Hubbard Gacier calving chunks of ice into Russell Fjord, Wrangell - St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the thumbnail to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

Here’s a photo from a trip to southeast Alaska I took, of the Hubbard Glacier calving into Russell Fjord at Gilbert Point, Wrangell – St. Elias National Park and Preserve, near Yakutat. To watch a 250′ high wall of ice crash into the ocean is simply awesome. And I mean awesome like ‘inspires awe’ … absolutely jaw-dropping stuff.

The Hubbard Glacier is one of the few advancing glaciers in Alaska right now, as most are retreating under the glare of warming climate; the cycles of glaciers that calve into the sea are also dependent upon dynamics of the sea floor, as well as other complicated elements. The glaciers are often at various stages of a retreat-advance cycle, and the Hubbard is currently advancing. A decade or so ago it actually advanced across the very narrow neck of Russell Fjord, known as Gilbert Point, and blocked off the Fjord – drastically affecting the ecosystem there. The pressure built up in the Fjord eventually pushed back, and the glacier washed out.

It’s an incredible place to sit and watch the absolutely breath-taking power of ice. These sheets of ice crack off the wall and hurtle into the ocean below; it’s pretty intense to witness. As a photographer, you also need to be on your toes, and not get lost in the viewfinder shooting photos. Within seconds of this calving ice, waves careened across the ocean surface toward the boat, and I had to make a rapid retreat. Intense stuff.

I look forward getting back to this area, near Icy Bay, this summer, and shooting this amazing landscape some more. It’s an incredible experience.

Cheers

Carl

Shower Camp Camera Cover from Alaskan Alpine Treks on Vimeo.

Hey Folks

I thought this video might be both entertaining and useful to visitors to the website. Here, Andy Seeger shows off his fashion-sense and creative ingenuity with ‘Shower Cap Hat’ – a cheap workable solution to protecting your camera gear from bad weather on backpacking trips. Backpacking is ALL about compromise; weight, bulk and space, durability, multi-use, etc … these are things to consider when packing for your trip.

Rather than carry an expensive and heavier camera rain cover, a cheap plastic shower cap fits perfectly. it’s lightweight, packable, durable, light and easily available. What’s more, as Andy says, you can even get water with it.

This video was taken on our fall Skolai Pass Photo Tour. We hiked out to this high ridge from Chitistone Pass, overlooking the Russell Glacier, and spent the day here before a walk back to a pre-determined spot where we photographed the mountains at sunset from. Then a big hot meal of pasta and lots of chocolate for dessert wrapped a fantastic day.

Have a look at the webpage for the Skolai Pass Photo Tour – Skolai is an amazing place, and never fails to impress. I always look forward to a return visit to Skolai, and this year just as much as ever. I’ll probably even bring a shower cap – maybe not lime green though. Something a little earthier, perhaps?

Cheers

Carl

A grizzly bear chases Sockeye Salmon through a stream, Katmai National Park, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

Well, the season has wound up tight, and I’m slowly getting back in to ‘office-mode‘ for the winter. I’ll try to write a ’summer backpacking wrap’ before too long, with some notes from the various trips we had this year. In the meantime, I’d like to mention a trip I’m planning for next year, 2010, that I’m WAAAAYYYYY excited about. I’ll be leading a photo tour to Katmai National Park in the fall, after the backpacking season. We’ll basecamp in Katmai National Park for a week, and photograph grizzly bears, also known as ‘brown bears’ in that particular region, all day long. For those of you unfamiliar with Katmai National Park, the region is home to the greatest population density of grizzly bears anywhere, and also some of the largest bears in the world. The bears feed much of the summer on spawning Sockeye and Silver Salmon, and images such as the above, with a bear charging through a stream, splashing up water as it races after the fleeing salmon, are just one of the fantastic photo opportunities that Katmai National Park holds the patient and hard-working photographer. There’s simply nothing like it anywhere else in the world.

This photo tour is something I’ve wanted to do for a while now, and I’m super excited about the trip. There’s nothing quite like being in the realm of the grizzly bear, and the opportunity to simply observe and be around the bears is worth the time and effort alone; and the photo opportunities are without par. Katmai National Park is a real treat for the wildlife photographer, so this is sure to be a great time. It’ll be a small group, no more than 4 or 5 photographers, we’ll outfit the camping gear, or you can bring your own, we’ll handle all the food, or you can bring your own; you have to bring yourself, your camera gear, clothing (more on this later), and the rest is up to the weather-Gods.

Another thing that makes this trip a treat is the time of year – we’ll be aiming for peak fall color season, giving us the chance to make some images simply impossible to do the rest of the year. The bears look better this time of year, being bigger (as much as a third to a half again heavier), with much fuller coats as they get ready to den for the winter. I haven’t posted the trip to the site in the Trip pages yet, but that’ll be coming soon, as the office-mode takes place. The photo tour will be late September; bring your fleece jacket and hat, chest waders, a telephoto lens and a boat load of camera batteries and CF cards. I’ll write some more about this as I get everything else caught up.

Use the Contact Form to reach me for more information.

Cheers

Carl

Hey Folks,

As I’m updating the website, I’m redoing the Image of the Month pages, and won’t be writing content there – so I’m going to transfer some of the past notes I’ve written on the image of the month pages to the blog, that way it’s all in one place, searchable, and much better organized. Here’s another piece I wrote a while back about backpacking and photography. Some of the issues are how to pack camera gear, how to keep camera gear weight down, the hassles of digital cameras, and how to ‘get your shots’.

a) Packing camera gear: I think this is a HUGE part of a good backcountry photography trip. In short, I don’t really have ‘the answer’. Well, not yet, anyway. It’s largely a matter of personal preference, but there is probably one standard that ought apply. Keep it protected. First and foremost, your gear HAS to be well padded. It’s too easy to damage expensive camera gear, so be sure to pad your camera bag or whatever you carry it in well. I usually wrap my telephoto in a fleece, and carry my camera body and shorter bodies, filters, etc, in a small camera bag – some kind of LowePro bag. All of it goes in my main backpack. Sometimes I just carry a small day pack inside my backpack, with the camera bodies, etc, stuffed inside it. This makes for a a nice portable and protected unit if I do any dayhikes, without having to bring my larger backpack. If needed, I’ll pad gear with a t-shirt, fleece hat, etc. Either way, just be sure to pad it well.

b) Keeping camera weights down. Oh I WISH I knew the answer to this one! Lately, I’ve been carrying only 1 camera body (a boon of the digital age), small variable aperture lenses (not the heavier f2.8 lenses), and trying to leave filter at home when possible. I still can’t get past the thought of having camera problems though, so I’ll probably be carrying 2 bodies on most of trips in the future. I like the Sigma 500mm for a telephoto, because it’s noticably smaller and lighter than the Nikon and/or Canon equivalent. Other options are a 400mm f5.6, or a 80-400mm f5.6 lens .. I am very tempted to get one before this summer! I use a Gitzo #1325 carbon fiber tripod, but will probably get another smaller lighter one just for backpacking this season. With a smaller ballhead as well, I could probably shed nearly 3 pounds just in a new tripod and head system.

c) Digital. Not having to carry film is outweighed by bringing a portable Hard Drive (I use the PD7X), spare camera batteries, and the added weight of modern dSLR cameras. I save some bulk, but the weight is probably similar. Digital cameras are great in bad weather, sitting inside a tent viewing the images I’ve shot so far relieves some of the boredom! I also find the initial editing process for digital images MUCh slower than slides .. I’m so far behind on getting images caught up and added to my database it’s ridiculous! Hopefully a workflow will sort itself out soon that alows me to keep up. In the meantime, I find it really beneficlal to edit immediately after a trip .. otherwise the work piles up and I never get caught up.

d) How to get your shots: this is probably the most improtant one. I think one of the big things is just having yoru gear accessible. Keep it handy, when possible, and try to be deliberate about stopping to shoot ANYTHING that catches your eye. better to stop, get your gear out, and decide against a shot, than to keep on walking and then regret it later. I’ve learned that lesson the hard way. Trust me – when you see something, anything, that catches your attention, stop, drop your pack, and get your camera out. It’s more important than getting to camp. Shoot it, and shoot it again. bring extra film or memory cards, and be sure you try different compositions and approaches to your photographs. You can always delete what you don’t like later!

I hope this brief run down helps. Feel free to email me if you have any questions or tips- photography can be a great way to remember your trips, so make the most of it. See ya.

Cheers

Carl Donohue

PS – Oh, yeah, the photo here is from a trip on the Canning River in 2006, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

Here’s a photo I took of the Kennicott Glacier, not far from the small town of McCarthy, in Wrangell St. Elias National Park, Alaska. I was exploring the west side of the glacier, which is much less frequently hiked and travelled than the east side. But, with a little luck and some perseverance, I found a few places I managed to scrape out some decent photos. Hiking around glaciers require care, particularly if you’re hiking solo. I guess hikign anywhere, anytime, requires care, but particularly solo trips. That said, I do love being out exploring the backcountry on my own – it’s a particular way of connecting with the land that is immeasurably different to trips with other people. I tend to do most of my ‘better’ photography when I’m traveling solo, I tend to look a little closer, as well as spend more time on a given scene, composing and recomposing, shooting, recomposing and shooting some more.

Looking a little closer, I tend to see more, and often times I tend to see more clearly. It becomes clearer to me what it is exactly in the scene that’s grabbing my attention – sometimes that leaps out at me right away, sometimes it comes through me spending more time, and exploring a little more closely. Either way, it’s amazingly rewarding when it happens.

For glacial travel, sometimes I use crampons and sometimes I don’t. It really depends, most of the time, on the glacier itself, and the time of year. A lot of the time in later summer days, the glacial snow cover has melted, and any crevasses that might cause a problem are clearly visible. Sometimes crampons are still requisite, but not always. If you’re not sure, definitely bring them along. You can either strap them on the outside of your pack ‘as is’, or wrap them in something such as the Black Diamond Toolbox Crampon Bag, or anything durable and punctureproof, such as PVC tarpaulin material. If your pack has a ‘beaver tail’, with a daisy chain loop, on the outside, like the Dana alpine back, strap them on there, and the beaver tail will protect your backpack and gear.

When moving around the glaciers, and on any ice really, slow down, watch your step, and
give more of your attention to your feet. Sounds simple, but most folks would be surprised how little attention they give to their feet, where and how they place them whilst hiking. Crevasses are obviously the main concern, and for good reason – they can be remarkably deceptive and even more remarkably hard to get back out of. Often the most difficult part of glacial travel is getting on and off the ice, as the ice closer to the edge is broken up more, and the edges can be steep – lots of times, once you’re out on the ice, travel is faster and easier than hiking off the glaciers.

The blue in the ice here is a function of the thickness of the ice. As light penetrates down through the ice, the light waves are absorded. The red end of the spectrum, having less energy in it that the ‘colder’ blue waves, gets absorbed first, leaving only the blue waves, which is how we see the ice as blue. That’s why, as you look down into a crevasse, for example, the ice gets more blue the deeper down the crevasse .. more of the red light has been absorbed by times it’s amazing how blue glacial ice can be, particularly on cloudy days.

So strap on your crampons, and go explore, safely, a glacier. Just be careful, and watch your step. And try REAL hard not to stab yourself, or your friends, with those pointy crampons.

Cheers

Carl

Hey Folks,

Recently someone asked me about some photography tips, and I thought that might make a good post for a blog. There’s obviously way too much stuff to talk about in one post, so I’ll just make this one specific to shooting landscapes on backpacking trips. Hopefully this will help you bring home some better images from your trips. The image I’ve posted here is of Regal Mountain, a 13 845′ high shield volcano, or stratovolcano, in the Wrangell Mountains, seen from Skolai Pass, Wrangell St. Elias National Park. Regal Mountain is most commonly seen from the west, from the Root Glacier near McCarthy. Because the mountain is so covered with glaciers, it’s hardly been studied at all by geologists. It’s a WAY cool mountain!

First thing is suck it up and bring your tripod. Even a little lightweight tripod is WAY better than no tripod at all. These days you can buy an ultralight tripod that’ll really help you out. Like everything else, it seems, you pay more dollars for every ounce you lose. Something like the Gitzo GT-0530 Mountaineer 6X Carbon Fiber Tripod or the Gitzo GT-0540 Mountaineer 6X Carbon Fiber Tripod or even the Gitzo G-0057 Table Top 6X Carbon Fiber Tripod is worth considering. I sometimes carry a larger Gitzo 1325 with me, particularly when I’m going to be doing some wildlife shooting as well. But for strictly landscapes, the lightweight models are generally fine. Everything’s a compromise, and you lose some height, some stability, some functionality (generally they won’t go as low to the ground), but a few pounds lighter is REALLY nice when you’re backpacking. If you’re basecamping and dayhiking, it’s not as big a deal, and by all means, bring a better tripod if you can.

I can’t stress the importance of a tripod enough. A tripod allows you to compose more carefully (IMO) and especially to shoot in lower light, such as when I made this photo. I forget the shutter speed I ended up with, but it was WAY too low to handhold and expect a sharp image. If I’m shooting mid-day snapshots, I might not set up a tripod, but probably 90% of my photography, and probably 99% of my better photography, is from a tripod. I feel like I’m shooting naked without one.

Get up early and stay up late. I think one of the biggest things that helps is really making the effort to get out of a warm sleeping bag, and get out before dawn, regardless of what the potential looks like, and hoping for the best. I spend a lot of mornings where I don’t get anything, where I don’t even shoot any photos, simply because the weather isn’t what I had hoped for – but occassionally it works out and I get a nice sunrise or some nice light like this. The same thing with going out in the evening, after dinner. It depends on the conditions of course; often in Alaska, when the weather’s bad, it’s simply flat grey clouds, and there’s not much hope for dramatic light to poke through. Often in the Lower 48, though, cloudy weather can bring some amazing scenes. ya just gotta be out in it, and hope for the best. be prepared to spend a lot of time coming home with nothing, and you’ll eventually start to collect a portfolio of dramatic images that you’d never have managed to shoot had you not been in the habit of making that effort.

Composition. This is a difficult one to write about, because it’s SO personal. No 2 people “see” the same way, so there’s not too many ‘rights’ or ‘wrongs’ of composition. My rule is shoot what grabs your attention, and keep shooting it. Look at it closely, whether it’s a grand landscape or a waterfall or a flower or a bear, and discern what it is that grabs your attention. Try to isolate that, and you’ll generally find your images you return with are a better reflection of your experience.

Learn some basic stuff, such as an understanding of depth of field, exposure, light, and also of image processing (usually digital these days, such as Photoshop). Often a little processing can make a BIG difference in the impact your image can have. This is the one I struggle most with, as I’m by no means as proficient as I should be – me and computers don’t seem to gel too closely. I’m learning, though, and as I continue to learn,so do I see an improvement in my images. Similarly, understanding depth of field, exposure and light all help me improve my photography. I come home with less and less images that are flawed because of some stupid thing on my part that I could’ve done differently to better control the image. If you have any questions on any of this stuff, visit a few photo forums, or post a question here, and I’ll try to answer if I’m able, or at least point you in a better direction.

Spend more than one day in a place. This is a big one, I think. I’ve spent many, many nights in Skolai Pass (where I shot this image from), and it’s the reason I have a nice array of images from there. I’ve visited many places that are very impressive in their grandeur, but I’ve only had a night to explore them. Spending a couple of days in one place allows me to find a composition or scene that I like and set up a couple of times, hoping for good light. Nature photography is largely about time in the field, and the more time I get to spend in a place, the more often my images stand out, to me.

So don’t just give yourself time to get to camp, eat, go to bed, wake up, eat, break camp, and hit the trail. Often, if I think I can do a hike in 5 days, I’ll allow 7 or 8, or 10, and take my time, spending a couple of nights in one place. It really makes a big difference. If you only have 5 days to spare, don’t try such a long hike, cut the distance down, or do a basecamp trip, and really explore the area. I guarantee your photos will be way, WAY better!

Any other ideas or tips, feel free to post them here.

Thanks.

Cheers

Carl