Black and white photo of a male Harlequin Duck, on a rock in Brooks River, Katmai National Park, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

OK, so sometimes I try something different. It’s not all just alpenglow and mountains and bears.

Usually, though.

Cheers

Carl

Snow covered boulders glisten in late evening sun. Winter light on fresh snow, along the frozen Kennicott River, or Kennecott River, Wrangell - St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

To honor the shortest day of the year (or longest for those southern hemispherian folks who might be reading, here’s a big fat Happy Solstice to you all. I posted a small, color version of this file a few years ago, but lately I’ve taken a liking to this black and white rendering, so I thought I’d post a nice big full page version for you.

Have a great day folks,

Cheers

Carl

Boreal forest and reflections in a small kettle pond, Copper River Basin, Wrangell - St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

It’s often said that art can teach us how to live. This is true, yet it’s also commonly misinterpreted. The product of art, what we call the photograph, or the lyric, or the dance, doesn’t teach us how to live. The product of art, these artifacts, can show us how someone ELSE lived.

On the other hand, the making of art (which is REALLY where art is), can teach us how to live.

This process, the making of art, illustrates how we might live; how we might be fully present, engaged, conscious. More fully alive.

The act of creating is a portal by which we might be connected with creation itself. That’s how we should live.

For most of us regular, “non-Dalai Lama” folks, the process of making art is one of the very few things we do where we might experience that realm of consciousness and presence. Making love might be another. I think sport, what athletes call being “in the zone” references that same state of being. A connection with the moment so powerful we’re aware of nothing else but that moment. Aware of nothing else, because there is nothing else, nothing but the present.

This is how to live. Conscious, alert and engaged. Fully present. The gift art holds is not for audience, but for ourselves, those who practice it. Most of us rarely acknowledge that.

In looking through the viewfinder, we look at ourselves; at our world, our lives, our experience. The moment of us. Every picture we take is a self portrait. The process of making those photographs, of composing and playing that music, is the process of living, of being alive. It’s the process of being ourselves. The process of creating, of creation; that’s the process of the universe itself.

Art doesn’t simply teach us how to live, and illustrate our experiences and moments in time. Art is life. It’s who we are. Art is Creation.

Cheers

Carl

Wrangell mountains, fall colors, sedimentation rock layers ad striations, aerial photo, Wrangell - St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

An abstract aerial shot of the Wrangell Mountains, with a little fall color thrown in. Wrangell – St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

I’d actually asked the pilot to fly us up in this area in the hope to find a particular glacial scene I wanted to reshoot, but the great patterns and colors along the ridges above the glacier were more interesting; in part because we didn’t find what I was looking for anyway.

Aerial photography is an exciting challenge; trying to see compositions that work in camera from such an unusual perspective is harder than one might imagine. The sensory overload of flying through such magnificent scenery, and the sheer novelty of perspective makes it easy to simply shoot everything, and come back with a bunch of images that don’t really work.

For myself, I find shooting tighter and really concentrating on shapes works best. I’m curious to hear what readers think and feel about this image; I’d love to hear your comments.

Thanks so much

Cheers

Carl

Fall colors in Wrangell - St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Aerial photo. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

Here’s a quick shot from a flight we took over the park last week; the weather wasn’t so awesome, but the flight sure was. I’d shot this valley before, and knew it would have some nice color.

Now, back to packing gear for the grizzly bear photo tour.

Cheers

Carl

Glacial Stream and ogives, Root Glacier, Wrangell - St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

From my most recent trip to Wrangell – St. Elias National Park and beyond. This is an aerial photo from above the Root Glacier, near Kennecott and McCarthy, Wrangell – St. Elias National Park and Preserve. The small stream is made up largely of runoff water from Stairway Icefall, a massive 7000′ vertical wall of ice that effectively form the “headwaters” of the Root Glacier.

This is an image I’ve wanted to capture for sometime now; I’ve seen various similar images of this same stream from a few photographers, including my friend Ron Niebrugge, and often thought it would be a cool subject to shoot. Indeed it is. 

The banding and ridge formations in the ice are a feature called “ogives”, created by icefalls, such as Stairway Icefall. The ice “bends” because the speed at which a glacier might advance is higher near the middle of the glacier rather than the outlying edges.

Shooting these kinds of images requires a fast shutter speed, and little depth of field; the lens will generally be focused at infinity, so a wide open aperture (or close to it) is best; shutter speed is the priority. Newer digital cameras also allow higher quality images at higher ISO’s than earlier models, and my new D700 was a great plus for this flight. I shot this at ISO 1000, and there is no discernible digital noise at all. That’s a nice feature to have.

I’ll write another post later with more info on shooting aerial photography; it’s a blast.

Cheers

Carl

Ice and dirt patterns, Nizina Glacier, Wrangell - St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

A view from above; looking down on to the Nizina Glacier, Wrangell – St. Elias National Park and Preserve.

Bob and I hiked around on the Nizina Glacier all afternoon, exploring the expansive icy landscape. Good times indeed, and a myriad different (temporary) photo opportunities. I say “temporary” because many of them were gone the following week when acres of the glacier calved from the main glacier into the lake, fractured, up-ended and disappeared down river. I flew over the Glacier maybe a week after our hike and much of the area we had traversed was gone. Cool stuff.

Glaciers are incredibly dynamic landscapes, and always a blast to explore, travel and photograph. As such they can be a dangerous place to navigate, but so can the streets of Anchorage (especially if you’re on a bicycle); caution is required, certainly, but glaciers are a fascinating subject.

Cheers

Carl

Wintertime on the Kuskulana Glacier. Abstract photo of ice patterns and colors on the glacier, Wrangell Mountains, Wrangell - St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image to view a larger version of the photo.

Hey Folks,

It’s interesting to think about how technology and cultural constructs shape what we think and feel. Today we live in a somewhat bizarre world, where digital mediums both record and present way too much of our lives; we can watch Australia’s then Prime Ministerial candidate Kevin Rudd (he went on to win the election) pick something from his ear and eat it during gov’t Question Time, we watch a person rush over and catch a baby falling off an escalator, etc, etc. So much of our lives is recorded and witnessed again, from the mundane to the exciting, the thrilling to the disheartening, our greatest moments and our worst. Whether recorded intentionally or unintentionally, today we see it almost all on the big screen.

In some ways, the power of visual imagery has only increased, it appears, with the inundation of imagery that digital technology has yielded. Some folks might suggest that this flood of images waters down its potency, but it appears to only strengthen with increased volume. The more imagery we’re subjected to, the stronger, apparently, their hold on us.

We see virtually everything, and I wonder if that doesn’t blind us in some ways. Must we see it to believe it? Do our real world lives hinge so completely on recordings for us to understand beauty and grandeur, love or tragedy, death or finality? How about to gain closure?

Has the evolution of an omnipresent recorded-visual imagery so reduced our ability to accept that we can’t trust that which we don’t see? I can’t help but think of how many amazing moments, from the monumental to the incidental, were never recorded on film, were never photographed, yet their stories told and retold over the years, nurtured for decades, for centuries. What’s lost to live in a world where if we must see it to believe it?

Has “Reality TV” so molded our perspective that this is the only window through which we as a culture can  move forward? Is that what we’ve become, that we’ve reduced even the most tragic and compelling moments of our lives to recorded imagery, to photos, to videos, to scripts? Are we THAT addicted to visual imagery that we need it for resolution?

Life isn’t a reality show and nor was what happened Sunday, May 01, 2011. We’re not spectators on the sidelines of the universe; we’re participants of the world. Photos are wonderful things, and they can be an incredibly powerful too for the human mind, but the universe, and that includes our selves, rarely needs a memory card and a LCD monitor to move forward.

Thinking further, I’m not sure this speaks to the power of an image, or power of imagery, as much as a debilitation of our other faculties. We all know that a completely passable ‘image’ can be constructed by even a relatively poorly skilled graphic artist, yet we’re somehow beholden to this idea of an image as documentation. We feel a need to “see it to believe it”, but we also know that seeing it doesn’t make it any more real. Few among us have the discerning eye to spot a good photoshop fake from an authentic photo, and yet we clamor for this pseudo ‘proof’; proof which will still, ultimately, rely on the word of some specialist we in turn seek for advice.

“Is it real?”, would be the immediate response. We all KNOW this, yet still we have some weird kind of autonomic response, demanding visual measurement. I suspect what we’re experiencing is more likely an addiction to entertainment than a real strengthening of the power of an image. The phrase “the power of an image” has, in this sense, more to do with our own yearning to see than any heightened powers of persuasion a specific image might have.

A picture might paint a thousand words, but if those words are merely ‘well, is this real?’ then I’m not so sure that’s a very powerful statement at all, is it?

What a weird world.

Cheers

Carl

An adult Bald Eagle silhouetted headshot, on perch, Homer, Alaska. (Haliaeetus leucocephalus). This photo was taken with photo equipment, by a photographer. The 2 worked together. The eagle co-operated only briefly. Pesky eagles. Click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

I read it again last night. This nonsense has to stop. Why do photographers so often have such a hard time simply acknowledging that what we do is inherently technological? As such, technological advances (i.e., new gear) can (and typically do) play an enormous role in the work we produce. Perhaps much more so than most other art forms.

You’ve all seen the kind of commentary I’m talking about; another piece about how painters don’t talk endlessly about their paintbrushes. Or, even more inanely, how if Art Wolfe were to shoot with a P&S camera, he’d still produce a remarkable portfolio. It’s the photographer, not the camera, that produces great work, blah, blah, blay.

Right?

Wrong.

While it’s true that no camera ever went out and took a photograph by itself, it’s also true that no photographer ever went out and took a photograph without a camera, either. Clearly, then, things are not quite as simple as some folks would have us believe.

Photography requires both photographer AND photography equipment. The relative weight of the role of each varies, for sure, but to deny the significance of the equipment in photography, and particularly wildlife photography, is to deny reality.

Even a cursory examination of photography illustrates how valuable the technology is to what we do. Recent advances such as Image Stabilization/Vibration Reduction, Auto-focus and focus tracking, High ISO, etc, etc play a critical role in much of what many of us shoot. It’s always amusing to me to hear Joe Schmoe talk about how secondary the gear is to taking photo, standing there with $20 thousand dollars worth of camera hanging off his shoulders. I’d invite Mr Schmoe the present his portfolio of images taken without any gear sometime.

But let’s look at some of the common arguments heard, such as those presented above.

a) Painters and their brushes. Wrong. Talk to painters sometime. Here’s just one example:

“Make sure you have the best possible brushes you can afford. While it is possible to save money on paint and canvas, one should never work with cheap brushes. In my experience, cheaper brushes are simply not worth it.”

Serious painters often spend years studying not just composition and form, but even paint makeup, etc, of the old masters.

And even though we can see the argument is simply incorrect, what if it weren’t? So what? We’re not painters, we’re photographers. Writers don’t look to dancers for direction, why should photographers mimic painters?

b) Art Wolfe and his P&S camera. Art’s one of my favorite photographers. Amazingly talented and hard-working man. And he knows his gear, wonderfully well. And, he doesn’t use a P&S, but typically is carrying some of the most advanced, technologically involved camera gear available. Here’s just one example from his blog. This post, from 2 years ago, lists his basic kit. The fact that he lists his sponsors liberally across his website supports the idea that his gear is, at least to Art, critical.

Secondly, and more importantly, what highlights how silly this argument is, is that it ignores the most fundamental point about all ‘gear’; one has to know how to use gear, regardless what kinda gear we’re talking about. Hand Mr Wolfe a P&S that he doesn’t know how to use, and I’ll wager he doesn’t produce much worth a damn with it. Hand him one with the camera manual, and he’ll do much better.

3rd point; offering Art Wolfe as an example to make a point is like suggesting we might all become wealthy by running fast, and then pointing to Usain Bolt to support your case. Statistically speaking, those people don’t even exist.

4th point; hand Art Wolfe that same P&S and his current DSLR system for a week, and I’ve little doubt with which system he’ll produce a stronger portfolio.

c) It’s the photographer. Sure, it is indeed. A great photographer produces great photographs. But I don’t know very many at all who don’t use good, or really good, gear. And I know quite a few photographers. And I’ll suggest that regardless of what they might tell their workshop clients, or write in their articles, they use good gear, if not the best they can scratch out, because they know they’ll produce much better results with it.

Gear matters. And I spent a helluva lotta money on it last year, so I damned well better be right.

Cheers

Carl (wishing he had a D3s)

An ice cave on the Kuskulana Glacier, in the Wrangell Mountains. Winter snow and freezing temperatures ice up the water of the Kuskulana River, and the this wall of ice is a myriad of patterns, colors, and textures. Kuskulana Glacier, Wrangell - St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Thank you, Dr. King.

Cheers

Carl