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.

What’s worse, is you might end up getting left behind while your wife pulls it back to shore for you.

So really, always be prepared.

(some blurring to protect the innocent)

Swimming back to shore

On a photographic note: I was prepared.  I had one of my small (Canon G11) cameras with me.

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.

OK, so here’s the thing: since I could fix this in Bridge, then tell PS to merge it, this came out fairly well. Because of the screw-up, when I tried this in Photomatix, it came out… poorly. I originally trashed it, but PS made a completely useable image.

PS was significantly slower, though.

The HDR effect: it’s really only evident in the lack of noise in the shadows. The light wasn’t that far ranging as to justify needing the HDR effect itself.

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.Check out these two pics as comparisons:

Late April 2010, Ski Trail

Jogging the trails in Anchorage, April 2009

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!

A pond in Hoonah

Specs:

• f/8
• ISO 640
• 1/400th sec.

Fireweed on the first week of July

I would note: in a mere week and a half, these blooms have already risen noticeably…

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.

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:

• Seriously, who cares about properly exposing snow?  I mean, unless it’s the primary subject.  Even then, who cares? Duh.
• Who cares that I’m from Alaska?  Moose doesn’t.  Shoot, his photographer base camp was in Anchorage last year and it easily looked like one of the tamer places he’s been.
• Don’t try to out-cool Moose.  He camps with bears.  I avoid biking trails where bears occasionally wander.

Since this conversation, I’ve read at least two articles since our exchange where the mighty Moose has talked about properly exposing for snow.