Hey Folks,

I hope you enjoy this. Be sure to turn up your sound.

Sorry if you an’t view this on an iPad, but Flash was the only way to make this happen.

cheers

Carl

A large male adult brown bear, or grizzly bear (Ursus arctos), stands and stares at the camera. Male brown bears may reach weights of over 1200lbs and easily stand 9' tall. Brown bear, Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

One of my main goals last year, photographically, was to shoot more ‘bears in the landscape’ style shots; images such as this one were what I was really after. Of course, that doesn’t mean I would pass up an opportunity to fill the frame with a bear like this, either.

This kind of image is all about the bear; power, size and vitality. The bears in the landscape speak a little more about place. Fascinating subject, place.

I just got back from a trip to Denali National Park and Preserve, where I spent some time in a cabin in the woods, by a fire, trying to stay warm. The day we skied in to the park, the temperatures plummeted, from the 0 to – 5 degreeF range to minus 40 and minus 45. The experience of the Alaska backcountry at that kind of temperature is something else.

It was a  cool experience, hanging out with my friend, Erik DeLuca, music composer from Virginia, while he concentrated on doing some soundscape recordings and trying his best to experience a ‘sense of place’ in a landscape like this. We chatted a lot about what that means, what it does for us, and why it might be important. I commandeered Erik’s book, “Place: A Short Introduction“, (author: Tim Cresswell) and read over it during the long dark nights. It’s interesting stuff. 

Place isn’t about location; it’s about a culture. A life. Lives. A set of experiences. This image above is all about place. The place of the grizzly bear; the top of the food chain. Lord and sovereign of the wilderness. And this bear put me in my place.

It’s a humbling experience to see, so clearly, something so much greater than ourselves. I still haven’t sifted through half of my photos from this fall’s photo tour to Katmai National Park, the bears’ place, and I can’t wait to go back to the realm of the great bear.

Cheers

Carl

Hey Folks,

It’s that time of year once again. Thanks so much for stopping by to read the blog here and view the photos, I appreciate it.

Here are my pick of images (34) for 2011. I hope you enjoy them.

You’ll find a great list of photographers’ photos of the year on Jim Goldstein’s blog. Check it out.

Thanks

Cheers

Carl

Mt. St. Elias, and Icy Bay, Wrangell - St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

After the sunset, the sky catches the earth’s shadow and turns an amazingly radiant blue. Everything glows. And I stare, stare at Mt. St. Elias, the biting evening air somehow far away. The mountain owns me. The sky dims and darkens, and the freezing night air chills me to the core. A shore walk back to camp, with a smile; the mountain is with me still.

Cheers

Carl

Grizzly bear lying on the ground, rear view, (Ursus arctos), Katmai National Park and Preserve. Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

I generally avoid articles built from numbered lists. The Top 8 anything is generally little more than billboardian nonsense.

That said, I read with some interest 12 things you were not taught in school about creative thinking: I’ll ignore the perfect opportunity to comment about the very clear LACK of creative thinking in the article’s title. For now.

The article is by Michael Michalko, “one of the most highly acclaimed creativity experts in the world and author of the best sellers Thinkertoys (A Handbook of Business Creativity), ThinkPak  (A Brainstorming Card Deck), and Cracking Creativity (The Secrets Of Creative Genius)”  - hhhmmm …. I’m seeing a pattern here.

I think perhaps the biggest ‘myth’ we hold about creative thinking is something that comes from this article and others like it.

Creative thinking is NOT about Einstein or Beethoven or Mozart or Edison or Walt Disney. That kind of talk doesn’t promote creativity; rather, it stifles creative thinking. Because you’re NOT Einstein. You’re NOT Amadeus Mozart. Statistically, such people don’t exist. We can’t aspire to some to, or be expected to simulate, what doesn’t exist. You’re not, and won’t be, Picasso.

Who are you? You’re Sean Quigley. You’re Randall, of Honey Badger fame. Or this guy. Or Alan Becker. The point here is not that you and I aren’t famous. The point is that creative thinking is rarely the grandiose and celebrated. It’s the small, inconsequential and often fleeting ideas that drift by our space sometimes.

That’s what creative thinking is about; it’s through the practice of that, the repetition of paying attention to our muse, even to, no, especially to the tiniest of ideas that come our way, that those really great moments happen.

And they do happen. But are we paying attention?

Cheers

Carl

Borwn bear in the forest, fall colors, searching for salmon in a river. Brown bear (Ursus arctos) Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks

A few quick updates: though nothing is ‘final’ on the interwebs, it seems; the internet goes to infinity, I suppose.

The end of every summer/fall I’m busy with office work, paper work, reports, emails, photo editing, processing, prints, website updates, website tweaks, writing, photo submissions (Oh, how I detest that word “submissions”; yet it’s so wonderfully apt, isn’t it?) and heaven knows what else. It’s not so much fun, but (apparently) it has to be done.

Lately, here’s a few of the projects I’ve been dealing with and fires I’ve put out.  Many more to come.

• New album added,  Gates of the Arctic photos
• New images added to the Wrangell – St. Elias Coastal Range album
• New images added to the Aurora Borealis album
• New images added, and some updated design, on my Alaska Photos portfolio page
• Finally added selections to a Mt McKinley photos page
• A Google Plus page added for Alaskan Alpine Treks, my guiding and photo tour business (come on folks, go ahead and add that page to your best G+ circles; thank you)

Another change I’ve made with the site, but less visible to everyone here, is I changed my email server from my web host’s server to gmail. Highly recommended move, and not to difficult at all. Gmail has a way better spam filter, and much more adept tools with their auto responder, etc, than lunarpages email server does.

I can still set up my Mac Mail program to retrieve and send emails, so it’s all handled and managed locally for me, but it comes thru gmail, rather than my webhost. Anyone having issues with spam, for example, thru their website’s email, I’d definitely recommend making this move.

One more change; I’ve disparaged coppermine gallery in the past, because they can be pretty hard to deal with. That’s putting it mildly; pita is more appropriate. I know, I know, it’s free software. But there’s no excuse to be so disrespectful toward people when they ask a question. But, the last few dealings I’ve had on their forum asking for some help they’ve been much better, and I actually was able to implement at least some of the changes I wanted to get done. So kudos to the folks at coppermine for being a little more user-friendly.

I also just had an article published, an op-ed piece on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain. The piece is driven by the recent debacle in Congress when AK rep Don Young tells an invited guest (essentially) to shut up. It’s a little outta control. The article is on Alaska Dispatch.

I won’t mention the new Alaska Photo Tours page I put up, but I will mention a lengthy article I wrote recently on “How to Photograph the Aurora borealis“; a 3 part comprehensive guide to shooting the northern lights. I think it covers most of what you might want to know about photographing the aurora.

Speaking of which, I’m about to go give it a whirl; enough of this writing already.
Heading out the door, folks.

Cya

Cheers

Carl

A brown bear patrols the river's edge at dawn, searching for spawning Sockeye salmon. Brown bear (Ursus arctos), Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

For regular readers here, you might well know of the photo tours and guiding I do with Alaskan Alpine Treks. I’ve just now set up a page to compliment those photo tours here on Skolai Images, and you can be the first to visit by clicking here: Alaska Photo Tours.

I’m currently booking 3 photo tours: the ever popular grizzly bears in the fall tour (2×1 week tours), both of which are almost full for 2012. I’m also booking 2 Alaska aurora borealis photo tours for winter/spring in 2012; March and April. And the Skolai Pass Alaska landscapes backcountry tour is a great summertime trip; July and August seem to be the popular dates for that trip.

You can find all the info you might want, and links and pictures, over on the new Alaska Photo Tours page.

Give me a call or drop me an email if you’re interested. Thanks so much.

Cheers

Carl

View up Arrigetch Creek toward the Arrigetch Peaks, Xanadu, Ariel and Caliban, from left to right. A popular rock climbing and backpacking destination, the Arrigecth Peaks lie in the heart of Alaska's Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, right near the Continental Divide. Arrigetch Peaks, Gates of the Arctic National Park, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

You perhaps saw this recent story in the news about our ‘drowning in a sea of images’. It’s an interesting view, and, I believe, a very valid point. Any kind of inundation makes staying afloat a difficult task. And sometimes it’s impossible.

A photographer and artist I admire, Chase Jarvis, recently posted a response to this on his blog, about how we’re not drowning, but getting richer with this unabating torrent of images. That’s kind of a weird take on it. What kind of flood can we swim through?

Chase argues “shouldn’t it be said that we’re not drowning in photography at all, that we’re perhaps getting metaphorically rich off more and more of these veins of gold?”

“veins of gold”? Gold has value because it’s rare. And because it’s durable. If gold were produced quite as readily as iphone “pics” seem to be, and had a similar lifespan of any digital file, it wouldn’t cost eighteen hundred dollars an ounce right now. I’d suggest a better chemical analogy might be carbon dioxide. CO2 seems to be pretty prevalent right now, becoming ever more so, and, contrary to what the s(k)eptics tell ya, it’s not enriching our world.

I suspect the ever increasing barrage of images only serves to dilute how we respond to great work. When we DO see an image of value, we no longer know how to savor it. Or why. Images (and content in general) are thrown at us so constantly, we can’t begin to appreciate them. We don’t have time, and we don’t have the interest. We don’t have the capability. Humans are creatures of habit; we’re being conditioned, and ever more strongly today, to quickly move on to what’s next, to discard and proceed, to eat on the run. We don’t know how to sit and relish some tasty tidbit.

We have no idea what we’re missing. I’ll quote Wendell Berry (always good form):

“Nothing is more pleasing or heartening than a plate of nourishing, tasty, beautiful food artfully and lovingly prepated. Anything less is unhealthy as well as a desecration”. – Health Is Membership, from Another Turn of the Crank. (Buy yourself this book. And then buy it for someone else. The first sentence above could be well used, metaphorically, to describe Wendell’s writing)

Chase’s argument, in my opinion, is like arguing that the world of fast food, of sliced Wonder Bread and pre-packaged everything somehow improves our diet over eating home baked bread (which, I can assure you, after my delicious sandwich on wheat today, it does not!) and garden grown veggies. We’re not getting richer on a diet of genetically modified grains; and we’re not getting richer via an endless deluge of pics that we’ll maybe see one time before they’re deleted or lost on some corrupted hard drive. Simply because it’s abundant and easily produced doesn’t mean we’re prospering because of it.

But the real killer, the coup de grâce in the post is this statement: “I prefer to make the argument that the snapshot has become perhaps the most human, the most important photography of our modern era.” (my emph. added)

“our”? His maybe. I’m not sure he and I live in the same universe, nevermind era. This statement is simply wrong on so many levels. “The snapshot is the most human photography of the modern era”? What an absurdly bizarre comment from a great photographer and artist. Is the text message the most human literature of the modern era? A 140 character tweet? Are 30 second advertisements on TV the most important film of the modern era? A junior burger the most human of our culinary efforts? Are

This is not simply incorrect, it’s precisely the kind of thing that contributes to the drowning. We’re also drowning, you see, in a sea of blogs and articles and essays and posts and tweets and shares and retweets and circles and status updates and  texts and … well .. squalor.Everyone’s so keen to make the most noise, and get heard, they’ll write anything, about anything, to ask for attention. Someone writes an article about how noisy the world is? Respond with an article about how rich our ears are. Someone writes an article about how the internet world is too hectic? Respond with an article about slovenly you used to be. Someone writes a great article about anything? You retweet it; you don’t actually READ it, you retweet it. That, imo, is drowning.

Now, if Chase COULD support his point of view with the odd coincidence that this sea of images has coincided with the most expensive price ever paid for a pic. But he didn’t.

What we don’t need is people like Chase adding to the nonsense; he’s usually an astute and insightful guy, and I enjoy his work. A lot. But this kind of post is all of what’s wrong with the internet, the digital age, and precisely what the original column he mentions is in reference to.

Cheers

Carl

PS: The undrowned image above was taken on my trip to the Arrigetch Peaks, in Gates of the Arctic National Park, this past fall. And not with a telephone.

Gilbert Point, the Hubbard Glacier and Mt Seattle, Disenchantment Bay, 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 an image from the first night of my most recent trip, a month long adventure down around the coastline of Wrangell – St. Elias National Park and Preserve. This photo was taken on the air taxi flight out to the coast; we departed a little from the scheduled route and I shot some images of the Hubbard Glacier and surrounding area. The points of interest here start with the Hubbard Glacier itself, generally regarded as the largest tidewater glacier in the world. At over 70 miles long, it’s quite a chunk of ice (given part of our trip was to look at the Malaspina Glacier and it caving into a tidal lagoon, the Hubbard’s claim to fame may be short-lived; the Malaspina is much bigger, and most definitely reaches the ocean).

You can also just see the edge of Valerie Glacier, and the medial moraine the separates the 2 glaciers, on the left hand side of this frame. The 2 iceflows join up a few miles before they calve into the Bay, and together form an open glacial face that’s over 6 miles wide. Impressive stats, for sure.

Other points of interest include Gilbert Point, the small channel on the right hand side of the frame here, through which the Russell Fjord drains into Disenchantment Bay. The Glacier advances every summer, often at a relatively rapid rate, and has twice recently plugged Gilbert Point, threatening to landlock the Fjord, and potentially flood surrounding ecosystems to the south. So far, though, that hasn’t happened, and each time the Fjord has forced its way thru the dam wall, breaking through the ice and emptying into the Bay; doing so very dramatically. In 1986 the flow was estimated to be over 5 cubic kilometres of water in 24 hrs, the 2nd largest glacial lake outburst flood ever; that’s about the equivalent of 35 Niagara Falls.  How long this cat and mouse game will go on is anyone’s guess.

Mt. Seattle stands aloft behind the Hubbard. The Hubbard Glacier actually starts at Mt. Walsh, to the north, but also a small tributary ice flow starts on the flanks of might Mt. Logan, Canada’s highest peak.

The Hubbard Glacier is also known as one of the most actively calving glaciers around. Here’s a couple of photos from a trip down there in 2008 of a calving face.

Cheers

Carl

Brown bear, Ursus arctos, standing on a sand spit, at the shore of Naknek Lake. Mount La Gorce rises in the background, catching the last of the sun's rays. The bear is silhouetted against the massive Alaska landscape. Grizzly bear, or brown bear, Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

I had hoped to try some different kinds of images this trip, and really worked to catch some of those big landscape shots. Here’s another brown bear in the landscape photo.

Cheers

Carl