If there is a lesson in life, it is that you should always be prepared. For example, you should always take an extra oar or paddle with you if you’re going out on a boat. Otherwise, you may end up stranded on the far side of lake.
For example, you might be in a boat with an electric motor. In Alaska. And on a cold, rainy day. And end up having to swim the entire lenght to get back. Click to continue »
Evening HDR
Just a test shot that I thought I’d post. I may be putting up a couple more over this evening. Testing CS5′s “Merge to HDR Pro” function, comparing it to Photomatix Pro. This one is an excercise in rescuing a screwed up frame: I had the color balance set to tungsten when I took this, so everything was hyper-blue. Arguably still is, but that’s the HDR saturation effect. Click to continue »
Some people have noticed that we recently had a dump of snow in mid-April, and it appears that they think that this is late in the year for such antics. It isn’t late: it’s not all that unusual, in fact. The subject did cause me to think back, wondering what it was like last year at this time.
In retrospect, I suppose it’s not that different from now. We still have snow on the same trails, but only slightly more. The streets are about as bare as last year, perhaps slightly less. Click to continue »
well, kinda. Normally, “urban campers” are the homeless. In this case though, I’m referring to a friend of mine in anchor-town (ed. fine, I’ll explain: local slang for “Anchorage”). He went camping this weekend in an area that is definately wild, but could still be considered part of town.
Check out his post, and especially his photographs. When’s the last time you’ve seen a moose carcass like that? Awesome!
While you’re at it, check out his site. He’s a local realtor and I’m sure he’d love some feedback. And if you’re in the market for a home in Anchorage, I’m sure he’d love the business!
To get a wide depth of field in a shot like the one below, I aim for a nearby object (not too close), and focus there. Then I minimize the f/stop. In this case, I was not using a tripod, so I had to be careful if I wanted to keep things sharp. In the end, I had to go much larger in f/stop than I would normally like, and also had to bump up my ISO.
A pond in Hoonah
Specs:
It is said in Alaska that when the blooms on the fireweed reach their top, then the summer is over. After 20 years, I will attest that this is pretty much true. As such, it is nice to know that summer is only half over. However, it only began a month ago. So soon it ends…
Fireweed on the first week of July
I would note: in a mere week and a half, these blooms have already risen noticeably…
You remember the update the other day about shipping to Alaska? Well, it arrived over the weekend. I’m curious now as to what the true cost is to them, but I give an enthusiastic thumbs up to Norman Camera and Video.
If you’re in Alaska & need to buy something, I highly recommend buying from them. Granted, a single observation, but they’re now on the short list of “companies I order from.”
Clouds in the evening - 10pm
Look at the angle of the light on the clouds to the right. It’s at quite an angle, and yet it’s not yellowing. You know, the yellowing that you see as it gets closer to the golden hour? Not yet – it’s too early. This is 10pm last night. It’s probably two or three hours away from a colorful sunset.
There were great textures though, and the sky was unusually clear. These clouds are probably over the inlet or, at the closest, over the open fields at Elmendorf Air Force base.
Classic for my situation, I noticed them almost too late – I had to pull out my good 80-200 f/2.8 lens & handhold at f/8 (1/250th sec.) to get this. This is fully zoomed out (200mm), so there’s an effective zoom of 300mm.
A view from the Johnson Lake trailhead
I wrote yesterday’s post knowing that there would be a great opportunity for me to find motivation. Yesterday we took a nice, long trip down to Seward – that’s 120 miles (more or less) each way. Ostensibly, our goal was to visit the Seward Sea Life Center, which was great in its own right.
One thing I was hoping for, however, was to get that strike of inspiration back. It kinda struck a few times – the pic to the right is a good example. The clouds and sun creating something of a chiarascuro effect. Look at it closer up (click on it) – it’s a fairly neat photo. All the more impressive if you consider that it’s a 9-frame HDR. The technique was similar to the one outlined here, except that it was completely hand-held.
After getting home and starting processing, I now realize that I let my sensor get beyond dirty. It’ll take hours to recover most of the pics – this one is a lucky pic – the dirt is mostly obscured by the tones in the photo.
As you can guess, I’ll be writing about sensor cleaning soon enough.
Alternate title: embarrassing myself in front of the pros.
I read an opinion online (probably on Fark) that Texans are a unique breed. They’re overly proud of themselves – not for what they’ve done or what they can to, but because of where they live. As if they have an overly-inflated sense of value ’cause their state is big. And the only people worse than Texans, according to this opinion, are Alaskans: convinced that they’re something special because they can somehow survive in a giant, frozen state.
There’s some truth to this. For the better part of the last two decades, I could easily leave state (well, to anywhere other than Hawaii) and say “I’m from Alaska.” The response: instant fawning. Usually you become the life of the party, making up crap about how hard the winters are (they’re not usually hard in Anchorage, just long – it’s usually far worse in the midwest).
Don’t do this with a well-travelled person. Like I did, with Moose Petersen. Yes, I made an ass of myself to the moose, but I learned something in the process. Imagine this conversation:
Me: so, I’m from Alaska.
Moose: yeah, so?
Me: um, so we have a bunch of unique lighting up here and I was wondering…
Moose: No you don’t.
Me: Um, nevermind, I’ll go away now.
Moose: You had a question. Ask it.
Me: um, I was wondering… how to properly shoot… snow?
Moose: who cares? Snow is snow, it’s white. If you blow it out, who gives a rip? Everyone knows what it is?
Me: I’m going to slink away now…
Well, that’s pretty much what happened. Wording has been changed (feeble memory and all that), but there are some important lessons in there. I walked away with these thoughts:
Since this conversation, I’ve read at least two articles since our exchange where the mighty Moose has talked about properly exposing for snow.