“Capturing Alaska”
    with Wayde Carroll






Alaska Sea Life Center


 
    
   Remember all the “decent snow” we were getting last week? Well, over the last several days we’ve had warm winds and rain and we’ve lost just about all of the snow accumulation!
   Due to the miserable conditions, I decided to concentrate on indoor photo projects and one of my favorite “indoor” locations immediately came to mind; the Alaska Sea Life Center in Seward. Just a two- hour drive south of Anchorage, this non-profit marine science facility is a wonderful place to hone your photographic skills , especially when the weather outside has nothing to offer photographically.
   The center offers up close and personal wildlife opportunities in naturalistic settings. There you can capture kittiwakes, eiders, and puffins with your 300mm lens or look for interesting underwater scenes involving Stellar sea lions, harbor seals, and a myriad of underwater sea life to capture with a wider angle lens. I’ll share a few things I’ve learned from several trips to this wonderful facility.
   Patience is the number one tool required here. Weather you are trying to capture kittiwake mid-flight or trying to capture a harbor seal swimming, with his face towards you, in just the right location, you need to be willing to stay put for a bit. You may also have to stand aside for a while to make sure you’re not hogging a prime spot for other visitors. We should always be aware of others and share the space.
   As far as gear, I usually have my 24-70mm and my 70-200mm. There aren’t too many situations where a super wide angle works well, except for an overall interior shot etc..
As always, a tripod is very useful. Also, I’ve used my flash, off- camera, to add some color to the blue cast found underwater.
 When photographing the birds, the 200mm works well and if you have a longer lens-even better! The birds are well lit by the ambient daylight so you can stay within 100 or 200 ISO. You want to make sure you are using a fast shutter speed of at least 1/500th of a second when you want to freeze motion. You can also experiment by using slower shutter speeds to get a creative blur and perhaps add a bit of fill flash to have a bit of sharpness  and a pop of color. A wide open aperture will blur the background and highlight your subject. Often I will select a focus point in my viewfinder and set the auto focus to one of the servo tracking modes. This will allow your cameras’ auto focus to track your subject as it moves around.
   When photographing some of the smaller, stationary, creatures in one of the aquariums, such as starfish, anemones etc.. I will set up a tripod so I can concentrate on composition and attain maximum depth of field via the smallest aperture the subject will allow. For some of the darker tanks I’ll push my ISO up to 400 or 8oo. One thing to keep an eye out for when shooting through glass is to look for reflections. It’s easy to get so caught up in your subject as you look at them through the glass that you completely miss the glaring reflection of the overhead lights or a display behind you. Also, if you decide to try some fill flash you want to make sure you are either shooting at an angle to the glass or you are holding the flash at an angle out of sight of your view-finder. A direct flash will bounce of the tank and add a huge bright spot to your image. Luckily, with digital photography, it’s much easier to catch this problem with a quick glance at the back of your camera.
   Also, keep an eye out for interesting light patterns coming through the water from the top surface. Some of the light patterns make interesting photos in themselves.
   When trying to capture the swift moving seals, otters, and sea lions, I use the fastest shutter speed I can and vary between panning to hold my subject in focus and render the background in a blur, and using a tripod to incorporate the over all environment in sharp detail. This later method requires patience but if you hold out you will usually find a moment when your animal slows down and models for you for a brief time.
 Lastly, I really like to incorporate people into these scenes as well. You can capture children playing in the tide pool display or get wonderful silhouettes of onlookers in front of the large viewing windows. To do this just set your camera to manual, expose properly for the underwater scene, and start shooting. The people in the foreground will be rendered as silhouettes.
 So if you find yourself itching to shoot and the weather is not cooperating, take a drive down to Seward and have fun experimenting and honing your skills at the Alaska Sea Life Center. It’s a great environment to practice many techniques  you would use in an outdoor wildlife situation. The more you practice, the better you’ll know your camera, the more likely you’ll be able to capture that once in a life time image when it suddenly appears on you next outdoor safari!