Midnight Wilderness
Debbie S. Miller has written one of the best, if not the best, descriptive books on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and it is certainly the most enjoyable that I have read. Debbie has real world years of feet on the ground experience in ANWR and her book will impart to you her passion for a place of moving beauty. I’ll let her introduce herself in her own words (http://www.debbiemilleralaska.com/). Midnight Wilderness is a book to read if you want to know what the fuss is about with regard to drilling ANWR. http://www.debbiemilleralaska.com/MidnightWilderness.htm. It is available on Amazon of course.
Just got back from Denali NP and Denail State Park so I have a lot of catching up to do. I have a ton of photos to go through; I will put some up asap.
Homer Wheels
These cable wheels caught my eye while I was poking around the bouy area on the docks on the Homer spit. The Coast Guard was looking like it was making preparations to get underway and had a few of these on the main decks also. I didn’t try any stealth boarding attempts on the Coastie but I did overtly photograph these without fear. The seaside in general is a wonderful place to receive a bounty of visual stimulus and a dock area is really icing on the cake with all of the goings on there.
Chased By the Light
Chased by the Light is an absolutely excellent book. Maybe it is so popular that you have heard of it and own it already, if not it is worth taking a look at. The photography is excellent because of what it is a part of, taken in context of the project all of the images become special. I think that is what a lot of photographers try to communicate to their viewers with stories of how they suffered and endured to make a particular photograph, that sense of context. Context is there when I view a photograph of mine because I was there, it is not there for you the viewer except for what you can draw from the image and add to with your imagination. It is a dilemma that is perplexing for a stand alone piece of work for an artist; will the viewer “see it”. Well…back to the book, Jim in writing this book does an excellent job of completing the missing contextual information and out comes a superb book that is revealing, inspiring, and thought provoking. I have enjoyed it immensely, take a look.
Tweeners
I seem to always struggle with the season between Winter and Spring. I guess it is not a season, but the couple of weeks of it sure make it seem so. This, we will call it a “shoulder” season, is a time of what I tend to want to call…..ugliness. The snow is dirty and rotten, the trees are bare and broken, the garbage is out all over, the junk in the yard is exposed, ugh. So what’s a photographer to do? I typically play catch up on my film development and bury myself in maps waiting for some “good weather” to get things going again. Unfortunately I always seem to slip past that two week period of spring where the leaves have just started budding and they catch the light in the most amazing ways. Backlit, freshly sprouted leaves are some of the most intriguing eye candy and I seem to get so busy on inside projects that I miss it. Well, here’s to not missing it this year. In the mean time had to make an run up the Glenn to escape the “tweener” time. I must say I enjoyed the ride…
Buoys Awaiting Service
I am continuing this Homer Spit/Maritime theme for a bit because, well, I like it. This is another set of buoys being temporarily stored on the docks at the end of the Spit.
Homer Buoys
We were out on the Homer Spit and the Coast Guard was getting (somewhat) ready to put these buoys out. Some were freshly painted and some were apparently waiting for their upgrade. Very colorful and the lines were inspiring. The Homer Spit is not just a tourista trap, you gotta look around a little.
Homer, Alaska
We just got back from several days in Homer. The weather was very spring like so that brought some rain but also some very dramatic cloud formations. You know what they say, “Bad weather makes for good photographs.” The shore birds are showing up but the recent volcanic ash dump seems to have dampened the activity a bit. There was quite a bit of it, Homer got about a 1/4″ of an inch of accumulation. Didn’t eat here but I have plans…
Eagle Against Pioneer Peak
A couple of Sundays ago we headed out looking for our spring bird arrivals on some old stomping grounds around here in the valley and got some nice shots of a couple of eagles against Pioneer Mountain. The Matanuska-Susitna Valley is famous for it’s views of Pioneer and although the weather was less than steller it was still a great day to be out and about. Other than a couple of eagles though it has been pretty slim pick’ins lately, althought the warm weather should help coax them in as the water thaws. We will be heading down to Homer shortly and that should help out with a bird fix. The Homer bird scene is heating up and we are looking forward to that trip and can hardly wait to go. The famous Homer Spit is a birding HotHouse toward the end of April early May. Check out the links in the blog entry below if you are interested in the Homer Birding Festival.
Rail Car
I made several exposures of this a couple of weeks back, I liked them all but I am posting this one :-).
The Beautiful Mallard
Anas platyrhynchos
Ah yes, the beautiful Mallard. I got to watch Don court this fair lady for a short time, she was a looker too. There were about 30 or so more sitting on the ice about 100 feet away just doing nothing so these two snuck off to flirt. (I was discreet.)
Interesting reading on the Mallard at the Cornell site. http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Mallard.html
Alaska Birding
The Alaska Birding Season is heating up. There are several resources for you to take advantage of if you are so inclined; if you are coming in from out of state the websites are great places to start.
Anchorage Audubon Society – http://www.anchorageaudubon.org/
Mat-Su Birders – http://www.matsubirders.org/index.html
Birding in Homer – http://birdinghomeralaska.org/
Birding in Fairbanks – http://www.arcticaudubon.org/
Juneau Audubon Society – http://www.juneau-audubon-society.org/
The Alaska Website with info on birding http://www.alaska.com/activities/birds/
Those are all excellent resources to begin with. Here is some information on the bird festivals in Alaska:
The Copper River Delta Shore Bird Festival that is held in Cordova
http://cordovachamber.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=57&Itemid=44
The Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival in Homer.
http://www.homeralaska.org/events/kachemakBayShorebirdFestival/index.htm
The Bald Eagle Festival in Haines
Sandhill Crane Festival in Fairbanks
http://www.arcticaudubon.org/crane.html
Bird Festivals are a great way to get out and see Alaska and of course the wildlife. There are cruises that cater specifically to these festivals and to birding in general in the Bay areas and in the course of bird watching you are very likely to see a great deal of the rest of the wildlife that is present in Alaska.
Arctic Wings
Another recommendation for you if you enjoy birds, birding, and are interested in finding out more about the ANWR. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is an extremely import migratory gathering point for well over 100 species of birds. Area 1002 is the proposed drilling area and this area is located on the coastal plain, there would be a large impact (at the least) to caribou and nesting birds and shore birds if this were developed for oil drilling and production. This is an area richly diverse and biologically expedient to many mammals and birds and the Arctic Ocean is of course, the anchor of the biology here and must be protected from oil spills. ANWR is a magnificent place (haven’t been there myself yet) and I believe there are other options for acquiring the oil reserves there that are far less obtrusive and invasive. The infrastructure required for oil drilling and production is sprawling and invasive and brings air pollution, noise pollution and light pollution to these wildness areas and it is first, avoidable and second disruptive to these important links in our ecosystem. This is an important place to conserve and we can conserve it by being realistic about how we go about extracting the resources that are in the earth while respecting the importance of the resources that are on it; all of them. “I would drill through a caribous’ head to get to the oil in ANWR” — Glenn Beck
Subhankar Banerjee has devoted the last 8 years exclusively to ANWR and increasing the awareness of it and working to protect it. He put this book together. Micho Hoshino’s photograph of a Snowy Owl graces the cover, some might remember him. Debbie Miller is an essayist for the book and I have another recommendation forth coming on her work, I really enjoy her ability to communicate so vividly about such a place in such a personal way.
Spring Fever
Spring fever is here for me, my goodness. Up here in the Great White North we are still buried under. We are getting some great sun but it is not coming fast enough it seems. Now I love the cold, and I love the snow but this year I am just ready to roll. Last summer was very short due to some late snow storms, rain, clouds and the coldest summer on record up here. All of that has me, and my northern brothers and sisters, chomping at the bit to get some warm weather “on”. April is here and that means birds, lots of birds, and I am looking forward to that. Unfortunately a considerable amount of snow is still covering major nesting areas and so we are all anxiously awaiting break up so these guys can get in here. We will be heading down to Homer later on this month to catch the migration stop over that comes through there; if reports are accurate we are talking tens of thousands of birds at a minimum. This will be our first time to attend this and we are looking forward to it. The stop over in the Copper River Delta is to the tune of millions of birds. That is the one I want to hit next year, it just won’t work out for us this year. They had a bird count of 1.25 million birds in one day last year. We also have a massive Rapture migration that occurs through the area. Gunsight Mountain is a major migratory corridor for this and there is a raptor watch from Feb to April with some days counts over one hundred. If you want to participate check out the Anchorage Audubon website they are looking for volunteers. There is a BBQ coming up too in April.
Anchorage Concert Association
Check out this link for a great write up on a really neat performance http://www.adn.com/life/arts/story/739809.html. I did not make this concert and I was very skeptical about the advertising that I was hearing about this Ukulele player, it seemed really over top. Well, if you read this review I guess it was actually understated; apparently this guy is all “that” and more, really a fantastic review and write up and frankly I am very sorry I missed it. It sounds like I missed more of an experience than a concert. If you hear of Jake Shimabukuro performing in your area I think you should really consider going, I wish I had, wow.
Where is he today?
We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul. We in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One. And this deep power in which we exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing, and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object are one. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
I love Ralph. Is there anyone writing now like Ralph did? That man had a direct line to God, his wisdom was other worldly and he understood the essence of every man. Pick him up and see if you don’t agree. He tells you what you know inside about yourself.
Rail Cars and Ash Fall
Crazy day shooting yesterday. Wind was all kicked up and keeping everything down on the ground but the ash. We saw more eagles on the ground than I have ever seen. I watched one for over a half hour sway back and forth in some wicked gusts; I think it was sleeping, or trying to. It never did move so I moved on. The ash was getting kicked up too (Redoubt) and smelling acrid, but hey it’s all good. Snowed last night and that laid it down. Anyway got a few pics in, I liked these rail cars sitting out in the Valley. The railroad is doing some work out on the Knik River Bridge and these cars were sitting for the weekend.
We got a light dusting during the night of the ash cloud that came from the late Saturday afternoon eruption but it turned out to not be too onerous. The snow was dirty but mostly just a trace.
400 Photographs
A great book of photos, a broad insight into the work of a great photographer, Ansel Adams 400 Photographs is a pleasure. Ansel felt his photographs as much as he saw them, he worked harder at printing them than making the image. He gave himself to every image and every print. He never had the consistency that we have now with the digital process and I am not sure that we haven’t lost something there. As an artist when you come back you see the work just a bit different each time. When I finish a print I could theoretically keep it exactly the same forever, I can save the file and print it exactly the same every time. We call it “reproducible results” but may its a little colder than the experience of creating and recreating the print for each viewer.
This is a real book not something to breeze through in an afternoon. Enjoy slowly and in smaller portions so pour a scotch or a glass of wine and unwind with the work of a master.
Eagle River Owling
Owwwwwling: Spent Sunday at The Eagle River Nature Center owling. Saturday I located a Great Horned Owl and I wanted to follow up with an attempt to find him/her in the daytime. It had snowed a couple of inches by the time we got there so it was beautiful. Hard to keep the dogs reeled in too with all of the foreign, uuuumm, smells. It wasn’t toooo cold, about 20 F.
The owls are out right now hooting for mates which makes it a little easier to find them. The GH I spotted was sitting silently on a branch and then started calling after I started making a racket with my camera (it was my first GH). So I got off a couple of shots on it but they were bad because the light was so very low, I started banging around with my tripod like a rookie and I’ll be darned if that owl didn’t turn around to me and tell me to shut up. I mean if he had actually said the words it wouldn’t have been more clear than him looking me right in the eye, leaning in, thrusting head out towards me and giving a scolding HOOOOO,……..HOOOOOO! I froze like a little boy and then started laughing, couldn’t help myself and with a disgusted look over his shoulder the wise old owl lit out. He came off his perch and dropped down right in front of me and I could not hear the wind in his wings, amazing. I would hate to be a critter having to watch out for those guys.
Seward Dry Dock
I LOVE going to the dry dock in Seward. We went down there a couple of weeks ago for some photos and had a fantastic time. I love boats to begin with and then I love old stuff so a bunch of beat up old fishing boats gets me going. We spent an evening and morning at the dock and got a ton of eagle photographs that day too. A lot of young eagles lacking the expected characteristic “bald” head were waiting out the weather in trees and light poles and stumps, whatever they could find. Mergansers were found quite easily and of course the ubiquitous gull was hamming it up just about everywhere. We saw a couple of other water fowl that I have to look up, don’t know their name, but they were beautiful birds. We stayed at Miller’s Landing by the way, if you are looking for a place to stay in the area one of these days. They are good people and their offering for accomodations is quite diverse and always clean.
Anchorage
I took a little stroll down 4th street this afternoon. The February sun gave some very nice lighting; it was nice to see it. See, winter can be a beautiful thing…
Artist’s Way
This is an absolute must read. This book is one of the best I have ever read and will cause you to take a very serious look at yourself, your past, and your future. Amazon has or you can google it and go to the Artist’s Way website.