The day ends late during an Alaskan summer, there are only a few hours of darkness each night. Sunset and sunrise last a long time, hours of low light in which the world becomes rich with color. Keep a camera handy at all times, you never know what you will see, what spectacular vista will greet the eye, or when an opportunity for a photo will present.
Category: Travel
Postcard from Alaska – Sea Lice
There are reasons why I avoid sushi. I have cut apart too many deep sea fish, I have seen what is to be found on and in those fish. I really want those things to be well and truly dead before I consume them. Cook it!
Postcard from Alaska – At the Helm
The boat is going from sunrise to sunset every day. In Alaska during midsummer this makes for very long days indeed. Everyone gets a chance to man the helm, taking their turn at the wheel. Boat policy is two people on the bridge at all times, one at the wheel and the other just to keep watch, a second set of eyes for safety. No problem getting volunteers, the best view is from the bridge.
Postcard from Alaska – Iceberg
Ice dots the water across the entry, large bergs lie beached near the shore stranded between tides. We pick are way carefully though the crowd, many of the chunks larger that our vessel. The bar across the entry to Tracy Arm is betrayed by a long line of icebergs grounded to reveal the shallow water beneath. Here the history of a thousand winters lies shattered about the landscape like broken glass.
Postcard from Alaska – Snyder Mercantile
A store from another time… A clapboard sided box just above the harbor. A small room with shelves crammed with everything you could need… Baking soda, potato chips, paper towels, beer and engine oil just over from fishing tackle and charcoal. The cash register is a 1920’s model ordered new from a catalog and shipped across a continent. The front window displays the work of local artists and a rack of postcards for the visitors that wander through in the summer. A hand written sign in the window warns of a bear seen in town a few nights previous. …A store from another time.
Postcard from Alaska – USCG Anthony Petit
The U.S. Coast Guard is tasked with maintaining the many critical navigational aids throughout the waterways of Alaska. Tracy Arm is entered across a narrow gap in a large bar, probably on old glacial moraine across the mouth of the fjord. The channel is marked by two buoys, one had been missing for a few days, ripped from its mooring by the impressive tides that surge across the bar. The buoy was back in place when we arrived, replaced by the crew of the USCG Anthony Petit, a Coast Guard buoy tender.
Crab Overload
Just a few crabs in the trap this morning! Tonight’s dinner will be crab cakes with a crab louie salad. We didn’t scrimp on the amount either, the cakes have twice as much crab as the recipe calls for. No problem… there is no better crab in the world than dungeness!
Postcard from Alaska – Baranof Hot Springs
Postcard from Alaska – Black Bear
A young black bear, well known to the staff of the Mendenhall Glacier visitor center, is attempting to catch salmon in Steep Creek, just below the visitor center parking lot. He was not too good at it, lots of splashing and no fish to show for the effort. The fish were there, bright red sockeye salmon busy spawning in the stream bed. This was this bear’s first year on his own, still learning the skills of survival.
Yes, I was really this close to the bear, this was a shot with a standard lens, no telephoto. Fortunately there was a small bridge over the creek to provide a slightly safer vantage point. The bear showed no interest in the gathering crowd of sightseers on the bridge, concentrating on the salmon.
Alaska 2009 – The Video
Three weeks of photographic effort, literally thousands of photographs to select from. It is difficult to put the experience into words, hopefully around one hundred of the best photos and a few minutes of video set to music will convey the trip better than pages of text can manage.
About two thirds of the photographs are mine, the others from one of the seven other cameras that were present on the trip in the hands of other family members and friends. Editing the video was not a short or easy process, but the result is fairly good. Hit the full screen icon to see it in full resolution, this is the first properly HD video I have put together. The Vimeo version does exhibit some encoding artifacts, the original 720p HD versions are simply beautiful.
Three weeks of traveling some of the most beautiful landscapes on the planet is something best experienced by being there. Short of that, this is the best I can manage…
A Touch of the Wild – Alaska 2009 from Andrew Cooper on Vimeo.