…that just sucks you in. Its quiet, its serenity, its taking you as you are, it’s just a place where one can get lost for all the right reasons in all the right ways. The Chilkat Valley is such a wilderness where the sounds of the ice drifting down the river and the calling Bald Eagles are all the sounds floating on the frost laden air. It’s just another thing I’m so thankful for, that something about … wilderness.
I just wanted to take a moment to say thanks … thanks for the gorgeous Chilkat River Valley that in the 70’s wise folks were smart enough to preserve for the eagles. Thankful for the GREAT guys who asked us to come up to witness this amazing part of our wild heritage. And thankful the majesty of the Bald Eagle still flies in our skies and we can watch them endlessly going through their antics. It was an amazing week with much more to come once back to a reliable connection. Homeward bound after this past week, it sticks in your soul, the magic of eagles.
The Eagles of Haines or Chilkat River are legendary! I’ve known about them long before I was even a photographer. It was once the place only the brave traveled, it remoteness and severity in weather made it a locale few ventured to. That changed and now it is a destination for many wildlife photographers from around the world. A loyal group of K&M folk asked Kevin & I 18 months ago to bring them up here. We’d never been here but were more than up for the adventure, so here we are! But the eagles, well …
You need two important elements to get the legendary show the area is known for, ice and salmon. We have neither right now and that makes the photography a challenge. Furthering the challenge for me personally is, I have photographed Bald Eagles, a lot, and have my own favorites that will be hard to improve on. With the challenges of getting here, we got a late start today, what good light had slipped by before we were in the field. None the less we found eagles. Now, these photos to me are really, well, barely keepers. One thing I mentioned to the group is the Bald Eagle is a commonly photographed bird. Hard to understand when they are a challenge for most but so many venture to locations like Chilkoot that there are lots of great images out there. So getting the uncommon shots of the common will be the goal. These photos though shot with the D4s / 800mm are common shots at the very best. We will do better but I won’t be satisfied with these kinds of images. Only time will tell how well we’ll do as I’m back with the eagles.
Well, three days later as we made it to Haines, AK. Started off at 01:00 leaving our home and flying without any real effort made it up to Seattle to meet up with my bud Kevin. After spending the night there, up at 04:30 and got on our plane to Juneau and again, ezzy peezy. By 08:30 we were in Juneau and in place for our 13:30 flight to Haines. It wasn’t to be!
Weather set in and one by one, all the flights to Haines were canceled. Well, got on the phone and secured passage on the Ferry to Haines which left the dock at 01:45 the next day. Now, to kill 15hrs at the airport. Well, after getting images finished from two weeks ago, rented a van, went down town for dinner (the sun sets at 15:30) and then back to the terminal (electricity and comfy seats) to wait for the ferry. Got on the ferry by 01:30 and by 06:30 we were in Haines. The sun doesn’t come up until 08:00. We were greeted by the view you see above. Gorgeous start!
I grabbed the D750 / 18-35 and made these quick clicks and then got settled in, got breakfast and headed out by 11:00 to the Bald Eagles. It’s just gorgeous up here! The temps and dew point are creating amazing fog whisking around the hills and pines. It’s really hard not to just watch as the fog changed every five seconds into another gorgeous view. Since the big guns was out for the eagles (D4s / 800mm) I did some optical extraction and made a couple of clicks I really like. It was a great start to what promises to be a great week!
The effects of going to Africa are still very much resonating in my heart even a month later. All the images are filed, backed up and finished and I find myself constantly going back and looking at them to see if, the trip really did happen and if I really did take the photos. This is a pair of White-fronted Bee-eaters. Greg did a marvelous driving the landie right up to them and with a couple of tweaks, I had the perfect background. Not only were the birds really cool, but the light and more importantly, its direction perfect to light up them colors. Just look at them backs light up! Gorgeous, simply gorgeous! And the fact they were in love didn’t hurt a thing, they were quite animated.
Shooting with the D4s / 800mm (with the converter) I still used HSC to make the shot. The HSC helped also with the FPS, increasing it so I could capture the small, quick gestures of love the two displayed. If they were on any other perch, bigger in diameter or deeper in the tree, the photo wouldn’t have worked and there were times, they used other perches while foraging. It was this moment that lasted perhaps, 2-3 minutes though which stand out in my memory. I’m just so thankful that the moments aren’t committed to just memory. So glad the camera captured the moment to.
It’s been a few weeks since getting back from Africa and I’m still getting through all my images from the Safari. At this point, I’ve forgotten which drive I ended up with a horrible dust spot on my sensor (Sensor Gel was a life saver!), so I’m checking all my images. Even though I was shooting D4s / 800mm wide open, this one dust spot is HUGE! Well, got to the lion shots and I started seeing all these additional, new spots and I started to mumble to myself. I hate dealing with dust in post … boring! I’m in ACR doing this, kinda machine like looking at the black and white outlines on the prowl for dust. I then turned off the preview to realize that the dust spots I was so diligently removing weren’t dust spots at all, but flies! So, I had to go back and undue all the “dust” spots I removed so the flies can live. Argh!