“Capturing Alaska”
with Wayde Carroll






2008 Iditarod Re-Start, Willow, AK.

   Ok, so much for well laid plans! I did indeed make it up to shoot the Iditarod re-start in Willow, just a few hours later than planned. I had a couple of unexpected delays, good and bad, that made me miss over half of the teams heading out.
 The first delay turned out to be very good. I was making good time from Anchorage and was on schedule to arrive at the re-start about forty- five minutes before showtime. (Because I was planning on hiking a couple of miles down the trail to get to a spot where there weren’t so many onlookers, I knew I would still miss some teams but thought I’d still get plenty.) As I passed by the tiny town of Houston, which has a couple of year-round firework stands, I caught a glimpse of this fellow selling furs from his pick-up truck. I kept driving but couldn’t get the scene out of my head. I was on another mission, but from past experience I knew I might not get that photo-op again. (I can still vividly see several photos that I wish I had taken and then never had the opportunity again!) So after about ten miles I flipped a U-turn and made my way back to Houston.
  My effort paid off. I introduced myself to trapper Don Craig and he agreed to let me get some great images. The type you can’t find in very many places in this country today. Not only that, but we discussed working on a photo documentary project of his trapping season next winter. I’m not a hunter myself but ever since reading “The Stars, The Snow, The Fire” by John Haines, I’ve been fascinated with the skill and dedication required to eek out a living, and lifestyle, in this age-old profession. I can’t wait until next winter!
  Now to embarrass myself:  The second delay was costly to my pride and my schedule! I arrived in Willow and the first racers were already off. I was trying to find a place to park and found a nice spot just to the side of a small street. Within a matter of seconds I somehow managed to get into some snow just deep enough to leave my vehicle high-centered. Try as I might I couldn’t free my CRV. My tires just spun and spun as my chassis rested on top. I spent an hour trying to dig underneath and clear it. I stuck twigs beneath the tires hoping for traction to no avail. Finally a batch of latecomers lent a hand and pushed me free. Yeah! But my day was half gone.
   I still snow-shoed a couple of miles down the trail and was able to try and capture about thirty of the ninety-six teams. I’m happy with the images you see here but I wish had the whole day as planned.
   I hiked out because I wanted to try and get images that would simulate what it would be like to see the teams racing in the far out wilderness, without crowds and buildings present. For the first two images I wanted to try and frame the mushers and show some environment. The snowshoes were a blessing as I got off the beaten path. In all of the mushing images I used a two-stop graduated neutral density filter to bring down the brightness of the sky to the scene below.
   I also wanted to try and get images unlike those I already have and planned on experimenting with slow shutter speed panning. In the fifth image you see one of the better results. I manually set my camera to 1/15th of a second to achieve the blur. I panned the action to try and keep elements of the animals identifiable instead of having a completely blurred image. I want to try more of this in the future.
   The dogs are just too charismatic to not take some stop action photos as well. For these I set my auto focus to “tracking” mode, opened up my aperture to F4, and boosted my ISO to 400 so that I was able to shoot with shutter speeds around 1/2000th of a second.
   The helicopter was a film crew getting images of the teams crossing Willow Lake. I just thought that the shape of the clouds echoing the propeller blades and the light coming through the blowing snow made for a striking image.
   The last image is the aforementioned trapper from Houston, AK.
   Not exactly the day I planned, but I’m more than thrilled to have lived it!