07-JUN-2013
Bald eagle, near Juneau, Alaska, 2013
The largest concentration of bald eagles is found in Alaska, and we were welcomed by one of them just a few hours into our cruise. Drifting high above our ship, the eagle’s huge seven-foot wingspan is echoed by the golden cloud that stretches across the frame above it. The juxtaposition of wing and cloud suggests not only the physical majesty of the bird, but its symbolic role as the national symbol of the United States.
07-JUN-2013
Rainbow over Admiralty Island, Alaska, 2013
While having our first dinner in the ship’s dining room, I noticed a very thick rainbow forming over the northeastern end of Admiralty Island. One end of it vanished into the clouds, while the other led directly into the base of a snow-covered mountain in the distance. My camera is always at my side, and I was able to catch it before it disappeared. Rainbows are symbols of good luck, and I could only assume that this scene represented a positive omen. Within two hours of making this image, my hunch would bear dividends.
07-JUN-2013
Whale aloft, near Admiralty Island, Alaska, 2013
I have photographed whales for many years, but had never been fortunate to see one throw its huge body out of the water, let alone photograph such an event. But on the night of June 7, 2013, I was able to do both. Not only was I able to capture this humpback at the apex of its leap, but also the backdrop and the late Alaskan evening light offered a memorable context for the scene. This whale had been following our boat for a mile or so, swimming in wide circles around it. The sun was due to set within the hour, due to the very long Alaskan summer night. The angle of the sun plunged the rounded island in the background into shadow, and muted the light on the mountains and sky behind it. Yet the water itself appeared as a golden sheet of shimmering ripples. The whale has been releasing golden puffs of water, known as spouts, for more than ten minutes. I photographed many of those spouts, and was very pleased with the results. More importantly, my “spout shooting” forced me to remain focused on the ripples the whale was making from just below the surface, so that when it decided to vault into the air, I able catch the decisive moment. The angle of the light turns the splash around the whale, and the water pouring off of its massive body, to gold as well. I had prepared for such a moment as this as best I could, but in the end, it is the whale that made the picture by deciding to breach right in front my camera. In my post processing, I kept this golden leap true to life. My most significant processing addition was to slightly darken the tree, mountain, and sky backdrop, leaving center stage to the breaching whale shedding its curtain of golden water.
07-JUN-2013
Point Retreat Light House, Admiralty Island, Alaska, 2013
This lighthouse sits at the northern tip of the ninety-mile long Admiralty Island. In 1794, the English explorer George Vancouver sent an officer ashore here to find food and water. However the fellow encountered a band of celebrating natives, and beat a hasty retreat. The tip of land had found a name, and 110 years later, it had its first lighthouse. The lighthouse is now automated, and stands as a historic reminder of Alaska’s Inside Passage history. In this image, the setting sun leaves its last light upon the top of the massive mountain rising behind the lighthouse and gilds the tiny-whitewashed structures below. The last light of the day symbolically echoes the function of the lighthouse itself.
07-JUN-2013
Last light on Chichagof Strait, near Funter Bay, Alaska, 2013
This memorable sunset capped our very first day in Alaska. I made this about fifteen minutes after the sun had set (at 10:15 at night), turning Chichagof Strait into a copper and turquoise channel carrying the eye to the brilliantly colored snowcapped peaks on Chichagof Island itself. In just our first five hours of cruising, I had already photographed a bald eagle, a rainbow, and a breaching whale – a fitting prelude to this image, one of the most striking dusk scenes I’ve ever encountered.
08-JUN-2013
Frigid sunset , Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 2013
Just 250 years ago, Glacier Bay was all glacier and no bay. It was a 100-mile long river of ice, thousands of feet deep. That ice has retreated to the north, leaving us with national park that covers three million acres of mountains, glaciers, forests, and waterways. It anchors a 25 million acre world Heritage Site, one of the world’s largest protected natural areas. Fifteen glaciers are within this park – the ice in this image has fallen from the face of Margerie Glacier. Shooting with a 24mm prime wideangle lens from the deck of our ship in the late evening light, I juxtapose the effect of a warm setting sun against the chill of floating ice that seems to extend forever.
09-JUN-2013
Blue ice, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 2013
Shooting from a skiff, I came within a few yards of this massive chunk of floating ice that had broken away from Margerie Glacier. I was drawn to its translucence and its odd blue color. The color is due to air bubbles trapped within the ice being squeezed out. As the size of the ice crystals within the ice increase, they become clear and blue. The blue color is intensified by the blue reflection in the water. I was also drawn to the diagonal thrusts of the ice itself, and the way it seems to glow at the base. The jagged blue translucent ice symbolically provides a metaphor for a rugged yet magical place.
08-JUN-2013
Tlingit canoe, Bartlett Cove Visitor’s Center, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 2013
The Tlingit people built this canoe, now on display at the National Park’s visitor’s center. The Tlingit were driven from their homes by advancing glaciers three hundred years ago, but as the ice retreated they have returned to the area and claim Glacier Bay as their spiritual homeland. I made this image to symbolically evoke such spirit. Using spot metering, I was able to emphasize the effect of a warm sun emerging from the dark shadows within the hand-made wooden canoe.
07-JUN-2013
Life upon death, Bartlett Cove Visitor’s Center, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 2013
While glaciers are prominent in the northern half of Glacier National Park, temperate rainforests dominate its southern part. Evergreen trees such as Western Hemlock and Sitka Spruce thrive in the mild, moist climate of these rainforests. Such trees drip with lichens and mosses, and share space with layers of vegetation that include blueberries, fungi, liverworts and wildflowers that blanket the forest floor. The vast quantity of things living or that once lived but that are now decaying produces some of the largest accumulations of organic material on earth. A National Park Service Ranger took us on a walk through just such a rainforest adjacent to the park’s visitor’s center. During that walk, I came upon this scene. In this image, I attempt to express the essence of rejuvenation itself. Using a prime 24mm wideangle lens, I emphasize the sheer scale of these massive fallen trees, now covered in moss and lichen, yet providing a platform for new growth everywhere around them.
08-JUN-2013
Tourism, Glacier Bay Lodge, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 2013
Millions of tourists visit Glacier Bay National Park each summer. Most of them view the park from the decks of massive cruise ships. We saw it from small skiffs, spending three days and nights exploring the park by day and anchoring in its coves by night. Some tourists chose to stay at the Glacier Bay Lodge, or hotels in the nearby town of Gustavus. As we entered the park, we waited to meet our National Park Service ranger in the busy lobby of the Glacier Bay Lodge. The ranger would stay with us for our entire trip through the park. While we waited, I found this pair of tourists planning their own visit, via laptop, from the comfort of a Glacier Bay Lodge sofa. The expressions on their faces and their body language make us wonder what they must be thinking at this moment. They face many choices, choosing from a menu of full day boat tours, hiking, camping, kayaking, birding, fishing, and berry picking.
08-JUN-2013
Forest Journey, Bartlett’s Cove, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 2013
I photographed many different creatures during my eleven-day shoot in Alaska, ranging in size from huge humpback whales to the tiny red bug shown in this image. This insect, which I’ve learned is most likely known scientifically as "Dictoptera Hamatus," was extremely difficult to shoot at close range. It was scuttling quickly across a flat rock in a rainforest near the National Park’s visitors center. I put my camera in Macro mode, and moved in as far as my wideangle lens would allow, and was able to make several images before it fled from sight. The insect vanished into my shadow in my first few images, but eventually the little red bug emerged from my looming shadow and broke into the clear. It seems to be laboring uphill at the moment, its head down but antennae held high as its six little red legs churn forward. This kind of insect is related to termites and cockroaches, but is far bolder in color. While this photo is a far cry from a breaching humpback whale, it does depict a legitimate native of Southeastern Alaska’s rain forest in action.
08-JUN-2013
Mountain goats, Gloomy Knob, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 2013
Mountain goats are among the largest mammals found at higher altitudes, but they often descend to sea level as they forage for food. We spotted this mother and her kid moving along a narrow path of rock high on a massive cliff. They were well out of camera range, but my long telephoto lens and a couple of strong crops reveal a sense of vulnerability within this image. A very young kid rests on the ground, while its mother stands alongside, ready to prod it into action. The massive rocks seem unforgiving. The scale of the kid is far smaller than its mother, and seems tiny and helpless when compared to the rocky context.
08-JUN-2013
Muskeg, Bartlett’s Cove, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 2013
These lily pads create colorful context for the dead trees that protrude above the surface of the pond. The entire area is known as a muskeg, a marsh or pond made up largely of dead plants in various stages of very slow decomposition. Water from snow and rain collects here, forming permanently waterlogged vegetation and stagnant pools. This image gives us more than a pond – it expresses the very nature of the bogs in an Alaskan rainforest.
08-JUN-2013
Bracket fungi, Bartlett’s Cove, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 2013
The purple mushrooms attached to a tree are stunningly incongruous in both color and scale. I’ve never seen anything like them before, but there were many such plants in this Southeastern Alaskan rainforest. I later learned that these are called “bracket or shelf fungi” and can very widely in color and size. This image offers us an example of nature at its most unpredictable.
08-JUN-2013
Margerie Glacier, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 2013
This mile wide, 21-mile long glacier was named for the famed French geographer Emmanuel de Margerie, who visited Glacier Bay in 1913. It is 350 feet high – 250 feet of it stand above the water line, and 100 feet lies below the surface. This glacier is so large in scale that it can’t be encompassed within a single image. I chose to move in on the craggy shafts of ice that soar above it, providing a base layer for the snow capped mountains and cloud laced sky that fill the background. A range of various blue colors fills the image – dirty ice, shadowed snow, and pure blue sky. It is a mountain of ice -- austere, cold, chilling, and massive.
08-JUN-2013
Falling ice, Margerie Glacier, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 2013
I made this photo at almost nine o’clock at night, yet the sun still had an hour to go before it was to set. Glacier’s such as this one will now and then "crack and groan," a sign that a chunk of its ice, large or small, is about to fall into the sea. The particular piece of ice “calving” from the face of the Margerie glacier was large enough to produce a report as loud as a cannon blast. The force of ice hitting water sends splashes both high and wide. I particularly liked the color of the exploding water – it picks up the golden light heralding the coming sunset. Meanwhile, the wall of ice just above the splash seems to quiver and shake.
08-JUN-2013
Kayaks, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 2013
Visitors to Glacier Bay often paddle kayaks to view the magnificent scenery that lines the bay. This image, made in mid-afternoon expresses the staggering scale of the area through scale incongruity. I photographed these kayaks from at least a mile away. The tiny figure detached from the group at right is probably a park ranger.
08-JUN-2013
Diving Humpback, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 2013
I made this image as primarily a landscape photograph of Glacier Bay, appropriately using a diving whale as a foreground “anchor” for my image. The surface of the water is as smooth as glass, reflecting the blue sky, white clouds, and massive mountain range. While the whale’s body is nearly vertical as it plunges to the depths of Glacier Bay, its tail remains horizontal, echoing the horizontal thrusts of the ripples in the water, the distant shoreline, and the rows of mountains and clouds above it.
08-JUN-2013
Brown bears on the climb, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 2013
We first found this female bear walking her three-year-old cubs along a rocky beach bordering Glacier Bay. We followed their slow progress for at least twenty minutes as they grazed for food along the beach, and I made many routine images of them feeding. Sightings of feeding brown bears are very common in this part of Alaska, and pictures of grazing bears often lack the incongruities that excite the imagination. The cubs are learning how to forage, defend themselves and where to den. Things improved greatly after they finished feeding, and left the beach to climb a steep cliff leading to either home or greener pastures. Although they were a long way from our ship, and very small in scale, the grouping clearly stands out against the gray cliff. Because we don’t often see bears climbing steep cliffs, let alone in family groupings, this image becomes a special document.
08-JUN-2013
A whale tale, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 2013
The most common whale pictures generally include a tail, also known as flukes, hovering above the water just as the whale is about to dive. I most likely photographed more than 100 whale tails during the ten days of my Alaskan adventure. Yet I discarded the great majority because they only showed water and tail, and nothing else. This one, however, is a keeper, because it tells a story. This Humpback whale surfaced, exhaled a cloud of steam known as a “spout,” displayed a dorsal fin upon its long shiny black back, saw us heading right towards it and displayed its flukes, covered in cascades of water, as it began its plunging maneuver. I cropped the image into a square, placing the flukes at bottom center, incongruously followed by a tiny gull whose wings were in exactly the same position. The expanse of water behind it speaks of the distances whales routinely cover in a day of feeding. The snow laden mountains beyond the distant shore represent Alaska itself, giving context to a humpback whale that has travelled all the way from Hawaii just to feed in these fertile waters before turning home to mate and breed. Rather than just show whale flukes, I instead attempt to tell a story featuring the flukes as a character.
10-JUN-2013
A big ship made small, Icy Strait, Alaska, 2013
As our own tiny expedition ship, holding just 22 passengers, moved through the Inside Passage’s Icy Strait, I made this image of a huge Princess ocean liner sailing away from us in the far distance, dwarfed by the scale of the landscape surrounding it. The vast mountain range overwhelms the cruise ship, making it seem vulnerable to nature’s whims in spite of its vast size. It is one of the many cruise ships that ply the Inside Passage each summer. Cruise ships usually anchor in a different port each night, and carry extensive tourism to Southeast Alaskan towns such as Juneau, Ketchikan and Skagway. More than one million cruise passengers were expected to sail on the Inside Passage during 2013. Several thousand of them were on the ship we see in the distance.
10-JUN-2013
Stealthy approach, Pavlov Harbor, Chichagof Island, Alaska, 2013
As we anchored for the night in this tiny harbor for the evening, we spotted a brown bear grazing on the shore. Our skiffs carried us to within 50 yards of the bear, and while were photographing it from a distance, a member of our crew glided past us on a surfboard. She could take a far more stealthy approach, floating almost to the edge of beach without the roar of an outboard motor. She had no concerns about running aground. I photographed her confronting the bear in absolute silence. She is so quiet that the bear seems to ignore her presence. It continued to do so.
10-JUN-2013
Defiance, Pavlov Harbor, Chichagof Island, Alaska, 2013
About fifteen minutes after I made the previous image of this brown bear ignoring the approach of a member of our crew on a surf board, I made this photograph that tells another story altogether. Two skiffs, carrying all of our 22 passengers, motored ever closer to the bear. We photographed this bear for nearly 20 minutes as it chewed on an abundance of grass.The bear gradually became irritated by our presence, and lifts its head towards us here with a defiant air. As it bares its teeth, I use my full 350mm telephoto focal length to make this image. I later cropped the image to increase the scale of the bear within the frame, stressing the facial detail.
11-JUN-2013
Brown bear family near Kasnyku Hatchery, Baranof Island, Alaska, 2013
This brown bear sow with three cubs is grazing along the opposite shore of a creek bordering a salmon hatchery. While the salmon were not yet present in the stream itself, this bear family had been frequently spotted near this hatchery. I waited for the four bears to naturally arrange themselves in a horizontal line, which gave my image a rhythmic composition based upon the repeating horizontal thrusts of the rocks, bears, log, and trees. The sow keeps a wary eye on 22 photographers on the other side of the stream, while the cubs pay no attention to her or to us.
11-JUN-2013
Cub at play, Kasnyku Hatchery, Baranof Island, Alaska, 2013
One of the bear cubs pictured in the previous image left its mother and siblings to enjoy a spontaneous tug of war with a net floating in the stream bordering the salmon hatchery. I caught the cub as it sat down in the stream and took one of the net’s floats in its mouth to gain extra traction. (Hatchery personnel are not amused by such antics. They make loud noises to keep bears off the property.)
11-JUN-2013
Nature at work, Baranof Island, Alaska, 2013
Evidence of nature’s wrath is everywhere in Southeastern Alaska. Unlike many other places in the United States, trees felled by storms, age, or lighting strikes are not routinely picked up and carted away. The Alaskan wilderness is anything but tidy. Dead trees are left where they fall. They decay, giving life to new organisms in the process. In this image, I juxtapose three layers of natural forms. I anchor the scene with massive boulders, some of them covered in lichen. Three felled trees connect the boulders to the layer of rich green forest that covers the top third of the image. The colors change as the eye moves upwards or downwards through the photo.
11-JUN-2013
Orca whale, off Baranof Island, Alaska, 2013
An orca whale, also known as a killer whale, glides past my skiff, showing only its distinctive dorsal fin. This one is known as a “resident orca,” because it is part of a family pod and eats a diet of fish. (Other orcas are classified as “transients,” who do not travel as a family, and eat only other marine mammals.) I composed this image so that the dorsal fin and its surrounding ripple echo the thrust of the mountain range on the distant horizon. I converted the picture to black and white to further abstract the scene, making it seem silent and ethereal.
11-JUN-2013
Orca with calf, off Baranof Island, Alaska, 2013
We see much more of the calf here, as its body seems to rise out of the water. This pair of orcas was traveling so close to our skiff that I needed only a 93mm short telephoto focal length to make this image. We could even smell the strong odor of their spouts. These are resident orcas -- they will live with their mothers for their entire lives. They eat primarily salmon in these waters. Some females can reach age 90, and as many as four generations of orcas can travel together. Only humans, elephants, and primates have comparable social structures.
11-JUN-2013
Colors of time, Baranof Island, Alaska, 2013
Ancient mineral deposits blend with moss and lichen, turning a huge rock into a facsimile of an artist’s palette. As we study these colors and their random design, we seem to be looking back into time itself. I used a 28mm wideangle focal length to come in very close, yet still manage to include a considerable sampling of rock.
11-JUN-2013
Safari Explorer, at anchor in Red Bluff Bay, Alaska, 2013
Our small expedition ship held 22 passengers and a crew of 13 on this particular cruise. Instead of anchoring in ports as the large cruise ships do, the Safari Explorer (Un-Cruise Adventures,
http://www.un-cruise.com) spent each evening of our cruise anchored in wilderness coves and bays along the way. I made this image just before 10:00 pm in the evening, and the long Alaskan summer day still gilds the waters of Red Bluff Bay, while the cliffs that soar overhead shadow the ship and the background. I was riding in one of our skiffs as I made this image, and one of my fellow passengers paddling a kayak layers the picture for me by offering a scale comparison to the Safari Explorer.
12-JUN-2013
Solitude, Red Bluff Bay, Alaska, 2013
I made this image in the early calm of an Alaskan morning. The position of a lone kayak made this image work as an expression of solitude. It is placed at the exact spot where all of the slopes converge, yet it floats free from the any background interference. The red hull draws the eye, contrasting to the green trees and the blue-sky overhead.
12-JUN-2013
Waterfall, Red Bluff Bay, Alaska, 2013
This waterfall was hundreds of feet high, descending from the heights of a towering cliff. However, I choose to feature the waterfall’s most powerful moment – the tremendous force of its flow crashing upon the rocks below it. The water seems to virtually explode on impact. I catch its flow over the face of the rock, and compare it to the flow of a supplementary stream of water at the left hand side of the frame. The story here is all about nature’s power and energy.
12-JUN-2013
Carol Island, Alaska, 2013
Carol Island, unlike many of the islands we visited along the Inside Passage, was very small. We circled it within fifteen minutes. I composed this landscape image to contrast the jagged rocks at the base of Carol Island with the distant peak in the background. The wispy texture of the clouds, riding in the pale blue sky overhead, echo the bold streaks adjoining the kelp beds in the dark, glistening water. A lone tree leans out of Carol Island, offering its own salute to the scene.
12-JUN-2013
Stellar sea lion rookery, Brothers Islands, Alaska, 2013
Our ship took us past this point of land, crowded with dozens of sea lions. I use a pair of large sea lions as bookends. One of them, a bull, seems to be riding a wave at left – he actually has commandeered his own rock. The other bookend, at far right, may be a very large cow. She takes the high ground, seeing everything that is going on below her. I organized this image around four layered horizontal bands flowing across the image. The rookery holds the foreground, the band of rocks runs through the middle, the distant tree-lined shore, along with the massive mountains, provides the backdrop. (Our ship could only linger off shore for a few minutes. I would have liked to have stayed longer, and my wish came true four days later, when I was taken back for a longer shoot, at much closer range, as part of my four day stay at a remote fishing camp within a half hour of this rookery. You can see the images I made here during that shoot later in this gallery.)
12-JUN-2013
Bald eagle, Wood Spit, Alaska, 2013
Bald eagles are very often seen along the Inside Passage, since it is largely made up water and shoreline, and the lion’s share of an eagle’s diet is fish. Breeding resident bald eagles nest in trees along the entire Pacific Coast of Alaska. We found this one perched upon a large rock at the entrance to our evening anchorage at Wood Spit, a small peninsula opposite the famous Stevens Passage. We arrived in evening light, which is warm and comes in at a low angle. It sculpts this handsome bird in light and shadow, and creates a perfect background via a shadowy forest as well. I particularly liked the way the golden brown algae on the rocks in the foreground are echoed in the gleaming brown features of the eagle.
12-JUN-2013
Young bald eagle, Wood Spit, Alaska, 2013
This immature bald eagle finds a navigation light in the middle of the Stevens Passage to be a safe and convenient place to observe passing tourists. I cropped in on the image to create a series of repeating triangles within the supporting structure of the navigation light. The bright red triangle, which is part of the light’s danger warning signage, now acts as a pointer aimed directly at this eagle’s beak. Both male and female bald eagles will acquire their distinctive white head feathers at age four. Meanwhile, they are learning how to hunt, and using this navigation platform as a perching place may help them to locate fish more easily.
12-JUN-2013
Hikers, Wood Spit, Alaska, 2013
Some members of our group chose to hike at sunset along Wood Spit, and I photographed them from a skiff as they followed their guide along the shoreline. This image juxtaposes man against the work of nature. The scale incongruity here is overwhelming. The people may well be awestruck at how small they seem in a place like this.
12-JUN-2013
Gilded boulders, Wood Spit, Alaska, 2013
As my skiff floated along the shoreline at Wood Spit, I noticed a group of boulders rising out of the earth that seemed to be shaped like projectiles. They are welded together by time and nature, and are clothed in a sprinkling of lichen. The setting sun warms the boulders, and bathes them in golden hues. They may be only a group of rocks, yet they symbolize the ice age environment that ended more than ten thousand years ago.
13-JUN-2013
Passengers on board Safari Explorer, Endicott Arm, Alaska, 2013
Endicott Arm is one of two fjords in the heart of the Tracy Arm-Ford’s Terror Wilderness. It was icy, cold, and foggy, and we traveled more than 30 miles to reach the Dawes Glacier at its end. Meanwhile, many passengers kept warm in our ships lounge. I made this image of some of them as they read books and viewed what they could see of the passing scenery. Using a wideangle lens turned vertically, I anchor the image with an open book at the bottom of the frame that is nearly as large as some of the passengers sitting in the background. I like the richness of the reds and blues in the image as well.
13-JUN-2013
Lifting fog, Endicott Arm, Alaska, 2013
The thousand foot high cliffs lining the sides of Endicott Arm were wreathed in fog for much of the morning cruise through this fjord. When it began to lift, I made this long telephoto image of alternating bands of fog rising between rhythmically repeating stands of trees along the sides of the cliff. The eye is ultimately drawn to a startling patch of pure blue sky, squeezed between the receding strips of fog and the layer of overhead clouds. Such is the process of weather itself, expressed here on a grand scale.
13-JUN-2013
Cruising Endicott Arm, Alaska, 2013
As the fog lifted over Endicott Arm, a translucent layer of clouds emerged, featuring small patches of bright blue sky. I used my 28mm wideangle focal length to anchor the scene with the two yellow skiffs being towed through the fjord by our ship. The skiffs ride in the wake of our ship’s engine, which churns the water into a frothy green roadway. In contrast, a mirror-like surface lines both sides of that wake. I use the two rows of receding cliffs lining the channel to echo the flow of the pair of skiffs.
13-JUN-2013
Surprise waterfall, Endicott Arm, Alaska, 2013
During our exploration of Endicott Arm, our skiff took us into a small inlet, where we found this exquisite grotto. Just after we entered the grotto, we turned a corner to find a slender waterfall interrupting the rhythmic flow of the ancient rock slabs lining the area. This image expresses the sense of surprise we felt at the moment we discovered the waterfall.
12-JUN-2013
Crimson cave, Endicott Arm, Alaska, 2013
The cliffs that line Endicott Arm are relics of the great ice age that once embraced all of Alaska. As we neared the end of the fiord that culminated with the enormous Dawes Glacier, we noticed that the colors embedded in those cliffs became ever more vibrant. This particular cave has an entrance lined with splashes of crimson. While I am not sure if those colors are due to mineral deposits, lichen growths, or both, the effect was stunning. I used my spot-metering mode to stress the interplay between light and shadow, darkening the image to create a painterly effect.
13-JUN-2013
Colors of nature, Endicott Arm, Alaska, 2013
Colors that nature usually reserves for flowers appear here upon worn mounds of rock. This image is an exercise in pure coloration. It could almost be the work of an abstract expressionist painter, yet it is not. These are the colors of nature itself, preserved on stone that has endured the flow of ice, water, and time itself.
13-JUN-2013
Waterfall, Ford’s Terror, Alaska, 2013
In 1899, a naval crewman named Ford padded into a narrow waterway connected to Endicott Arm, and was trapped for six terrible hours in a ripping tidal surge. His ordeal gave this waterfall, and indeed the 653,000-acre wilderness area around it, its name. There were actually three separate waterfalls plunging side by side down a huge cliff. I chose to shoot only one of them here – the one that offered the most beautiful pattern of water hitting rock. I used a fast shutter speed of 1/800th of a second to make this image, and converted it to black and white to simplify the composition and make the flow of water seem even more graceful and delicate. It’s beauty stands in direct opposition to its namesake.
13-JUN-2013
Explosion, Dawes Glacier, Endicott Arm, Alaska, 2013
I was able to catch the moment of maximum force as an enormous slab of ice broke loose from the face of this glacier and plunged two hundred feet into the water. We saw the ice begin to move, slide, and hit, and only then did the sound reach us – a shattering blast that sounded like an exploding bomb. Notice the background of blue ice behind the blast – we can see smaller chunks of ice in free fall within the detail. This entire process is called “calving.”
14-JUN-2013
Floatplane Base, Juneau International Airport, Juneau, Alaska, 2013
My six-day cruise through the Inside Passage ended in Juneau, and I extended the trip by flying out to a remote fishing camp at the end of Admiralty Island, where I enjoyed four additional days of nature photography. In this image, I stood on a floating dock almost below the wing of a private floatplane, and made this image of the floatplane base at Juneau’s International Airport. I used this plane’s wing to create a horizontal frame within my frame. The horizontal wing echoes the wings of the plane parked just in front of us, as well as the horizon, along with the sweep of the roadway adjoining the huge basin where floatplanes are parked, takeoff, and land. The distant mountains offer context – these floatplanes connect Juneau with wilderness destinations throughout Southeast Alaska.
14-JUN-2013
Fly-in fishing camp, Pybus Bay, Admiralty Island, Alaska, 2013
This fly-in fishing camp, known as Pybus Point Lodge, stands at the foot of Admiralty Island. It is miles from the nearest habitation, and has a fleet of small fishing boats and skiffs that are used to carry fisherman out daily in search of halibut and other fish. I am not a fisherman, but used the services of this camp for lodging, meals, and the use of a guide and a boat for my photographic needs. I made this image on the first night there. The sun has not yet set, but it casts warm light on the sandy beach. A single pier carries us out to the boathouse and its surrounding craft. A single fisherman stands reflected in the water, giving scale to the scene.
14-JUN-2013
Cannery Relic, Pybus Point Lodge, Admiralty Island, Alaska, 2013
This fly-in fishing camp was constructed upon the foundations of a salmon cannery, which was built more than 100 years ago. Relics of this cannery can still be found strewn about this camp. This gear was part of a machine that processed salmon. It was covered in red rust, and almost buried by the lush vegetation. By converting this image to black and white, I made the gear almost invisible. It seems as if it is there, yet also not quite there, just as the cannery itself. The era of commercial salmon fishing and processing is long gone from Admiralty Island. In fact, the entire 90 mile long island – the seventh largest island in the United States – is now mostly occupied by the Admiralty Island National Monument, a federally protected wilderness area. The camp itself is allowed to exist today because its builders purchased the land from the heirs of the cannery owners, a structure built and later abandoned long before the island became a National Monument.
14-JUN-2013
Fishing Fleet, Pybus Point Lodge, Admiralty Island, Alaska, 2013
I photographed parts of two identical fishing boats parked side by side at our fly-in fishing camp. I organized the image through rhythm and pattern, stressing the repeating flow of hull supports and railings. A fisherman stands within one of the boats at upper right, lending human scale to the scene. The silver structures suggest power and strength, two important characteristics for small craft that must carry up to a dozen people in weather that is always changing by the hour.
14-JUN-2013
Dungeness Crab traps, Pybus Bay, Admiralty Island, Alaska, 2013
A pile of 30 crab traps stand on a wilderness beach, waiting to be placed in the water. I was drawn to this image because of the layering of colors. The brown and orange traps, along with the sandy beach, are squeezed between a layer of green water at bottom and a layer of green trees at the top. The Alaskan Dungeness Crab season opened the day after I made this photograph, and commercial crab trappers were obviously fully ready for it. They had already piled caches of such traps along the shores of the inlets and channels where the crab were most likely to be found. Dungeness Crab is trapped in eelgrass beds, as well as on the bottom of the bay itself. The day after I made this image, Dungeness Crab was featured at our lodge’s dinner. The crabs had been trapped only a few hours before they were served to us. The meat has a delicate flavor and is slightly sweet.
15-JUN-2013
Bald eagle roost, Cannery Cove, Pybus Bay, Alaska, 2013
Our fishing camp was located within Cannery Cove –a small bay within Pybus Bay itself. Dozens of bald eagles roost in this cove, many of them within our fishing camp, largely because they usually feed on the carcasses of the fish that are caught and then cleaned here. This backlighted immature eagle waits on a nearby rock for a free breakfast. However, each day’s catch is not cleaned until the fishermen return home at 5 pm, and this young eagle will have a long wait.
14-JUN-2013
A gathering of eagles, Cannery Cove, Pybus Bay, Alaska, 2013
This is the first image in a three-picture sequence featuring bald eagles feeding on fish carcasses at the Pybus Point Lodge fly-in fishing camp. More than a dozen eagles, both mature and immature, gathered on these rocks at sunset as the tide receded, waiting for it to reveal what remained of the halibut discarded by the camp’s fishermen. Here three mature bald eagles wait patiently, paying no attention to an immature eagle about to land in their midst.
14-JUN-2013
Parental lesson, Cannery Cove, Pybus Bay, Alaska, 2013
In this, the second image of this eagle-feeding sequence, a mature eagle shows off its six-foot wingspan to a young member of the family. A vivid sunset turns the island just behind it to gold. A mature bald eagle has a wingspan of six or seven feet. The largest bald eagles are found here in Alaska. Female bald eagles are twenty five per cent larger than males. This eagle in flight might well be the mother of the immature eagle waiting on the rock. At this time of year, the immature eagles are being taught how to hunt by their parents.
14-JUN-2013
Halibut feast, Cannery Cove, Pybus Bay, Alaska, 2013
Five minutes after making the previous image, this eagle spotted a chunk of halibut carcass in the shallow water and swooped down to grab it in its talons. I conclude this sequence with this image of success, as the eagle soars towards my camera. The young eagle behind it will soon share in the feast.
15-JUN-2013
Fearsome sight, Cannery Cove, Pybus Bay, Alaska, 2013
A bald eagle lunges towards a young eagle barely visible in the lower right hand corner of the frame. I caught its fearsome expression in the early morning light – it was responding with what seemed like anger to something the young eagle had done. The low angle of the sun illuminates the head, while throwing the rest into shadow. I made hundreds of images of eagles while at the Pybus Point Lodge. I was fortunate to visit at this time of year – later in the summer these eagles leave the lodge area to hunt among distant streams filled with spawning salmon. I made at least several hundred images of eagles during my four-day stay at the Pybus Point Lodge fishing camp. Bald eagles were always around me, day and night. They would float past the windows of my cabin, filling the air with their cries. This image is perhaps the single most rewarding image I was to make of eagles in Alaska. It is more than a descriptive portrait. It is intimate, beautifully illuminated, and full of feeling.
16-JUN-2013
Ducks on Pybus Bay, Alaska, 2013
I caught three ducks here, each frozen in a different stage of motion, traveling before me in horizontal alignment towards a distant island. The water was calm, the skies laden in mist. This image is rich in atmosphere and mood, and I convert it to black and white to further abstract it, honing it down to only its most essential elements.
17-JUN-2013
Waterbirds, Cannery Cove, Pybus Bay, Alaska, 2013
This quintet, most likely immature seagulls, aligned themselves perfectly within my frame. Their delicate pale features contrast with their lookout spot, a large, kelp covered rock. This rock had just become available to them as a gift from the outgoing tide. The negative space between each gull creates a sense of tension, while the repeating heads provide rhythmic repetition that carries the eye through the image.
17-JUN-2013
Nature’s trick, Pybus Bay, Alaska, 2013
My guide took me deep into an unnamed cove, tucked into the vast nooks and crannies of Pybus Bay. The water was as smooth as a mirror, allowing me to work with reflection as well as subject matter. This tree seems to have broken free of the ground, and hangs lifeless against the rocks before us. However, the surrounding overhead canopy of vibrant green foliage makes it seem as if this tree is alive and flourishing. I regard the scene as a trick of nature.
16-JUN-2013
Dragon Rock, Pybus Bay, Alaska, 2013
As soon as I saw this rock, crowded with trees along its spine and glowing in the morning light, I thought I was seeing a dragon. Its translucent head draws the eye. It seems to have a hooked beak and an open mouth. My guide told me that it is called “Dragon Rock,” and I asked him how it came to have that name. He answered, “I think it looks like a dragon, and obviously, so do you.”
17-JUN-2013
Aftermath, Pybus Bay, Alaska, 2013
A violent storm, no stranger to the Alaskan coast, had ripped this tree from the earth. It probably drifted with the tides, and wound up tossed upon this rocky shore, its vast root system exposed and useless. I found a haunted beauty in its form, and when I made this image I saw it as a black and white photograph, which worked well for my intentions. I wanted this tree to retreat into the darkness of the living forest behind it, a reminder that all things that live also eventually die.
17-JUN-2013
Double Take, Pybus Bay, Alaska, 2013
I use the mirrored surface of utterly calm water here to reflect the complexity of the tangle of dead trees and branches resting upon a bed of lichen covered rock. The colors are essential to this image – the reflected canopy of green foliage and the golden lichen covering the tree trunk express new life hosted by the ghostly trees and dead branches. The symmetry of this image creates a dual pattern, bringing order to chaos, and showing a natural lifecycle in an esthetically beautiful way..
16-JUN-2013
Stellar sea lion rookery – a second visit. Brothers Islands, Alaska, 2013
On my initial visit to this rookery four days earlier, I photographed it from a greater distance and a higher position while on board a small cruise ship. On this second visit, I could photograph these sea lions from sea level and closer vantage point. I built this image around the dynamic interactions at the crest of the rocky rookery. Although there are many sea lions in this image, our eye goes directly to the dispute at the peak of the rock, where the raised heads of two sea lions echo the mountain peak rising behind it. Meanwhile, two other sea lions are giving each other an earful on the right hand end of the slope.
16-JUN-2013
The trio, Stellar sea lion rookery, Brothers Islands, Alaska, 2013
This close-up study of a sea lion pup caught between a pair of adults composed itself for me. The three heads, all featuring wide-open jaws, are naturally positioned for coherence and eye flow. It is if they are a trio of opera singers performing an aria. The coarse rocks on either side of this grouping provide both context and contrast.
16-JUN-2013
Family portrait, Stellar sea lion rookery, Brothers Island, Alaska, 2013
I visited this rookery at the height of the breeding season. In this family portrait, I place a bull at the center, controlling its territory in the rookery. Females give birth soon after arriving at the rookery, and they will breed here one to two weeks after giving birth. The pups in this picture are about a month old – the result of the previous year’s breeding season. This bull controls this territory for two months. Stellar sea lion bulls, which can weigh more than 2,000 pounds, do not coerce females into harems. Instead they control specific territories among which females freely move about.
16-JUN-2013
Followers, Stellar sea lion rookery, Brothers Island, Alaska, 2013
Reproductive males will fast throughout the breeding season, often without entering the water for more than two months. Yet at one point during our half hour shoot, a bull momentarily abandoned the rookery, while all of the pups and cows in its territory followed him into the water. In this image, I caught the bull looking towards the rookery, his entourage lined up behind him. I structure the image as a series of horizontal layers, starting with the sea lions in the foreground, and then moving to the stretch of rocks behind them, and finally to the snowcapped mountains in the background. It was sight I had never seen before.
16-JUN-2013
Five Fingers Lighthouse, Frederick Sound, Alaska, 2013
This Art Deco lighthouse was built in 1935, one of many government sponsored public works programs during the Great Depression. It is the second lighthouse on this site – its predecessor was built in 1902, the first manned lighthouse in Alaska. It burned to the ground in 1933. All of Alaska’s lighthouses built during the 1930s were designed in this Art Deco style. The last four-man US Coast Guard crew left Five Fingers lighthouse in 1984, making it the both the first and last Alaskan lighthouse to be manned. This lighthouse was the last in the US to become automated, and the Coast Guard leases it to the Juneau Lighthouse Association, which is gradually restoring the structure. Our cabin cruiser circled the island, giving me a chance to shoot the lighthouse from many different vantage points. Rather than just shoot the structure, I decided to use a wideangle focal length to include the surrounding trees, overhead clouds, and the wake of our boat. I use the vertical tower to link all of these elements.
16-JUN-2013
Curious humpback, Frederick Sound, Alaska, 2013
Nearly 20,000 humpbacks spend their summers in Alaskan waters, where they feed. They migrate to Hawaii for the winter. where they will live off their fat reserves while breeding. The females breed every two or three years, and bear their young in both northern and southern waters. Humpbacks are often curious about objects in their environments. Some of them gain a reputation as “friendlies” and will approach boats to check them out. This whale is a friendly. It circled our small boat at fairly close range for over fifteen minutes, and at one point we saw its head come up out the water to inspect us visually. I caught the moment of inspection here, just as an exhaled cloud of steam was rising from the whale’s head.
17-JUN-2013
Wary brown bear, Cannery Cove, Pybus Bay, Alaska, 2013
There are more than 1,500 brown bears living on Admiralty Island. Most of them feed on grasses growing along the beaches of the island’s perimeter. Most of Southeastern Alaskan brown bears are known as coastal brown bears. (Those that live inland are called inland grizzly bears.) There is a beach at the head of Cannery Cover, only a few minutes from our fishing camp. We motored over to it every evening to wait for bears to come down towards the water to feed. On this evening, we found a feeding brown bear not far from the edge of the water. We cut the outboard motor, and glided silently through the high grass at high tide. At one point, this bear stopped feeding and looked squarely at us. I framed this wary bear with lots of grass around it to stress the ample food supply here, including some of the water to add context for our approach.
17-JUN-2013
High tension, Cannery Cove, Pybus Bay, Alaska, 2013
Only three minutes after I made the previous image, this same brown bear moved forward to the very edge of the water, only a few yards away from our small boat. We could come no further to make a picture – the bottom of our outboard skiff was virtually resting on the bottom. The bear shows us its teeth, its stare intense. I was able to catch the essence of the moment here. This was the closest I have ever been to a brown bear in the wild. My guide was confident that it would come no closer, but added that the bear was “staring us down” and it would be “preferable” for us to leave. We did.
15-JUN-2013
Ready and waiting, Cannery Cove, Pybus Bay, Alaska, 2013
This is the most startling image I’ve ever made of a brown bear. As with nearly every bear we encountered in Alaska, it was grazing on lush grasses that bordered a beach not far from our fly-in fishing camp. Pictures of feeding bears with their heads down and often with their backs turned are usually not very expressive. The best advice that I can offer those making photographs of bears is to have the patience to be willing to wait for the bear to do something other than eat. We floated down to this bear and anchored just off shore. I watched it graze for more than fifteen minutes. Suddenly it stopped, turned towards me, and reared up on its hind legs. I was looking at 1,500 pounds of bear, standing nearly nine feet tall. Our guide told me that bears would sometimes do this to identify a threat. Its claws are held in readiness at its waist – it most likely thinks that we might be threatening its food, and is ready and waiting to defend it. It held this position for about a minute. This is the image that best expressed the moment.
14-JUN-2013
Summer night, Cannery Cove, Pybus Bay, Alaska, 2013
The tide has receded, leaving the log breakwater protecting the shoreline of our fishing camp high and dry. The long Alaskan day lingers well into the evening hours. It is almost 10:00 pm, and there is still enough light for this lone boater to navigate around the logs that float alongside. The mood here is one of silence. Only the cries of the eagles in the overhead trees break that silence.
17-JUN-2013
Final dawn, Cannery Cove, Pybus Bay, Alaska, 2013
July mornings can be misty in Southeast Alaska, but by 9 am, the skies usually begin to clear. On this morning, the beginning of my final full day in Alaska, the morning sky turned orange during the clearing process. The fog lifted, revealing snowcapped mountains ringing the sides of Pybus Bay. I structured this image as a five layer photograph. The calm waters of the bay provides a base, the island at the head of our cove offered a middle ground, the mountains provided a truly Alaskan background. The orange sky pulls the eye up and into the image, while the gray mist at the top represents the rising fog. I had already made several images of this scene when suddenly a bald eagle left its nest just behind our camp, sounding a loud call and circling overhead. It passed over me once, and then floated through my frame once again. I was able to place the eagle within the rising fog at the top of the frame to complete this image, and this gallery.