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

Coyote pup sitting beside yellow daisies, Jasper National Park, Canada. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

BBC = bBS

Hey Folks,

Here’s an interesting article from the UK Telegraph; the first paragraph pretty much sums things up: “The BBC is accused of routinely faking footage in wildlife documentaries, by using studio sets, sound effects and tame animals to portray creatures in the wild.”

Now, I know what you’re thinking: yes, indeed, the UK Telegraph commenting on any media source of ‘faking’ anything is pretty sad. Let’s disregard tabloid integrity for a moment and consider what this is really about (and what’s WAY more fun); wildlife photography.

Wildlife photography does not include zoo and game farm animals; shooting captive subjects, given that some folks are perpetually going to choose to do this, should always be labelled as such, even if only via context (see Darwin Wiggett’s bear photo for an example; and notice that he captioned it regardless).

I have yet to hear anyone explain how photographing a bear in a cage is wildlife anything. The root of the word ‘wild’ is free-willed, not Free Willy. I understand, for certain, there are degrees of what that might mean. Is a zebra migrating hundreds of miles across the plains in Africa before being hemmed in by a fence really free willed? *

The fact that there are indeed myriad shades of gray, woven through every possible facet of our world, does not make charcoal black any less black. We might differ on where 18% gray is, but we know what black is.

A bear in a cage is a bear in a cage, and not wildlife. Steel bars and free will aren’t friends.

Wildlife photography must be about wild, as people photography must be about people. Photographing captive animals is no more wildlife photography than photographing my pickup truck parked in front of the house might make me a Nascar photographer; a photo of me in my stylishly stunning goretex jacket is not fashion photography.

So what is “wildlife”? In thinking of how critically different a captive animal is to a wild one, I’m reminded of a powerful passage by Derrick Jensen in his great book, Thought to Exist in the Wild, Awakening to the Nightmare of Zoos: “A sea lion is her habitat. She is the school of fish she chases. She is the water. She is the cold wind blowing over the ocean. She is the waves that strike the rocks on which she sleeps and she is the rocks. She is the constant calling back and forth between members of her family, this talking to each other that never seems to stop. She is the shark who eventually ends her life. She is all these things. She is that web. She is the process of being a sea lion, in place. She is her desires, which we can only learn by letting her show us, if she wants; not by encaging her.”

That’s what wild is. A bear in a cage relentlessly pacing back and forth thru its own shit is not.

The power of photography is in its capture. What makes a photo so appealing to a viewer is the moment. Reality portrayed on a 2 dimensional plane. If we look through great moments in all forms of photography and ask the question of what is it that evokes a reaction in a viewer, it’s clearly a response to some perceived sense of reality, to some actual experience; even if that sense is simply someone else’s “take” on reality. We understand that moment. We feel it. We relate to it.

I think it’s important that we don’t deny that power, that integral function of a photograph. Photography might, translated literally, mean ‘painting with light’, but that’s a superfluous definition. Photography is most definitely NOT painting. Photography is photography.

When we present that photography as something other than what it actually is we’re not documentarians. It’s a copout to hide beneath the veneer of “artists” as well; the only use of the term “artist” that might be appropriate for those photographers who don’t disclose captive subjects is “con-artist”.

Speaking of such, even the National Advertising Division recently made a similar statement when they banned an ad by Proctor & Gamble for too much digital manipulation. The NAD took things a step further, however, and pointed out that even a footnote isn’t enough; that is, full disclosure should be FULL disclosure: “You can’t use a photograph to demonstrate how a cosmetic will look after it is applied to a woman’s face and then – in the mice type – have a disclosure that says ‘okay, not really.’

Some folks claim that labeling their photographs reduces nature photography to a form devoid of ulterior meaning, but I disagree. We humans label things. We label animals, features, subjects, moments, days, places, etc. We label each other. We label ourselves. And yes, we label our art. We label sculptures as ‘sculptures’, paintings as ‘paintings’, poetry as ‘poetry’, and so on. We even subdivide each form into further categories, and label pieces and subdivisions accordingly. Photography becomes ‘journalistic photography’, or ‘still life photography’ and ‘nature photography’. This is what we do. Its how we know the world.

IMO, the power of nature photography is its expression of the natural world. Portrayals of captive animals as wild animals loses much of the power that comes through our relationships and experiences with nature. I see no harm in expecting artists and documentarians alike to pronounce their work for what it is. The phrase ‘nature photograph’ carries with it certain intimations. A trip to the zoo is NOT one of those.

Cheers

Carl

* PS: the answer to the question about the zebra is (a), yes.

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

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

Brown bear, Ursus arctos, and a wildlife photographer, walking along a road in Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

Just a fun photo to show you that this grizzly bear photography isn’t as easy as it looks. Here’s an experienced Alaskan wildlife photographer setting off trying to find a bear to photograph.

You might THINK it’s easy to find a 800lb brown bear, but such isn’t the case. Take a guide who knows what he’s doing with you so this photo isn’t you on your next photo trip.

Cheers

Carl

Brown bear, Ursus arctos, fishing for spawning Sockeye salmon at the edge of Brooks River and Naknek Lake, Mt LaGorce rises in the background. Sunset, grizzly bear and landscape photo, Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

A bear photo for while I’m away.

Cheers

Carl