picture that shows their habitat. It was a pleasant change from the normal hike of multiple thousands of vertical feet to find these animals, although I can claim no credit for the work other than being in the right place at the right time! Which sometimes, is a lot of what nature photography is about.

I committed myself to a position in which the light was perpendicular to the subject, which had it’s pros and cons, mainly because of background variation. I usually prefer some sort of side lighting, and these worked out o.k. But, I believe that the desire to be in multiple locations when the light splashes is a common dilemma for photographers.

I’ve had a few recent posts on panoramas, so I will continue in that format. In the near future, I’ll share my protocol for shooting panoramas, and the process of stitching them together. If I’m shooting a scene that merits a panorama format I try to capture it. With landscapes, this is a bit easier, with wildlife, there is often a lot going on, including subject movement, and it can introduce complications, not to mention just forgetting to do it since you are focused on the immediate scene at hand. In this particular situation, I was photographing a different bull moose when another one approached off to the left. I backed up some since he walked right in front of me on the ridge, then stopped and stood there. I was hoping for some golden light on a subject this evening but the clouds precluded that. So, I decided to expose for the sky and make a silhouette of the moose. I unfortunately did not have my 24-105mm lens with me so I made a panorama with the 100-400mm. I used four images and blended them in Photoshop to make this scene. I lowered myself as much as possible so the belly of the moose was separated from the background mountains, which enhances the full body silhouette. In the end, and in the absence of good front light, the silhouette works in this picture. I shot a huge variation of scenes, but really wished I had that wide angle lens!

Alaska’s big landscapes are hard to fit into a 35mm 2:3 ratio format. Sometimes, they beg for a 3:1, or more commonly referred to as a panorama format. I used to use a Fuji 6x17cm film camera especially designed for this, but now I simply blend images with a stitch program. Currently that is Photosphop 5. During my early August trip in Denali National Park, in the last hours while driving out of the park, I spotted this moose walking along the ridge. After a quick stop and rush for the tripod, I threw on my 500mm with a 1.4x converter and shot a sequence of frames, swinging the camera along so I could generate a panorama later. The clouds were quite interesting, along with the manner in which the sunlight was generating great contrast to separate the moose from the background. Here are the three images and the final blended panorama shot.

I watched the summit of Mt McKinley (Denali) slowly clear off one evening in Denali National Park, while the lower portion was still enshrouded in clouds. So I set my telephoto lens up on a tripod and thought I’d shoot the summits. Many are not aware that there are two summits to the mountain, the north summit, 19,470 feet (5,934 m) and the south summit, which is the highest one, 20,320 feet (6,194 m)–on the left in this picture.  I found the clouds intriguing as they slowly dissipated, and watched it for a while, took my camera off the tripod and got ready to move on when I noticed the tiny flightseeing plane approaching the mountain. I grabbed my camera, quickly composed and shot a series of the plane moving across the peak. I had been on manual mode so I knew the exposure was dead on, but my shutter speed was on the low side at 1/160 sec. Fortunately, that was enough to stop the plane at that distance. I have flown around that mountain with the doors off doing aerials in the past, but this perspective of flightseeing is a new view to me.  Below is a single frame from the panorama series. What a sense of scale!!

It can be a challenge to photograph in the late morning on a sunny day. The light gets hot and harsh. However on this morning, the sunny foreground was complimented by some dramatic cloud action in the distance and the perpendicular lighting, although contrasty, made for some drama in lighting. At 10:30 am, this bull moose was still wading and feeding in a tundra pond. If you are familiar with this region, you will know that Mt. McKinley is to the right, but it was clouded over. And, even if it was visible (a bull moose and Mt. McKinley is a sought after shot) it would not have been as interesting from a light perspective. I’ve always been fond of the contextual shots of wildlife in a broad landscape setting, and I particularly like the dramatic light and clouds in this frame.

I photographed a lot of bull moose during my trip in Denali last week. It is a subject I have extensive coverage of, but not much imagery of large bull moose still in velvet antlers, so I was pleased to acquire some pictures of that stage of development. Soon, the bulls will be losing the velvet and preparing for the mating season. I’ll be back in Denali National Park for that later in the month and look forward to the splendid fall colors that will carpet that wonderful landscape.

On a short visit into Denali park early this week, I had the good fortune of some clear skies revealing that amazing mountain top–Denali. In this particular scene, the clouds slowly cleared from the peak as the morning unfolded. And as you may know from my previous posts, I like some clouds for art and shapes in the sky. The first shot is a little tight, in order to focus on the mountain and the swans, and the one below reveals more of the sky and overhead clouds that were constantly changing. I’ve learned to shoot fast when you see good cloud action as they move very quickly in mountain regions. The mountain was clouded over in a few hours, which is typical weather behavior. Most tourists arrive by shuttle bus deeper into the park about 10:00am, and by then, the mountain is often enshrouded in clouds. It may have been clear for a few hours in the early morning and camping in the back country, or at the Wonder Lake campground is one way to optimize views of the mountain in the early morning or late evening.

The Grant Creek wolf pack in Denali National Park has maintained a high profile along the road corridor, giving many visitors and photographers an opportunity to watch and photograph the social dynamics of a wild wolf family. If you are new to this blog, you may want to check out a couple posts I made earlier in the year when this same wolf pack attacked a young moose calf. The attack. After the attack.

I followed this wolf for some time in the latter evening, but this was the only decent opportunity I had to make a photo. The wolf paused on the tundra in a colorful patch of wildflowers for this portrait