"Capturing Alaska"
         

                      Denali Views

The other day I was talking with a friend of mine about his recent trip up to Denali National Park. Now, this person isn't a "professional photographer" but has always enjoyed taking photos. So I asked him if he was excited about any of the images he took on his trip and his reply sort of stunned me and made me think.
My friend replied that he didn't bother taking any photos. "Why bother lugging my gear around a national park when I can buy the postcard? It's not like you can take a photo that hasn't already been taken a thousand times before. I rarely break out my camera in the popular areas."
I thought about it for a bit and decided that my friend was off base for several reasons.
First of all, I truly believe that every person looks at things a little differently than the next. I was in Denali national Park as well this summer with a group of photographers and I distinctly remember getting a big kick out of watching each person approach the same area in a different way.
Ten of us arrived at the northern end of Wonder Lake and there were ten different approaches to photography.
A few people wandered up to the top of blueberry hill. One focused on photographing her companions as they hiked, one focused on lichens in the tundra, and the other was photographing the changing cloud patterns.
Down below, people were photographing close ups of canoes, mushrooms, reflections in the lake. One was trying to capture birds.
Secondly, I feel that nature has an endless array of tricks up her sleeve. In the past, I too have had moments of feeling like one scene or another is just same-old, same-old, then a moose bursts through the trees, splashes across the pond and disappears into the woods again, or a ray of sunshine bursts through the overcast sky to highlight a lone peak. Then, again, I am reminded of the endless possibilities that exist and my faith is renewed.
Lastly, I get enormous pleasure in having a photo that I took, in a place that thrills me. I don't care if it does end up looking similar to other images. I, Wayde Carroll, was lucky enough to have seen such a beautiful sight and the photo I took serves as a reminder of the slight wind that blew that day, the slog through the brush-soaking my pants- to get to that spot, the clouds that appeared just minutes later making the just photographed scene disappear for days.
I think it is an exciting challenge to keep taking images, even in the most popular of places. If anything, the glut of standard images serves to motivate photographers to keep stretching their craft, keep seeing from a different perspective. So for goodness sakes, don't leave your camera at home and don't be afraid to take that photo everyone has taken. Odds are it really is a little different.
I've included several images from my Denali trip this summer. They are all of Mt. McKinley but look how different they are.