Denali Fall Color
For the past few years, it seems whenever I took a fall color trip – I was a bit early, or a bit late. The colors are always nice, but you miss that absolute peak time.
As I mentioned in my previous post, my Alaska trip started out in Cantwell – primarily for its closeness to Denali. (Thanks Doug). Since I have never been to Denali before, and certainly don’t know what it looks like week to week, I don’t know if this represents peak color or not. But man, if this isn’t peak, I think I would need to take some tranquilizers seeing it peak.
Denali National Park simply had some gorgeous scenery. It just wasn’t this particular view. Imagine spinning around 360 degrees and seeing this type of view.
We seemed to hit a good weather time as well. Temps in the 60s (deg. F) here, but this past week seems it is now hovering around freezing with snow starting.
This image is another 5 exposure blend, using Photomatix, some additional processing in Lightroom, and then to Photoshop for some adjustments with Luminosity Masks. I think the exposure blend combined with the luminosity masks added a lot of drama here – but certainly the clouds hugging the hillsides helped as well as the color of course. I was surprised by how many dust spots I had to clean out of the sky. I had just cleaned my camera’s sensor prior to this trip, and have come to the conclusion that Nikon’s sensor cleaning on the D700 isn’t worth much.
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Sitka Spruce in Cantwell
This is an image from the start of my trip where a friend recommended staying at the Backwoods Lodge in Cantwell, AK as a good central spot to access Denali from, with better rates than staying just outside the park. We were told that the film “Into the Wild” was filmed just across the river from the lodge, and they hosted much of the cast. Denali was about a 30 minute drive in the mornings, but had some wonderful scenery 5 minutes away, which is where this shot was taken – across the road down the Denali Highway. These Sitka Spruce grow like weeds up there. You would think these Alaskans would do something about this rampant growth. Kidding…I couldn’t get enough of photographing these nicely shaped trees. This is a 5 exposure blend to capture the details due to the backlight and sunbeams as well as the foreground color.
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Katmai bears
Hey folks. Back home now after a couple of days of recouping from a bad cold I caught while on the boat in Katmai. Future posts will elaborate more on the trip that was basically broken down into three segments – Denali, Kodiak/Katmai, and a short day shooting south of Anchorage.
It certainly should be no surprise to anyone that Alaska is a beautiful place. For a newbie there, the majestic scenery and the wildlife of Katmai can be a bit overwhelming. It is certainly evident from my photographs of the first few days because I was shooting anything that moved. On post review, many of those are bound for the trash bin. The little dots you have to explain are bears or eagles just don’t have the impact in an image after the experience is done. :-)
It is also quite a feeling to be in the middle of a wilderness with the bears in Katmai. No other humans around for many, many miles other than fellow photographers – and there were only 8 of us there with 3 crew on the boat. It was obvious the land belonged to the bears and we were only visitors.
I have plenty of editing left to do. After shooting about 7900 images over two weeks, I am just trying to purge the obvious ones now. The image in this post is one of the shots I had hoped to do with a ultra wide angle – and it finally came together on the very last day at Katmai – almost to the last minute before the float plane arrived to pick us up. It feels good to be home though, and I came home to the best homecoming anyone can ask for.
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