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.

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.

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

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.

My trip to the high western arctic unfolded broadly under the never setting sun. With a short turn around between another venture back to the arctic for a river trip, I’ll have some photos to share but little time to write. The birds nesting in the tundra region were continual companions in a very solitary and remote place. Strong winds, relentless sun, and the magic of this paradoxical land of severity and beauty, along with lots of hiking left some good photographs in the wake. The plovers were abundant and vociferous, and their comfort zone for approach was about 1000mm. I took this shot about 10:00pm, which, believe it or not was pretty early. Due to harsh light I ended up shooting primarily between 10:00pm and 5:00am.

The Waved Albatross, sometimes called the Galapagos Albatross, breeds primarily on Espanola Island. Like other albatrosses, it comes to shore only to breed and rear young. In the Archipelago, this happens in response to food availability, which is generally in early April, and we were fortunate enough to see the very beginning of their arrival to land. They are a beautiful, large bird, with a wingspan of about 7 feet, and enter into an elaborate courtship ritual which includes bill clacking and bowing. There were just a few pairs on land, with many flying over looking for nesting sights and mates.

I used all my lenses to photograph these birds, and the warm, late afternoon light helped make exposures of a white headed bird manageable.

South Plaza Island was our first shoreside visit, and it was perfectly timed with sunset, which happens quickly along the equator. The gentle afternoon light was warm and luminous accent to a landscape rich in green and yellow, due to recent abundant rains and the short-lived blossoming period of the portulaca plant. Plants in general, although they do receive the attention that the wildlife of the islands do, were and are a critical component in understanding natural selection processes in the archipelago. We had the rewarding experience of watching both a reptile and birds feeding on the abundant yellow flowers. In particular, a ruddy turnstone was eating the pollen, certainly something I’ve never seen before.

I had high hopes for an evening landscape here with the flowers in the foreground, but the sloping angle of the island, in combination with clouds and the fact that one can’t deviate much from a trail, prevented that. I did however find the tall prickly pear cactus on this island offered some vertical spatial dimension for a landscape. The warm and cool color combination always seems to work well together, offering some tension in the palette, but still very pleasing.

As clouds obscured the sun, the low light made stopping motion in the bird and iguana photos challenging. I moved to 800 ISO since 1/200 sec was not fast enough to stop the quick action of an iguana chowing down on blossoms. Unfortunately many good compositions were a little blurry. The 400 f/4.0L  IS DO with a 1.4x was a valuable lens choice for this area, although I did not use it much throughout the trip.

Paulet Island, just off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula hosts a giant colony of adelie penguins. The count varies year to year, but approximately 200,000 birds make for a notable population. They are constantly coming and going from the nesting sights to the sea, bringing food back to feed the growing chicks, often two per nest.

The adelie, of all the penguins, to me looks the most comical. This is perhaps due to the white circle surrounding its eye which gives it a slightly cartoon-like appearance and a look of constant alertness.

The combination of good weather and some free time in the afternoon to photograph, leaves me with fond memories of this wonderful region. Cruising in the zodiacs near Paulet Island is a popular activity, as penguins haul out on the floating icebergs, making great observational and photographic fun.

There is an art to driving a zodiac, since the wind, water current, angle of light, background objects, not to mention finding subjects, all factor into getting good images. I drove a zodiac for the morning session and had some free time in the afternoon to visit the colony on shore, as well as do some zodiac cruising as a passenger.

From a photographic perspective, having the versatility of lens focal length is critical. I carried two bodies, the 24-105 on one, and the 100-400 on another. I really like the flexibility of zoom lenses, since distance and positioning is often unpredictable in a zodiac, and the zoom gives compositional freedom not as easily acquired in fixed focal lengths.

Over the years, I find myself gravitating more towards the contextualization of a subject in its surroundings, and therefore often end up shooting wider, as opposed to more telephoto. There is certainly desire for both, but seeing the environment really depicts a sense of place, something often missing with an excessive obsession on close up shots of wildlife. There can be a “tunnel vision” that results with always looking through a long lens, and upon reviewing photos, you end up saying “why did I not shoot wider, I’m missing a sense of place in my images”.

The Black-browed Albatross, a sleek, beautiful and artfully soaring bird nests in giant numbers on the Falkland Islands (approximately 400,000 brids in total). The Falklands, or Islas Malvinas, depending on your political persuaision, lies about 2 days east (by boat) of the southern tip of Argentina. The islands are well vegetated, in contrast to the Antarctic Peninsula, and life is abundant in the relatively mild summer season. Of particular note, and fame, is a colony of black-browed albatrosses that nest along the shore of Steeple Jason Island. To sit at the edge of the colony is to be washed in waves of sound along with a continual fleet of incoming and outgoing birds in flight. The windy shores are perfect for these largely, soaring birds whose wingspan reaches 8 feet. Remarkably, they can live up to 70 years!

The general, daily mode of operation was for our expedition staff to get all guests ashore and map out the permissible route of travel and access in relation to the specific environmental sensitivities of the area. Then switch gears rapidly, grab a camera and shoot until the schedule required my presence. I did not find this the easiest of things to do, since the landscape, wildlife and general sense of place was quite overwhelming and it takes a little time to absorb the surroundings before being photographically creative. If I had any mantra regarding my trip it would be that I wish had more time with each and every scene, and that is certainly the case with these beautiful birds.

I used every lens in my bag at this spot, but if you have ever photographed birds in flight with confusing backgrounds, you might well know that it is often an experiment. I attempted to isolate one bird against the surrounding pattern of nesting birds in the background, and most of my efforts were failures. Panning in conjunction with a moderately slow shutter speed introduces enough blur in the background to help give distinction to the foreground bird in focus. A faster frame rate would have helped but then I’d be editing three times as many photos! A few other scenes worked o.k., but there were very many almosts in the files.

(Thanks to all of you who checked in on my blog while I was in Antarctica for a month. Postings were slim due to a busy schedule of work since my primary purpose was an expedition staff member. While this is primarily a blog about Alaska photography, I’ll be deviating to Antarctica over the next few weeks to share some of the amazing sights from the southern hemisphere).

Chaos is a good word to describe this scene, both from a visual experience and a photographic endeavor. Besides the obvious action packed scene the conditions for this shot were on the edge in all respects. The location is an exposed, steeply sloped gravel beach on Deception Island, notorious for its high surf and difficult access. A large colony of Chinstrap penguins inhabit the island and are a bio-mass of movement as they depart and return from feeding sessions at sea.

The cloudy and rainy morning offered paltry light, calling for high ISO in order to get a shutter speed sufficient for stop action. Additionally, the nearly black beach and white surf presented a very high contrast, monochromatic scene. I found composition difficult, and therefore resorted to hanging out in the surf zone waiting for penguins to make landing near my camera. I was wearing chest waders along with a robust rain shell tightly strapped at the cuffs for additional waterproofing. I started with my camera in an EWA marine housing but it was too difficult to operate the camera settings so I grabbed my other camera (1Ds with a 24-105) and did my best to stay somewhat dry in the crashing surf. Not visible to you on my left is a large crowd of people shooting the same scene but from a higher point on the beach.

In order to keep my camera dry, I raised it high when I heard the surf crashing. This worked pretty well in general, although I nearly doused the camera one time when I was startled by a bunch of penguins that crashed into me when leaping onto the beach. The reason these little birds enter and exit with a great frenzy is that leopard seals are patrolling the offshore waters waiting to prey on the penguins. The beach was one giant mix of energy. The sound of the waves, penguins, and the movement of both, with mixed patterns of black and white was amazing. I shot a lot of frames in the short time available, and was not overly excited about any of them. But the experience was a thrill. Unfortunately the video function in my 5D Mark II malfunctioned on this landing or I’d share some sound and movement.

From a technical perspective, I “exposed to the right” for this scene, with the whites just blinking on the histogram. This is a general style of exposure shooting I engage in by habit but it is very critical when shooting at high ISO, since it gives the latitude to work with post production adjustments with a lower signal to noise ratio in the shadows. These files held up very well.

A note about access: small zodiacs brought groups of 8 people to the beach. The technique is to approach on a large incoming wave as a team of staff on shore grab the inflatable boat and hold it stable amidst the crashing surf. Then passengers get out quickly and the skiff is turned around and pushed back out as soon as possible. We had about 8-10 people to handle each incoming boat. The frame below denotes a celebratory posture once all the passengers were safely on shore!