Close, But No Cigar!

Aug 18, 2010 | Landscape Photography

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I’ve received a whole bunch of correspondence asking where on the North Slope did I do to photograph Grizzly Bears. While they are there as you can see here, they are not really common or plentiful. Furthermore, they are interior bears and other than perhaps one or two prime Blueberry patches (and man where they good, did some grazing ourselves), interior bears don’t gather like the coastal griz do at salmon strong holds. Nope, I wasn’t up on the North Slope and in the Arctic for photograph Grizzly or Polar Bears. What we were working on? Ah, not yet, still gotta work up to it.

As far as this little family group, they were on the south side of Atigun Pass eating berries when we came up on them. Eagle eye Jake saw them on his side of the truck (everything was on his side) and brought everything to a halt. This photo was made through the truck cab, around the other two guys in the back seat to the bears. You could tell we were all a little jaded because after asking out loud a couple of biological questions and making some other comments, we drove off to let the bears munch away. Don’t get me wrong, darn cool to see but it wasn’t what we were after and still has a ways to drive. It does show though that even on such a long drive as the Haul Road, traveling with a camera and lens in your lap and ready to go is a must to make the most of every opportunity!

Photo captured by D3x, 70-200VR2 on Lexar UDMA digital film.

The End of Our Road

Aug 17, 2010 | Landscape Photography

Seriously, when we pulled off the Haul Road and headed to the base of Slope Mtn which would be our home for the week, this is what greeted us as we stepped out of the truck. Now you could take this in one of three ways.

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The romantic way is that the rainbow is a sign of great things to come. Reality is that it’s fall on the North Slope and it always rains. Or that even if it does rain, there is something the end of the storm worth weathering the storm for. You’ll just have to hang around to see what this omen comes to mean for us.

Photo captured D3x, 70-200VR2 on Lexar UDMA digital film

To Put the Landscape in Perspective

Aug 17, 2010 | Landscape Photography

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If you’ve never been there and let’s face it, most of the sane planet hasn’t been, then you wouldn’t know just what a vast expanse it is above the Arctic Circle. Bringing back the immensity of the North Slope in a thumbnail on a blog is a challenge. Here’s my first attempt. To the right you see a little line heading off over the horizon. That’s the Alaska Pipeline, a pipe ten foot in diameter that is fifteen feet off the ground. If you get out your binoculars out and look on the horizon on the left, there’s a big rig moving up the highway. And lost behind those wicked clouds is the Brooks range. And this is just a ten mile vista of the landscape. Yeah, it’s just that huge!

Photo captured by D3x, 70-200VR2 on Lexar UDMA digital film

The Haul Road

Aug 17, 2010 | Landscape Photography

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As Jake posted, we ventured north of the Arctic Circle this trip. The was Jake’s first but not last time to the far north. The Haul Road also known as the Dalton Highway is known by many now because of the History Channel’s series Ice Road Truckers. Our trip coincided with the start of fall on the North Slope and while there is no ice on the road, the truckers are still present. And just like our own home town where road work is crammed into the short summer season, the same is done on the Haul Road. So if our truck up the road wasn’t going to be long enough, we were stuck in a couple of construction zone stops. This is at the base of the infamous Atigun Pass north bound. You can see the road take off up the hill behind the trucks. Notice how steep that road is? The engineering of the Haul Road is amazing and that in itself can keep the mind busy while you truck up the road. Let the mind get beyond the road and the landscape easily lets you come up with another meaning for the Haul Road.

Photo captured by D3x, 70-200VR2 on Lexar UDMA digital film

PS…take a note of the road bed. Just as Jake mentioned, it’s a blatter breaker!

Back to the Land of Wireless

Aug 16, 2010 | Landscape Photography

OK, enough of the aviation and back to what I do, wildlife. Then why the landscape photo? We’re just back (Jake & I) from the Arctic where we were continuing work on a project. Not that I’m going to put it all forth here on the blog, I do want to share some of it through this mass media. While many are still enjoying summer, in the Arctic fall is more than coming with cool temps, fall color and storms lining up for winter.

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The beauty of this stark landscape is just stunning. The God beams as they play on the landscape in themselves a subject of a lifetime Arctic travel. Any project in the Arctic first requires a love for this landscape, it’s cultures, its rules and its wildlife. It is definitely not the place for weekend warriors. This is one big ass place that I hope to bring to ya this week.

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Photos captured by D3x, 70-200VR2 on Lexar UDMA digital film

A Progression of Thought – the end

Jul 21, 2010 | Landscape Photography

I needed to bring out the drama in that “color” in the B&W. By doing the 1 image HDR, processing that Tif through ACR, in a matter of seconds you can now see simply in the B&W the color drama but in the gray scale. If you go to the bottom of the page and then move back up through the images, I’m hoping that you can see visually what I take for granted as a simple progression of thought.