Taku Weekend
I was invited to take a trip up the Taku River this past weekend, and since the adjacent glacier has been on my list of must-visit location for several years now, it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. The visit proved to be so packed with adventure that a narrative describing it would be far to long to fit the format of this blog. Instead, though it doesn’t include the moose sighting or glacier calving, I think a photo essay will best sum up the experience.
"Taku Trip #1" - to have a cabin in this spot is still unbelievable to me
"Taku Trip #2" - Corey and I wait at the cabin and watch the air-boat take its first trip of the weekend up the river
"Taku Trip #3" - while the Taku Glacier looms in the background, some longer shutter speeds illustrate the way this boat skims through the shallow water and land
"Taku Trip #4" - these silly fledgeling geese did circles around our stop on this marshy creek for over ten minutes
"Taku Trip #5" - in an area surrounded by breathtaking and jagged peaks, these two mountains were my favorite of the trip
"Taku Trip #6" - it was so odd to look off the end of a glacier and see massive spruce trees just a few feet away
"Taku Trip #7" - gigantic crevasses on the Hole In the Wall Glacier led to no shortage of tense moments during our traverse
"Taku Trip #8" - probably the most remarkable and strange ice formation I've ever seen, this spire must have been a remnant of a huge arch
"Taku Trip #9" - Corey down-climbs from his perch in the pair of "eyes" high on the wall of ice
"Taku Fire" - a favorite local flower, dwarf fireweed plants spread across the sandy plain at the foot of the Hole In the Wall Glacier
"Taku Trip #10" - a full boat cruises just off the edge of the Taku Glacier, "posing" for pictures
"Taku Trip #11" - this small section of the massive terminous of the Taku had regular calvings that we were lucky to witness a couple of times
"Taku Trip #12" - sunny skies bid us farewell before a two our boat ride back to Douglas Harbor
Missed It By That Much
"Reflected On Dark Water" - the brilliant color of sunset clouds is reflected in the ripples just off the shore
A late night drive to the Shrine of St. Therese proved to be a real treat when significantly more clouds than expected hung around to catch the light. Then, while working on another wide-angle composition, I heard it. The explosion of air and saltwater spray nearly made me jump, and I turned to see the arching humpback not thirty yards from me, not thirty feet from the water’s edge. I scrambled to my bag knowing that my wide angle lens would do nothing but diminish the sense of proximity I wanted to illustrate. I watched another spout as I hurriedly but carefully started swapping to a short telephoto zoom. Finally, so nearly ready, I looked up to see the whale flash her beautiful fluke and dive deep under the water. By the time she resurfaced, I was ready…but the spout was an eighth of a mile away. In the end, there was no artful record or even crude documentation, but what a rush! I wouldn’t trade having the experience for having the photo any day.
Finally a New Post
"Reversing Time" - cave and stream under the Mendenhall Glacier
It’s unusual in the realm of digital photography that a couple of hours spent on location results in only two images being recorded. It’s unusual, but then again, so is everything else about a place locked under ice that is a hundred feet thick and thousands of years old. To say that light levels are low would be an enormous understatement, and so these photos are a tribute to both the photographic medium and the human eye. A visitor is fully able to perceive the beauties of the place while distracting elements within a scene are lost in the dimness. The camera, through the use of exposures stretching up near ten minutes and potentially beyond, is able to unleash a wealth of intricate and splendid details. The challenge to the artist is to merge these two disparate points of view within cramped quarters and with failing sight. While successful compositions are difficult to muster under the conditions, the lengthy exposure times (with the related long-exposure noise reduction) offer just a handful of chances. Fortunately, the sheer spectacle of the environment allows viewers to overlook small imperfections in the photographer to enjoy the magic of the cave.
"Dark Stream" - a long exposure deep under the Mendenhall Glacier
