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

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

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

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

Brown bear, Ursus arctos, standing raised upright and rubbing her back against a birch tree in Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

I can’t imagine my father ever calling himself a “professional University lecturer” or my brother referring himself to as a “professional math teacher”.

The word professional means many things; but when it’s followed with a vocation, such as “photographer”, it doesn’t mean that you enjoy photography a lot, or that you speak politely about it, or that someone bought a print from you. It doesn’t even mean that you have a website. It doesn’t mean you teach workshops and lead tours, either.

Show me a professional photographer, and I’ll wager a dollar I’ll show you someone who’s struggled to pay their rent, who’s sold gear to make their car payment (or sold their car to make their gear payment), someone who’s eaten peanut butter sandwiches because that’s what was available to eat.

A professional photographer has made real sacrifice to do what they do (there are always exceptional cases, with trust funds, a wealthy spouse, etc). It’s a risk. It’s giving up an awful lot to choose to pursue a particular vocation. It’s losing on that risk, picking up, and swinging the stick again. And again. And yet again. Repeat, infinitum.

It sounds much more glamorous than it might be. It means you take the bus sometimes, it means you sit in the rain and wish you were somewhere else. It means you sometimes take a lower price for a sale because you need shoes. Pardon my French, but it means you’ve been sh** on. It means you’ve wished, cursed and swore that you had chosen some other manner to live by. It means you say ‘yes’ when you think ‘oh sh**, that gig sounds like hell’. It means you say ‘yes’ and then that gig actually IS hell. And you then say ‘yes’ again. Still you pursue it.

Being a professional photographer (or musician, or actor, or writer) doesn’t just mean you’re good at what you do, or that you’re very passionate about photography. It doesn’t just mean you spend time promoting yourself. It doesn’t just mean you write invoices and receipts. It doesn’t simply mean you work hard to ‘get the shot’ (it doesn’t mean you use such ridiculously lame phrases as ‘get the shot’, either). It certainly doesn’t mean you have a facebook/twitter/google+ page.

It means you took a step. And another. And another. You consciously chose a path less traveled. You stepped into an unknown world and wondered ‘how should I live?’ It likely means you’ve also wondered ‘will I make it?” That’s an incredible dilemma to have; and for many people, continue to have. It’s a very different place to be in.

Being a professional photographer means you’re probably not striving to become something else (though some certainly do); you’re not doing it to make some bank while you try to get your law business off the ground.

The term “professional photographer” means so much more than how you see yourself, your own sense of identity, though that’s certainly a part of it. You ARE a photographer. It’s not a simple advertising slogan. It’s not just a banner for your website. It’s real, folks, and it does mean something. And to every professional photographer out there, hats off to you.

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

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

Grizzly bear, Ursus arctos. A large adult male grizzly bear stands in dawn's early light, shrouded in fog on a cool fall morning. Brown bear, Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

We were treated to some gorgeous soft light in the cool fall mornings on our recent grizzly bears photo tour. Fortunately for our group, no one had any troubles with lenses fogging up, which can wreak havoc on shooting early, cold mornings. The ethereal, moody experience of standing in the mist in near silence, watching the bears go about their morning, was really a special experience we all were grateful for. The photos were just the icing on the cake. And this bear? Ted, the coolest bear in the whole wide world. Ever.

I’ve shot this bear a number of years now, and it’s always exciting to see him on the river again. He’s a beautiful animal, and I’m lucky to have had so many great opportunities to see and photograph him.

Thanks Ted.

Cheers

Carl

Grizzly bear, Ursus arctos, and the Alaskan landscape. Standing on the shore of Naknek lake, near Brooks Camp. Sunset over the nearby mountains. Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

Trying to catch one of those big Alaskan landscapes with a grizzly bear anchoring the scene.

Cheers

Carl