Alaska - Just Go (part 2)

February 4th, 2013

(Click for Alaska - Just Go (part 1))

Grizzly near Eielson Visitor Center, Denali National Park & Preserve

Alaskan meteorologists will tell you the view to Mt. McKinley, AKA “The Mountain”, is clear about one day in four. Of course, they’re dealing with statistical averages. Our experience was a bit different.

We retraced our tracks south from Talkeetna to pick up the Parks Highway, then drove north to Healy. Overcast gray skies were our constant companion, with stretches of rain to break it up. As you drive north of Trapper Creek into Denali State Park, the trees begin to shrink, and they’re plunked down here and there in tundra. Stop to stretch and take a few pictures, and you’ll see purple fireweed blooms dotting brown grass that stretches to the mountains. Things grow smaller here because the season is short, but also because there’s a permafrost layer one or two meters under the soil (and sometimes less than that). Tree roots can’t penetrate it, so they stay small.

We also saw an Alaska Railroad passenger train. I’m sure there were some lucky passengers glued to the windows of observation domes.

Denali Wildllife From the Park Road
It’s a good thing my wife had explicit directions to our B&B in Healy. Those directions reminded me of my boyhood in rural Montana, where you navigate by landmarks instead of city street names. We had a northwest-facing room on the second floor of Aspen Haus B&B. There was always plenty of rain, and rainbows to go with it.

We had scheduled back-to-back days riding buses on the Denali Park Road. We were so pooped after the first day’s 56-mile bus ride to Eielson Visitor Center that we postponed the second day’s ride to Wonder Lake, and took an easy tour of the Denali sled dog kennels instead. We alleviated serious dog withdrawal by spending time with the Alaskan huskies, and enjoyed a dog team pulling a roller sled afterwards.

On the next day’s bus ride to Wonder Lake, we got a second fleeting look at McKinley. But caribou, grizzlies and wildflowers provided the main show.

Musk Ox in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley
We paused for a day in the Mat-Su Valley, where we discovered nearly-tame musk oxen on the Musk Ox Farm near Palmer. These ice-age holdovers are well worth getting close to.

Seward and Kenai Fjords
Seward served as our base for trips to Kenai Fjords National Park. Exit Glacier is an easy drive-in. If you’re more ambitious, you can make the strenuous all-day hike to the Harding Ice Field, a remnant of the last ice age. You’ll climb about 4,000 feet in 4.1 miles getting to the top. We didn’t try it, mainly due to extensive rainfall. Instead, we took a cruise out Resurrection Bay opposite Seward to Aalik Bay in the National Park. Calving icebergs cause explosions of seabirds into the air above. Heck, just keep your camera ready on deck and you’ll photograph puffins, murres and juvenile bald eagles.

Homer and Kachemak Bay State Park
We spent three days in Homer, near the end of the Kenai Peninsula. The drive in gives jaw-dropping views of Grewingk Glacier in Kachemak Bay State Park. That view was so enticing we took a day hike in the area, up the Alpine Trail. That required a water taxi drop-off and pickup, so we had to be back to the coast on time. On the hike, we kept passing what appeared to be very fresh bear scat. I didn’t worry because there were only black bears in the Park - no grizzlies. Even so, we made a lot of noise hiking to avoid bruin encounters. We had some great views of the Bay back towards the Homer Spit, but lacked time to get to Grewingk Glacier.

We also took a boat to Seldovia, which can only be reached by boat. The cookies and cakes at the Tidepool Cafe were worth it, but again there wasn’t time to hike to views of the Bay on the Rocky Ridge Trail. We had to settle for horned puffins on the way.


Alaskan restaurants host some of the best cooking anywhere. Homer’s Cosmic Kitchen was no exception. We ordered Mexican combination plates and chips, and got deliciously fed for under 30 dollars.

We drove from Homer to Anchorage and spent a last night in the big city before flying home.

What did we miss?
We didn’t see the Anchorage Museum’s displays of native art and science. We also missed Anchorage’s Alaska Native Heritage Center and Alaska Aviation Museum. But mostly, we didn’t hike in the Denalli backcountry, hike to the top of the Harding Ice Field, the top of the Rocky Ridge Trail, or the top of the Alpine Trail for great views of Grewingk Glacier in Kachemak Bay State Park.

See all the pictures here.

Shot Notes
This was a ‘kitchen sink’ trip photographically. I brought everything from EF 16mm-35mm f/2.8L wide to EF 400mm f/4 DO IS and EF 500mm f/4L IS. I used a tripod very rarely - I braced the 500mm on open Denali bus windows for wildlife, and used the 400mm handheld from boats for seabirds. I used the 24-70mm f/2.8L and 70-200mm f/2.78L IS most, mounted on EOS 5D Mark II and EOS 7D for telephoto shots. I could have left the 16mm-36mm f/2.8 home and not really missed it.

We brought batteries, chargers and lots of memory cards, plus a Macbook Pro laptop to download full memory cards to. My wife’s EOS 60D used the same battery type as both my cameras, so we had plenty of spares in case we lost a battery, camera body or lens. We didn’t have any problems, but it pays to be prepared in the Alaskan bush where nothing is available.

Posted in Alaska, Travel, Wildlife | No Comments »

Unexpected Drive Through Zion National Park

December 6th, 2012

I hadn’t been to Zion National Park since 1983, and didn’t remember exactly where it was in Utah. (“Anybody seen Zion National Park lately? I know it’s around here somewhere…”)

So my wife’s return route through it from Albuquerque’s Balloon Fiesta took me by surprise.

Autumn leaves added brilliant yellows against Zion’s pale Navajo Sandstone, and misty fog added mystery to photographs. We got some drizzle, but missed most of a severe storm that provided more dramatic skies.

I used to think that Zion’s blocky rocks and canyons didn’t cut it compared to Yosemite, but this drive showed me something different. I found myself wishing we had more than an afternoon there, with time for hikes through the Virgin Narrows or to viewpoints on surrounding ridges. I loved the banded sedimentary shapes in exposed desert rock, with bright splashes of fall colors.

After a forgettable dinner in Springdale, we drove to St. George. The next morning brought a hailstorm with 1” stones, a dramatic finish to our Utah detour.

See all the pictures here.

Shot Notes

I should have used a tripod for most of these, except where lack of space dictated a monopod. I can see some camera shake, especially as sunset approached. Mountain canyons get dim…

I was glad for fairly water-resistant dSLR cameras and lenses. Wet, drizzly weather is unkind to rangefinder Leicas.

I used Lightroom’s graduated filter function to hold back skies slightly and add contrast. In film days, I would have used a Singh-Ray ½ ND grad filter in a Cokin holder. If skies had been any brighter, I would have wanted one.

Posted in Great Basin, Landscape photography, Utah, desert, sandstone | No Comments »

Utah Unplanned - Grand Staircase-Escalante

December 5th, 2012

What do you do for an encore, especially on vacation?

When you reach the destination of your driving trip and it’s way-out-there incredible, it’s hard to get excited about your return. I hadn’t thought much beyond getting to Albuquerque’s International Balloon Fiesta, then watching and photographing it with my wife Pat. We’d seen great red rock sandstone in Nevada, stopped to visit friends in Arizona and Farmington, NM, and gotten close to wolves in Gallup on the way. I’d thought only of taking the most direct way home. Fortunately, Pat wanted to see something different.

North To Southern Utah
So we went north across the Colorado River into Utah. To me, Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument was something declared by Bill Clinton in 1996, a big chunk of rocks south of Moab, Canyonlands, and Bryce Canyon National Park. I’d never seen it and didn’t know what to expect.

It was an amazing treat - a visual feast of orange, pink and vermillion colors in starkly-eroded sandstone you approach up close. We drove from Page to Kanab, Utah, pausing to watch constantly-changing light shadow the land, courtesy of local storm clouds. There was the abandoned Pahreah / Paria townsite, used as a movie set between 1924 and 1975. We stopped at the dirt road entrance but didn’t enter due to storms and flash flood danger. We’ll have to go back, but it was worth seeing the surrounding country from the entrance.

The mountains changed constantly as we drove closer to Kanab. One shadowed thumb shed its dark summit, revealing a white cap dotted with conifers. Approaching Kanab, you come in more and more intimate contact with the surrounding red mountains. You finally enter Kanab on a narrow plateau, part throwback to small towns of the 1950s, part modern tourist destination.

Up The Squaw Trail
The town hosts one of Grand Staircase – Escalante’s visitor centers. From there, they directed us to the Squaw Trail north of town for a hike. Since BLM administers the National Monument and surrounding land, dogs are allowed on trails. After a complimentary continental breakfast at the Best Western, we leashed dogs, donned raingear, and went up.

The trailhead was actually easy to find on the north end of town. The ascent led into drip-castle layers of red rock. Wildflowers punctuated the deep red with wildly-contrasting greens, whites and yellows on this rainy October day. There were a few steep pitches, but the trail was mostly an easy scramble up, even with two curious dogs in tow.

We admired fantastically-eroded sculptures and cliffs of sedimentary sandstone, the first part of a giant staircase that gives the National Monument part of its name. Much of Utah and the Four Corners was a large inland sea and tropical bog in past geologic time. Over that time, tidal forces deposited many layers of sandstone in what became the Vermillion Cliffs, one of the middle ‘stairs’. Many uplift episodes exposed the overlying country rock to erosion, leaving behind today’s red sandstones. As photographers and non-geologists, we still marvel at the intensely-saturated colors.

We started in intermittent drizzle, but it turned to rain as we gained elevation. Mindful of our safety on slippery rock, we turned around and headed down before it got too heavy. The area is definitely worth more hiking and exploration, so we’ll be back.

Headed out of town, we discovered the Moqui Cave. This is a friendly tourist trap displaying Anasazi artifacts and fluorescent minerals collected in the area. It’s been operated by the same family since 1951.

See all the pictures here.

Shot Notes

Today’s dSLR systems are very water-resistant, unlike film SLRs of days past. I left my digital Leica rangefinder camera at home, since it doesn’t shed water nearly as well. Canon’s EOS 5D mark II, 7D and 60D all use the same battery and lens systems, more reasons for bringing only recent Canon gear.

We were lucky with dramatically-cloudy skies for backgrounds. I still needed to look for cloud texture, or minimize boringly-featureless white sky. The lack of prominent shadows also made me look for other ways to show depth. I used figures in the landscape or strong foreground elements to give scale, and draw the viewer’s eye into a picture.

Composition in desert landscapes is a balancing act. With interesting color contrasts and shapes everywhere, you need to choose elements to tell your story. Sweeping scenics tend to overwhelm your viewer, and hide details even on large monitor screens or prints. I tend to avoid them, usually choosing smaller pieces to suggest the larger landscape.

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Posted in Great Basin, Travel, Utah, sandstone, wildflowers | No Comments »

Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta

November 9th, 2012

It didn’t go off as planned.

Albuquerque’s International Balloon Fiesta attracts tourists and hot air balloons from around the world. You’ll see everything from the usual colorful round balloon shapes to Darth Vader, the Spiderpig, and Elvis. As you might guess, expectations run high for this world-class event.

After our arrival the night before the Fiesta’s start, we scoped out Balloon Fiesta Park and the available parking. We had already reserved a room at the Motel 6 North, dog-friendly lodging just a couple miles from the Park. We set our iPhone alarms to 5:20 AM and went to sleep.

Petroglyph Alternative to No Balloons

We discovered our alarm wasn’t set early enough. After our 6:00 AM departure, we got stuck in a police-directed traffic snarl that needed 40 minutes to go one and a half miles.

When we got to Fiesta parking after paying our $8 fee, we discovered that high winds had canceled all events for the first day. Fortunately, it took us much time to get to downtown Albuquerque and the Gold Street Caffe. After an excellent breakfast, we went hiking in Petroglyph National Monument’s Rinconada Canyon. Petroglyph National Monument allows leashed dogs on trails, making it a favorite of pet-loving locals. It also has one of the densest collections of rock art anywhere in the Four Corners.

To avoid unnecessary driving the next day, we found KKOB radio at AM 770, the official news station of the Balloon Fiesta. We also downloaded ABQ Journal’s Balloon Fiesta app with news updates. Either way, we would know if events were canceled due to wind or rain before we committed ourselves.

Morning Darkness with Glowing Gasbags

The alarm woke us at 4:45 AM and we were on the road by 5:20. This time, it took just 20 minutes to arrive and park. The attendants honored our parking stub from the previous morning too.

The first thing you see are balloon crew spreading big, bright patches of color on the ground. Crews begin blowing cold air into their balloons for cold inflation, but Zebras, the stripe-costumed launch directors, have final say on whether pilots get to fly or not. Zebras check the airworthiness of balloon envelope and basket, advise pilots on wind and overhead traffic, and signal clear for takeoff. You’ll see them walking among inflating balloons.

At the point of maximum cold inflation, pilots will make a preliminary fly decision and begin hot inflation. The bright flames from gas burners mounted to each basket make that warm glow much prized in balloon photographs. They also heat the air which completes the fill and forces the balloon upright.

Glowdeos, synchronized burns scheduled in morning and evening, give everyone marvelous views of glowing balloons. Balloons rise like colorful soap bubbles in the morning’s mass ascension.

You can’t tell what shape a balloon has if you’re standing close to the basket when inflation starts. You might see bright patches of green, black or white as the envelope grows, but you’ll need to step back to recognize the traveling snowbird, one of many special shapes balloons.

The evening glowdeo presented clusters of color and shapes in a riot of glowing fabric. In one spot, it looked like a giant scarecrow was warding off two big bumblebees while the spiderpig watched.

Where To Nosh Afterwards

After the evening fun, we found great barbeque dinner at Rudy’s Country Store and BBQ. Everything is fresh-cooked – you point at the meats and sides you want, and they slap it down on a platter for you. It’s maybe a half-hour drive from Balloon Fiesta Park, and it’s worth the drive.

See all the pictures here and here.

Shot Notes
I used Canon’s EF 16-35mm f/2.8L on an EOS 5D mark II and EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS on an EOS 7D for almost all pictures. I took a few shots with the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L. I probably could have used my EF 24mm f/3.5L TS-E lens to avoid tilting the camera up, but I was traveling light and had left it at home.

Most of the time, you’ll either be going close with a wideangle or doing flight shots with the telephoto. The wide also works for balloon crew and spectator pictures. I didn’t use a tripod for early morning and post-sunset pictures. In a widely-attended event with lots of moving people, it’s tough to use one anyway, so I relied on high ISO and good camera-holding skills for sharp shots. You can generally handhold captures with 1/focal length shutter speeds and get usably-sharp pictures.

I also held down the shutter button for lots of 2-fer sequences. The second image is usually sharper because you’re not squeezing that button when you capture it.

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Posted in Events | 3 Comments »

What To Do When You’re in Gallup

November 9th, 2012

Gallup isn’t most travellers’ destination.

Great as a jumping-off spot for trips to Chaco Canyon’s Anasazi ruins, it’s usually a town you pass through on your way somewhere else.

That’s exactly what it was for us, but even less-likely Candy Kitchen, NM, became our next stop.

We followed a tip from Arizona friends and stopped at Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary, about an hour southeast of Gallup. We happened to catch Executive Director Leyton Cougar leading ambassador wolf Flurry out of his enclosure.

We all got to pet Flurry, who seemed indifferent to us. That’s as it should be – Flurry’s a wild arctic wolf, but just happens to lack the skills he needs for survival in the wild.

We saw a red fox and other wolves in their large enclosures. Sadly, most of the wolves and wolf-dogs at the Sanctuary get there after being bred as vanity pets that become too much to handle.

Shot Notes
When you’re shooting in a captive situation, your best bet is two camera bodies, one with a wide to short telephoto zoom and the other with a longer telephoto zoom. Instead, I swapped EF 24-70mm f/2.8L and EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lenses on the same EOS 7D body. I used an iPhone 4S as my spur-of-the-moment wide-angle camera.

The problem is that iPhone cameras tend to blow out highlights like white fur. I didn’t have the time to move the auto-exposure point to a light area to reduce the problem in the ProCamera app I use. Moving subjects didn’t let me do this, and I knew I couldn’t crop very much with an 8 megapixel camera. I had to crop in the LCD instead, shoot quickly in photo-journalistic style, and ended up blending blown areas as much as possible in Lightroom 4.

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Posted in Wildlife | No Comments »

Arizona Desert Solitude

October 29th, 2012

Nevada contains a lot of empty, but if you’re crossing between California and Arizona, it’s brief. Once over that border in Arizona on I15, you’re in canyon country, and things get much more interesting.

But man doesn’t live by rock alone. Our first stop was Mr. D’s Route 66 Diner in Kingman. It was a 1960s time warp, back to when all produce was organic and burgers came from cows. I dripped onions and mustard all over, and loved every minute of it. Yumm!

We made our way to Flagstaff, then south to visit friends in Cornville. Their place sits in a northern extension of the Sonoran Desert - saguaro cactus, prickly pear, scorpions and clean air. Douglas does dog agility training at their MoKe Ranch, when he and his wife Sara aren’t competing in agility events with their Dobermans.

We spent the night at the Little Daisy Motel in Cottonwood. It’s dog-friendly, and we thought it was just the place for our Bernese Mountain Dog puppy Daisy.

After heading north again and turning right at Flagstaff, we passed signs for several tourist attractions in otherwise empty desert. Some of these are overpriced tourist traps ($20 was a bit much to look at a meteor crater for just an afternoon – we passed).

You’ll be much happier paying the National Park Service $10 to enter Petrified Forest National Park. From the entrance off I40, follow the signs to the visitor center and pick up a map. Then start the 28-mile loop road through the Painted Desert. We only made it as far as the freeway, but that was enough to see purples, yellows, reds, oranges and other vibrantly-unusual sand colors. Those colors came from iron and manganese minerals settling in the sand over geologic time. It was well worth the few hours we spent.

When we reached Page, Arizona near Glen Canyon Dam, we stopped at the Fiesta Mexicana restaurant for dinner. It was near enough to Halloween that I had this skeletal washroom attendant.

We crossed the Colorado on the bridge at Glen Canyon Dam. It’s been years since I bicycled the Maze District in Canyonlands National Park, when I saw the northern extent of Lake Powell. Time hasn’t mellowed my view much of this finger lake that doesn’t belong there. I understand the need for power generation and water in southwestern states, but wish we could avoid doing it at the expense of natural ecosystems.

It did make for interesting photography, showing the intrusion of man in a desert landscape.

See all the pictures here.

Shot Notes
The best camera is always the one you have with you. I captured the interior of Mr. D’s Route 66 Diner with an iPhone 4S and the ProCamera app. The shot lacks perfect tack-sharpness, but it captures the feel of the place.

Lack of time at Petrified Forest meant no hikes into the Painted Desert. I isolated pieces of the landscape from the rim with a 70-200mm f/2.8L zoom on the EOS 7D.

Intuition and experience tell you how many ridges you can pack together in a picture before your viewer gets bored or overwhelmed, and looks at something else. Your best bet is to incorporate objects lying along one or two natural curves in a piece of the landscape. Another way to do it is with a strong foreground object to anchor the picture. That might be a person, a rock shape or a bright-colored plant you light up with fill-flash.

You can get away with shoe-mounted or pop-up fill-flash in a landscape. You just need to reduce flash output 2/3 to 2 stops below the ambient and aim it where you want it. That makes it much less obvious. But you’re better off using angled morning or evening light and choosing selectively-lit compositions. They will always look more natural.

Posted in Glen Canyon, Great Basin, Landscape photography, Travel, desert, sandstone | No Comments »

Things to do in Vegas when you’re broke

October 29th, 2012

Say ‘Las Vegas’ to most people, and they picture the glitter of the Strip, jingling jackpots, and croupiers hauling chips off the board at the roulette tables.

But Las Vegas sits in the middle of red, orange and white stone sculpture gardens rivaling anything the world has to offer. The highest cost of these attractions is for the gas to reach them. Entrance fees are below ten bucks.

Just west of town, Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area has blocky layers of colored sandstone much prized by rock climbers. You’ll get dramatic colors from those layers in sunset light for landscape photography too.

It’s administered by the BLM, so your leashed dog is welcome on trails.

We arrived 90 minutes before sunset, and photographed from trailheads and overlooks. I wished there’d been time to walk trails into the aptly-named Calico Hills for more intimate shots of the rock and climbers. There was at least one climbing party enjoying top-roped ascents and rappelling descents of one pitch, until it got too dark for climbing and photography.

I hadn’t been to Vegas for years, so my wife insisted I see the fountains at the Bellagio. I had a front row view, and braced my elbows on a stone post to get sharp shots at high ISO. While I was waiting for my wife to circle around with the car, I had time to photograph the faux Tour Eiffel and skyline.

The other jewel sits an hour northeast of town. Valley of Fire State Park opened in 1934, Nevada’s first state park. Its name is an accurate description – the place looks ablaze, especially in sunrise or sunset light. Strange rock sculptures and rock art alone make this place worth visiting.

I was suffering the effects of mild food poisoning the day we toured Valley of Fire. (Avoid the complimentary breakfast at Howard Johnson’s in St. George, Utah.) Distant thunderstorms and rain gave dramatically dark skies and saturated color – it all led to great photographs. I managed to spot some very subtle pictographs on the back of a fallen slab in the Seven Sisters area. But there’s much more rock art in this park, and I want to see it when I feel better. We’ll be back…

If you see what looks like several gantries for a desert rocket launch site crossing the Nevada-California border on I15, stop and take a closer look. This is a set of solar-thermal power towers in the Ivanpah Valley. When it’s complete the facility will provide 392 MW of power to customers in southern California and Nevada.

Shot Notes
Wide angles may be used for wide coverage of large subjects, but this usually crams too much distracting detail in a frame.

You’re usually better off using wides to invite your viewer into the frame. Find a striking foreground rock or texture, focus on it, and arrange other distant rocks and mountains to lead your viewer’s eye around the picture. You can also find a close rock texture and play it off against clouds, like this.

My first serious camera was a Leica M3, much used by newspaper shooters in the 1950s and 1960s. I became accustomed to shooting reportage-style with it over the years. That was how I shot this trip, handholding or bracing the camera against found objects. While I dislike its lack of camera stability, Live View helped me get some unusual views.

ISO 6400 is quite useable in low light with relatively recent dSLR cameras like the EOS 7D and EOS 5D mark II I was using.

I left my Leica M8 home this time. Its high-ISO performance is very disappointing, and its sensor requires manual cleaning. The Canons have built-in vibrational sensor cleaning, making them much simpler to use and maintain. But they are bigger and heavier. It’s a tradeoff you always face.

Posted in Canon, EOS, Great Basin, Landscape photography, Leica, Nevada, Travel, cross-bedding, desert, sandstone | No Comments »

Alaska - Just Go! (part 1)

January 15th, 2012

Mt. McKinley from Talkeetna Overlook, Talkeetna Spur

Most of the continental U.S. has been manicured, bulldozed, replanted, or developed. The lower 48 states look nothing like what their first explorers saw.

Alaska is different. Its remoteness, cold climate and huge size keep it undeveloped. Even around the Alaska Pipeline, it’s remained mostly unchanged.

Fly-In and Drive - Anchorage

Alaska’s huge size invites a kitchen sink approach to travel. But we had just 15 days, so we chose bite-sized pieces around Anchorage, central Alaska, and the Kenai Peninsula.

We flew into Anchorage to spend a couple days before heading north to Talkeetna and Denali. It was mid-August, so the sun was setting after 10 PM. That gave us time to take a taxi to Enterprise Rent-a-car in Anchorage to avoid paying on-airport rental rates and fees, and discover the GPS we brought didn’t have maps for Alaska. Since we were driving around Anchorage and the Mat-Su Valley a fair amount, we bought another one at the local Radio Shack.

Bartender at the Bear Tooth Theaterpub and Grill, Anchorage

We didn’t want to wait 40 minutes for a table at the Moose’s Tooth Pub and Pizzeria, so we found the Bear Tooth Theaterpub and Grill instead. Cindy’s Rita was a very tasty drink, and the salmon tamales showed off creativity and fun in a traditional Mexican dish made with fresh local fish. I couldn’t pass up the Chocolate Ancho-Chile Brownie for dessert, either.

Wildflowers and trail leading into Chugach State Park, Alaska

Chugach State Park

We spent the next day in Chugach State Park, on trails from the Eagle River Nature Center. Many Anchorage residents hike there with their dogs, since it’s only about half an hour away.

Due to Alaska’s short growing season, plants explode across the state in a vibrant green orgy of growth and pollination every summer. We walked through beautiful aspen forests, including some trunks with bear scratches, and wildflowers complete with pollinating insects. We also watched salmon heading upriver to spawn and die, turning more red as they went. Eagle River is also a popular area for moose, but watch from a distance.

Clear To McKinley & Funky Talkeetna

When you get a clear shot at “The Mountain”, take it. We’d had clouds and rain in Anchorage and Eagle River, but the cloudcover disappeared for our drive to Talkeetna. I’d taken some insurance shots at views farther away along the George Parks Highway, but the pictures from Talkeetna Overlook were the best.

Mount McKinley Summit from Talkeetna Overlook

Independent-thinking Alaskans move to Talkeetna to escape city restrictions, politics and taxes. It’s also the base for summit expeditions to McKinley during the early summer climbing season. For us, it was a chance to relax in an Alaskan small town, and try to see something on a flightseeing trip to Denali.

I have a problem with motion sickness. Riding in a small DeHavilland Beaver and banking to see scenery while trying to photograph said scenery at the same time probably wasn’t the greatest idea. But I wanted to capture my own ‘glacial river’ shot in the Alaska Range’s glacier maze, so there I was.

We had hoped for a glacier landing and views of McKinley, but the cloud deck hung below 12,000 feet. That eliminated both possibilities. Even that low, views were spectacular.

Southern foothills of the Alaska Range

I turned very pale by the end of the flight, and was lucky to have the provided air sickness bag. But photographing from that eye-in-the-sky vantage point was worth it.

Shot Notes

I left the Leica at home this time, opting instead for Canon EOS 5D mark II and EOS 7D. They both use the same small battery, so I could take one charger for batteries in both cameras. I also left my tank-like EOS 1D mark II at home. Its batteries and charger are very large (and heavy), and it has less resolution and lower picture quality than the newer cameras.

I used a Gitzo 1625 mk II tripod with Wimberley Sidekick gimbal head. This is a wildlife rig, but it works fine for nature / landscapes if you’re used to it.

Two of my Leica lenses sport maximum apertures at f/2 or below, very useful for isolating a subject with shallow depth of field. But f/2.8 and close subject distances can also give you that effect with 28-50mm lenses. I didn’t get the creamy out-of-focus background color I like with most wildlife pictures, but it was enough to lead a viewer’s eye to the sharply-focused subject.

Who says 500mm isn’t a landscape lens? I mounted mine for a summit view of Mt. McKinley at the Talkeetna Overlook. It’s a good thing too, since I had just one other opportunity to photograph The Mountain relatively close-in on a semi-clear afternoon.

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Posted in Alaska, Landscape photography, Travel, Wildlife, wildflowers | 1 Comment »

Cat Poop, Tidy Tips and Kit Foxes on Carrizo Plain

April 7th, 2011

Photographers shoot wildflowers for different reasons.

Some love the bright color splashes. Others enjoy crazy-colored carpeting extending into the distance. And some wait for an insect or bird to fly in for a drink of nectar.

Incredible Spring Flowers but No Services
About 90 minutes southeast of Atascadero, Carrizo Plain National Monument has one of the best spring wildflower displays in California. But you shouldn’t expect 5-star hotels and restaurants, or even potable water. What’s there is very alkaline and undrinkable. And for all you texting fanatics, sorry - cellphone coverage is spotty to nonexistent.

Know Your Motel’s Exact Location - The Internet May Lie
Carrizo Plain doesn’t appear on some maps, and when it does, it sometimes looks like there are inhabited towns nearby. When I searched for lodging online for the first night, I found a motel listing for Santa Margarita, which appeared to be close to the northwest entrance to Carrizo. So we booked for Friday night, when we would be arriving late from the San Francisco Bay Area. When we got to Santa Margarita and the last gas before Carrizo, we discovered we had another 45 minutes of driving down a twisty, dark road before we got to the motel’s actual location.

For the first couple nights, we enjoyed(?) that motel room in unincorporated California Valley, with embalmed cat poop in one corner, a stuffed 1/2 size horse, and a bar with carved camel heads at each end (but the room was otherwise clean and fairly comfortable). We had a much better time in a tent at Carrizo’s KCL campground with its nightly owl serenade, migrating cows, and nearby kit fox family.

Enjoy the Main Event
But Nature provided the real entertainment in the flicks of color from God’s own paintbrush in a daisy field extending to the horizon.

And insects enjoyed the display, like the little guy on this hillside daisy.

There were all the bright colors and sky reflections you could wish for.

Locals said 2010 was a much better year for wildflowers, but these looked pretty good to me.

Locals May Direct You to Endangered Wildlife
The unforeseen bonus was the San Joaquin kit fox family near KCL. Other campers alerted me to their presence, and I slowly approached with 700mm on a tripod. I could see the agitation in the supervising adult fox at one point, so I stopped. I was close enough to see that kangaroo rats were what’s for dinner.

On the way out, we stopped for a purple display of what looked like Perry’s mallow. Once upon a time, marshmallows were made from mallow plants and honey. Nowadays, they’re all corn syrup and food starch.

But the flowers are still pretty.

Shot Notes

This was supposed to be a wildflower shooting trip, but I brought the 500mm f/4 lens, 1.4X and 2X teleconverters, and big Gitzo 1325 Mk II tripod with Wimberley Sidekick just in case. A tripod was useful for shooting wildflowers in otherwise uncomfortable positions, and would have come along anyway. An EOS 5D mark II dSLR provided very vibrant colors and plenty of resolution.

Lens Tilts for Depth of Field Without Stopping Down
I also ended up wishing for my 24mm TS-E lens to get a deep plane of focus without stopping down. Lens tilts allow you to place the plane of sharp focus in a line from near the base of the camera to infinity. The price is that depth of field is quite narrow in the foreground near the camera, and needs to be checked to see that distant subjects still fall within it. The effect is used with the Lensbaby to get a focus ’sweet spot’ with adjacent areas out of focus. You can find a more complete description of tilt effects here.

My most-used focal lengths were 24mm, 48mm and 70mm on a 24-70mm f/2.8L zoom lens. As it was, I stopped down to f/16 and f/22 for some shots, compromising ultimate sharpness to get some sharpness through depth of field. When you stop down below f/11 with most large-sensor digital cameras, you begin to lose sharpness because of diffraction from the small lens opening.

Hold that Sky
I could also have used a half neutral density filter to hold back the sky for even exposure in many shots. These little gems cut the exposure by 2 or 3 stops over part of their surface, and allow full exposure through the rest. You can slide the filter up and down to place the exposure cut line where you want.

Instead, I used Adobe Lightroom’s 1/2 ND feature in the program’s Develop module. If your image has sufficient dynamic range and you haven’t blown out the highlights, you can darken an upper or lower part of your image in a similar way. You can also use this to selectively enhance contrast or sharpness, something you can’t do with the real filter.

I also used Lightroom’s ability to selectively darken certain colors to darken the blue sky and enhance cloud textures. The combination of these adjustments is like a polarizing filter with the 1/2 ND, but with much more control of what the final image looks like.

The program also allows you to adjust levels of shadow, darkness, light and highlight areas, so you have pretty good control of overall contrast.

Wildlife Approach - Back Off When They’re Bugged
For the kit foxes, I started my approach about 100 yards out. I had the 500mm f/4 and 1.4X teleconverter on an EOS 1D mark II dSLR, with its 1.3X crop factor. As I got closer, I carried the tripod with camera and lens in front of me to avoid the drop-from-the-shoulder move that wildlife always associate with hunters. I captured insurance shots from relatively far away, then moved closer, always at an angle to the foxes. I eventually switched to the 2X teleconverter to get usable shots, since the adult fox made it clear I made him nervous as I got close, and I stopped.

The next morning, I photographed a Say’s phoebe and other birds around the campground. Early morning light was so good that this was mostly a matter of waiting for subjects to look towards the light to give a good catchlight in their eye. I was blessed with some cloud texture to avoid a featureless gray sky, and part of an old barn as a perch for the phoebe and for an incredibly red house finch to give a sense of place.

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Posted in Landscape photography, Travel, Wildlife, wildflowers | No Comments »

Dog-Walking in a National Parkland?

March 11th, 2011

Golden Gate National Recreation Area is well-known for the beautiful landscapes it protects. Whether you’re walking along Ocean Beach or enjoying the peacefulness of Muir Woods, it’s gorgeous.

President Nixon signed GGNRA into being in 1972, collecting several parks in San Francisco and Marin counties into one entity. Additional properties there and in San Mateo County were added over the years.

Before creation of GGNRA, dog-walking on and off-leash was allowed on some of those properties. After 1972, dog walking continued largely uninterrupted, even though it was against National Park Service regulations in National Park properties. NPS recognized the issues but chose to allow the prior practices to continue.

GGNRA 1979 Pet Policy and 2011 Draft Dog Management Plan
In response to requests from dog walkers in 1978, the GGNRA Advisory Commission developed a pet policy for the park. It was adopted by NPS in 1979. The 1979 Pet Policy allowed a balance of on-leash and voice-control dog walking on specific GGNRA properties contained in the park at that time.

With additional population pressure in the San Francisco Bay Area over the last 20 years, there have been additional conflicts and lawsuits over off-leash dog use of GGNRA. This prompted the draft dog management plan of 2011, a two volume, 2,000+ page document that attempts to bring order and enforceability to dog-walking regulations at GGNRA. NPS has begun the public review and comment process for the plan with public meetings in Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties.

The San Francisco SPCA and other dog advocates charge that the draft dog management plan is overly-restrictive, a major departure from current use. Their complaint is that the plan would reduce off-leash dog walking below the less than 1% of park land on which it is currently allowed. They also complain that any type of dog walking would be prohibited on newly-acquired land in GGNRA unless the park service makes an exception, which they think unlikely. They see the 1979 Pet Policy as perfectly adequate, even though it has been difficult for NPS to enforce in recent years.

Explanations and Comments at a Public Meeting
I attended the public meeting at San Francisco State on March 5 to get direct experience with the conflict. I heard some grumbles that the NPS wasn’t allowing opposing groups the use of a microphone to address a public forum. And I found 12 helpful NPS staff members and rangers from GGNRA explaining the plan and the reasons behind the adoption of alternatives to attendees. Attendees wrote comments on large flip-charts or on forms provided. NPS announced an extension of the comment period from April 14 to May 29 the day before this meeting, giving the public a longer opportunity to have their say.

NPS appears to be fully considering public comments in the process of creating the management plan. They also have additional requirements imposed by the Endangered Species Act of 1973 and National Park Service Organic Act of 1916. GGNRA is home to 30 endangered species. Some, like the Western Snowy Plover, are disturbed by the simple presence of dogs, while others flee the barking or predatory scent. Pathogens in dog feces can infect wild mammals like foxes, coyotes, raccoons and skunks.

On the other side, I heard from groups who rightly point to the lack of off-leash areas for dogs in the Bay Area. GGNRA has some of the only unfenced spots where you can walk your dog off-leash. If you live in the South Bay like I do, you’re pretty much out of luck - there are no large, unfenced off-leash areas in Santa Clara County. You’ll end up in relatively small, fenced-in areas of county or city parks or municipal dog parks if you want to run your dog off-leash.

People, Dogs, and Wildlife on the Beach
After the meeting, my wife and I went to GGNRA’s Ocean Beach with our dog. We saw several other dogs on- and off-leash, all of them well-behaved. Of course, most marine species aren’t nesting for another three weeks at least, so impact was minimal.

Ocean Beach and the other parts of GGNRA are gorgeous. Should they be available to people and their dogs? Yes, with enforceable regulations appropriate to wildlife and human health protection. Will there be more arguments over what regulations are appropriate? Of course. People want to walk their dogs in a natural environment, especially near an urban area, and they always think restrictions are for someone else.

SHOT NOTES -
I used a Leica M8, mostly with Leica 35mm f/2 Summicron ASPH and Zeiss 25mm f/2.8 Biogon T* lenses. Maintaining sky detail while rendering texture in beach sand were my major exposure challenges, even on an overcast day. I underexposed shots with a lot of sky by 1/2 stop, and exposed for the sand in others with less sky. I shot mostly at ISO 320 to keep digital noise down, since I knew I’d be manipulating skies later in Lightroom.

The other challenge is always finding interesting features in a long, horizontal landscape like a beach. Fortunately, there were large groups of foraging willets doing their sewing-machine probing into the sand, along with people enjoying the beach with and without dogs.

I also liked black-and-white interpretations best for some images. If there’s not much color to begin with and lots of interesting textures, B&W works very well.

Posted in beach, dog walking | 2 Comments »

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