Aug 30, 2010 | Landscape Photography
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Atmosphere is so important to landscape photography. I’d rather have an overcast sky to a bald blue sky. Give me a storm breaking up though and I’m in pig heaven!
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Why a breaking storm? Well a storm that is forming means the solid gray skies are coming so my hopes are dashed on the rocks for any drama in the sky.
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But a thunderstorm breaking up, which typically happens near sunset, means the drama is coming and the pixels are going to be burnt. The trick is to have an open mind, a number of focal lengths handy and be flexible between color & B&W photography. With that, you look for the drama which in a nutshell are changes from light to dark in combination with interesting shapes in the landscape. And with that, you’re now ready to chase the light!
Photos captured by D3x, 70-200VR2, 24PC-E, 18AF on Lexar UDMA digital film
Aug 27, 2010 | Landscape Photography
Russell Brown in Monument Valley, one of the most tranquil places on the planet. You might be saying to yourself this is an oxymoron but actually, he’s a natural here. Russell was supposed to be apart of our April adventure here but he went on a trip to Mexico and actually ate something that made him miss our trip.
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So we’re here to make it up to him. And I’ve always wanted to be here in August when it’s supposed to be incredibly hot with killer thunderstorms. It’s not real hot but the weather is shaping up for the storms. Jake & I got our gear back from Nikon after their annual check ups (planned it so it would happen after their workout in Alaska) so we were ready to get them all dirty again. This is such a gorgeous place, we see our good friends today and we’re with great friends. Life doesn’t get any better!
D3x, 70-200VR2 on Lexar UDMA digital film
Aug 19, 2010 | Landscape Photography
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Yeap. we did the planning, over a year in advance. We were with THE experts, the best in the field and we made the trek and none of that, not one single iota of it guarantees that once you get on site, you will get to make a single click. That’s how it goes in wildlife photography and despite shelling out $4k to make the adventure happen, after day two, we’d not even seen our quarry let alone got any glass on it. And I’m just fine with that!
Na, sitting on the slope with rain dripping off my gear and myself is not how I wanted to spend my day but to be honest with you, that’s better than being stuck inside four walls personally. There are always moments, perhaps just seconds when the clouds lift and light comes through on the horizon that reminds you that you are just spec on this planet and your time here if you’re really, really, really lucky will count for something. And the rest of the time, just sit back, take a deep breath and be grateful you at least have a shot at the brass ring.
Photo captured by D3x, 70-200VR2 on a very wet slope in AK
Aug 19, 2010 | Landscape Photography
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With the boat in the water, we headed back to camp to grab our gear to head out. You look up on the slope on Slope Mtn (name isn’t on a map) to that sunny patch, those bare rock outcroppings is where we were to spend the day. The 700′ vertical climb in less than 3/4 of a mile was simply brutal for me. If that wasn’t bad enough with the 600mm/D3x on my shoulder going up that loose shale, the rain made it official. It was a bitch of a climb for this old man!
This would be the last time we would see the face of Slope Mtn for two days! The biologists flew up the mtn just as nimbly as our quarry with Jake right behind them. Then for the next five hours, Jake & I sat in the damp fog and rain, out in the open on that slope looking at rocks. Our quarry requires sun and we surely had none. So wet and sore, we worked our way back down the slope wondering if we had traveled ten hours up the Haul Road for nothing.
Photo captured by D3x, 24-70AFS on Lexar UDMA digital film
Aug 18, 2010 | Landscape Photography
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Well, it does make coming down a whole lot faster and definitely a whole lot more fun, but that’s not why. The Arctic is covered by ribbons of creeks and rivers flowing fast and deep in many places. There’s one at the base of the mtn we’re going to climb so to get to that mtn, we need a boat to cross the creek. Actually, there were three boats in the back of that truck and a whole lot more. But this is just another good example of why I always work with biologists. What seems like a minor detail is in reality a biggie because without that boat, we weren’t getting to the mtn and our project. The details of planning from tent to pad to gear to just getting from point A to B are all so important to the success of a single click!
Photo captured by D3x, 18AF on Lexar UDMA digital film
Aug 18, 2010 | Landscape Photography
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This is the scene the next morning when we awoke. Typical Alaska fall skies, even though it’s August, they are gray if not falling on you. Knowing this, the one smart thing I did was take our bigger 4 men Kelty backpacking tent. The other tent is Jake’s two men. I took the larger tent because knowing it would be wet, I wanted space to hang and get clothes dry. Also need to have all gear in the tent and I wanted space to work. You can see the large Pelican we shipped up to AK, it contained the 200-400s, tents and other misc gear. Once thing new this trip were the new Therm-a-rest NeoAir pads. My old Therm-a-rest which is 28yrs old and still works great has one issue, a big issue when you camp by plane. And that is it takes up a whole lot of space! Well the new NeoAir rolls up smaller than a water bottle and inflates to nearly four inches tall! Jake & I didn’t think that once we used it, we could roll it up to the same small size but low and behold, we could and it did. Great find, thanks Kevin!
The other thing you might notice is the orange cord going around the tents. That’s an electric bear fence the biologists wanted to test since it was brand new. Working as we were and as the biologists do all over Alaska, these things have become quite popular and many swear by them. Even though there were no bears anywhere near us, it went up anyways. Was it tested you ask? Only by us silly humans who wanted to see if two D batteries actually but out any zap. It was like Homer, we couldn’t stop touching it and going ow, ow, ow, ow.
And that mountain behind you, that’s what we would be climbing shortly.
Photo captured by D3x, 18AF on Lexar UDMA digital film
