08-JUN-2013
Muskeg, Bartlett’s Cove, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 2013
These lily pads create colorful context for the dead trees that protrude above the surface of the pond. The entire area is known as a muskeg, a marsh or pond made up largely of dead plants in various stages of very slow decomposition. Water from snow and rain collects here, forming permanently waterlogged vegetation and stagnant pools. This image gives us more than a pond – it expresses the very nature of the bogs in an Alaskan rainforest.
08-JUN-2013
Bracket fungi, Bartlett’s Cove, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 2013
The purple mushrooms attached to a tree are stunningly incongruous in both color and scale. I’ve never seen anything like them before, but there were many such plants in this Southeastern Alaskan rainforest. I later learned that these are called “bracket or shelf fungi” and can very widely in color and size. This image offers us an example of nature at its most unpredictable.
08-JUN-2013
Margerie Glacier, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 2013
This mile wide, 21-mile long glacier was named for the famed French geographer Emmanuel de Margerie, who visited Glacier Bay in 1913. It is 350 feet high – 250 feet of it stand above the water line, and 100 feet lies below the surface. This glacier is so large in scale that it can’t be encompassed within a single image. I chose to move in on the craggy shafts of ice that soar above it, providing a base layer for the snow capped mountains and cloud laced sky that fill the background. A range of various blue colors fills the image – dirty ice, shadowed snow, and pure blue sky. It is a mountain of ice -- austere, cold, chilling, and massive.
08-JUN-2013
Falling ice, Margerie Glacier, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 2013
I made this photo at almost nine o’clock at night, yet the sun still had an hour to go before it was to set. Glacier’s such as this one will now and then "crack and groan," a sign that a chunk of its ice, large or small, is about to fall into the sea. The particular piece of ice “calving” from the face of the Margerie glacier was large enough to produce a report as loud as a cannon blast. The force of ice hitting water sends splashes both high and wide. I particularly liked the color of the exploding water – it picks up the golden light heralding the coming sunset. Meanwhile, the wall of ice just above the splash seems to quiver and shake.
08-JUN-2013
Kayaks, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 2013
Visitors to Glacier Bay often paddle kayaks to view the magnificent scenery that lines the bay. This image, made in mid-afternoon expresses the staggering scale of the area through scale incongruity. I photographed these kayaks from at least a mile away. The tiny figure detached from the group at right is probably a park ranger.
08-JUN-2013
Diving Humpback, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 2013
I made this image as primarily a landscape photograph of Glacier Bay, appropriately using a diving whale as a foreground “anchor” for my image. The surface of the water is as smooth as glass, reflecting the blue sky, white clouds, and massive mountain range. While the whale’s body is nearly vertical as it plunges to the depths of Glacier Bay, its tail remains horizontal, echoing the horizontal thrusts of the ripples in the water, the distant shoreline, and the rows of mountains and clouds above it.
08-JUN-2013
Brown bears on the climb, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 2013
We first found this female bear walking her three-year-old cubs along a rocky beach bordering Glacier Bay. We followed their slow progress for at least twenty minutes as they grazed for food along the beach, and I made many routine images of them feeding. Sightings of feeding brown bears are very common in this part of Alaska, and pictures of grazing bears often lack the incongruities that excite the imagination. The cubs are learning how to forage, defend themselves and where to den. Things improved greatly after they finished feeding, and left the beach to climb a steep cliff leading to either home or greener pastures. Although they were a long way from our ship, and very small in scale, the grouping clearly stands out against the gray cliff. Because we don’t often see bears climbing steep cliffs, let alone in family groupings, this image becomes a special document.
08-JUN-2013
A whale tale, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 2013
The most common whale pictures generally include a tail, also known as flukes, hovering above the water just as the whale is about to dive. I most likely photographed more than 100 whale tails during the ten days of my Alaskan adventure. Yet I discarded the great majority because they only showed water and tail, and nothing else. This one, however, is a keeper, because it tells a story. This Humpback whale surfaced, exhaled a cloud of steam known as a “spout,” displayed a dorsal fin upon its long shiny black back, saw us heading right towards it and displayed its flukes, covered in cascades of water, as it began its plunging maneuver. I cropped the image into a square, placing the flukes at bottom center, incongruously followed by a tiny gull whose wings were in exactly the same position. The expanse of water behind it speaks of the distances whales routinely cover in a day of feeding. The snow laden mountains beyond the distant shore represent Alaska itself, giving context to a humpback whale that has travelled all the way from Hawaii just to feed in these fertile waters before turning home to mate and breed. Rather than just show whale flukes, I instead attempt to tell a story featuring the flukes as a character.
10-JUN-2013
A big ship made small, Icy Strait, Alaska, 2013
As our own tiny expedition ship, holding just 22 passengers, moved through the Inside Passage’s Icy Strait, I made this image of a huge Princess ocean liner sailing away from us in the far distance, dwarfed by the scale of the landscape surrounding it. The vast mountain range overwhelms the cruise ship, making it seem vulnerable to nature’s whims in spite of its vast size. It is one of the many cruise ships that ply the Inside Passage each summer. Cruise ships usually anchor in a different port each night, and carry extensive tourism to Southeast Alaskan towns such as Juneau, Ketchikan and Skagway. More than one million cruise passengers were expected to sail on the Inside Passage during 2013. Several thousand of them were on the ship we see in the distance.
10-JUN-2013
Stealthy approach, Pavlov Harbor, Chichagof Island, Alaska, 2013
As we anchored for the night in this tiny harbor for the evening, we spotted a brown bear grazing on the shore. Our skiffs carried us to within 50 yards of the bear, and while were photographing it from a distance, a member of our crew glided past us on a surfboard. She could take a far more stealthy approach, floating almost to the edge of beach without the roar of an outboard motor. She had no concerns about running aground. I photographed her confronting the bear in absolute silence. She is so quiet that the bear seems to ignore her presence. It continued to do so.
10-JUN-2013
Defiance, Pavlov Harbor, Chichagof Island, Alaska, 2013
About fifteen minutes after I made the previous image of this brown bear ignoring the approach of a member of our crew on a surf board, I made this photograph that tells another story altogether. Two skiffs, carrying all of our 22 passengers, motored ever closer to the bear. We photographed this bear for nearly 20 minutes as it chewed on an abundance of grass.The bear gradually became irritated by our presence, and lifts its head towards us here with a defiant air. As it bares its teeth, I use my full 350mm telephoto focal length to make this image. I later cropped the image to increase the scale of the bear within the frame, stressing the facial detail.
11-JUN-2013
Brown bear family near Kasnyku Hatchery, Baranof Island, Alaska, 2013
This brown bear sow with three cubs is grazing along the opposite shore of a creek bordering a salmon hatchery. While the salmon were not yet present in the stream itself, this bear family had been frequently spotted near this hatchery. I waited for the four bears to naturally arrange themselves in a horizontal line, which gave my image a rhythmic composition based upon the repeating horizontal thrusts of the rocks, bears, log, and trees. The sow keeps a wary eye on 22 photographers on the other side of the stream, while the cubs pay no attention to her or to us.