Kenai Fjords National Park Alaska
Prince William Sound, Alaska
Archive for category Alaska
Heaven… Jacket Required
Sep 5
Flightseeing over Denali National Park
Thanks to K2 Aviation in Talkeetna Alaska for a great flight!
Heading to Europe in a few hours but I wanted to share a few photos with you of my recent photography in Alaska.
This week was an incredible walk through the clouds, high up on a flightseeing trip over Denali National Park with K2 Aviation, in Prince William Sound with Phillips 26 Glacier Cruise, and in the Kenai Fjords National Park. Enjoy a walk through heaven… jacket required.
Anchorage Alaska Sunset Photos
Walking in the woods around Anchorage is always an interesting experience for one who has eyes to see the small details. Multi-colored mushrooms spring up from the spongy floor looking like it fell out of a Mario Brothers video game.Afternoon light pierces a wood of birch trees, reminding us that summer is drawing to a close. Green leaves melt into red and yellow, and autumn squeezes past the summer sun and takes hold of the season.
to the north of Anchorage is the tiny native village of Eklutna, Alaska. First settled more than 800 years ago, Eklutna is the oldest inhabited location in the Anchorage area. In the 1840s Russian Orthodox missionaries came to Eklutna and brought with them a melding of orthodox Christianity and native traditions that resulted in brightly-colored spirit houses which can be seen at the Eklutna cemetery.
Meltwater on the Glacier
This summer in Alaska has been spectacular if for only one reason – I’ve seen more glaciers this year than any other year since I moved to Alaska in 2004. Numerous visits to the Matanuska Glacier, Portage Glacier and this weekend to Kenai Fjords have allowed me to capture some incredible photos of these spectacular blue monoliths.
This week my friend Rick and I drove to the Matanuska Glacier for some twilight stomping on the ice. Having viewed the glacier at midday a few months earlier, we were eager to see the ice as the sun was settling over the peaks. And what we found was a joy… a yellow sun that bathed the ice in a translucent amber, purple skies and deep blue horizons reflected on pools of meltwater.
A few weeks beforehand, during one of our precious few sunny days this summer, Rick and I raced to Matanuska to capture the light of the compressed blue hues of the ice as it lies like a cat sprawled across the valley floor. We climed as high as we could get without crampons and climbing gear. Which is not an easy task! At the Matanuska Glacier visitors center you are asked to sign an insurance waiver should you fall into a crevass or be sucked into a sinking pool of mud (As happened to me in 2004). Once we signed our lives over to the grim reaper, we made our way to the ice. The photos in this slideshow show some of my favorite images from these two adventures.
iPhone users: Click on a thumbnail to view:
To purchase a copy of any of these prints, visit my gallery by clicking here.
PRODUCTION NOTES: These photos were taken using a Canon 50D with my Canon EF-24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens. The camera was mounted to my Gitzo carbon fiber tripod and ballhead mount. Each scene was bracketed in 1/3 stop increments while metering on various lighting conditions of the scene. Post-production: Images were opened in Lightroom 3 and bracketed images were merged into HDR Pro in Photoshop and adjusted to provide a wide dynamic range. Images were then individually painted using masking techniques in order to paint hue, saturation, lightness, sharpness and vibrancy. Some images were also provided an illustrated look through the use of various Photoshop actions and filters.