“Capturing Alaska”
with Wayde Carroll
Aialik Glacier, Kenai Fjords National Park
Continuing on with images from this month’s photo safari….
I guess I should put a quick plug in here for the company I lead these safaris for. Alaska Wildland Adventures, based in Girdwood, is one of our country’s top rated eco-tourism companies. They lead all kinds of Alaskan adventures. The photo safaris are unique in that they cater especially to those of us who want to be able to stop and capture the moment whenever we feel like it without getting the antsy hikers angry with us. These trips are all about photography. Throw in great lodges in stunning settings, add great gourmet food, and hey, you’ve got a great trip on your hands. The people, clients and staff, are great as well. They come from all over the country and make each trip a wonderful and unique experience.
Ok, back to the (somewhat) regularly scheduled blog.
On the second day of our photo safari we set out into the Kenai Fjords on AWA’s new boat that has the ability to land on shore.
Kenai Fjords National Park is incredible in its’ diversity of wildlife and scenery. I’ll share more images from it later. This week I wanted to focus on the Aialk glacier ( pronounced: eye-al-ick), accessible by way of Aialik Bay. (pronounced: bay).
Because we were able to land on shore not far from where this active glacier was calving I was able to get some awesome action images from shore. It was incredible to walk amongst giant pieces of ice freshly calved from the glacier and stranded on shore. It was more than a little unsettling at first to hear the loud cracking of ice and its’ tremendous plunging sound as it reached the frigid waters. On more than one occasion the calving ice was so large that the group had to scramble up the beach to avoid the large waves it created.
It was agreed by all that the entire day could have been spent there photographing, and experiencing one of the most incredible forces of nature. Indeed, we overstayed our allotted time and it was difficult to get everyone back on the boat!
When photographing ice it’s helpful to remember that your cameras meter is always trying to expose for an 18% gray, which is an average tone of your average scene. So in essence your camera is trying to make your most dominant tone a mid-gray tone. If your viewfinder is filled with bright white objects, such as large chunks of ice, your camera will expose to make them large GRAY chunks of ice. What you need to do, if your scene is predominantly white, is add more exposure than your meter is asking for. You need to fool your camera and with exposure compensation. Usually you can add about one and a half stops of exposure to bring your whites back up to white. Your histogram is a great resource for this!
It’s true that you can always “brighten “your exposures on the computer later, but if your original exposure is more than one stop underexposed ( your whites are gray ) you really start to get grain and color aliasing ( weird colors in your shadow areas ) when you do. In these situations I always set my camera to plus 1 1/2 exposure compensation.
I kept my ISO at 400 so I could make sure I had a fast shutter speed that allowed me to “freeze” (no pun intended) the action of the falling ice. You had to be ready because you had no warning of when a huge chunk would fall. Once you could hear it, it was too late!
It was fun to experiment with wide angles but I also had my 200mm on a separate camera to capture the falling ice.
I can’t wait to get out there again.
One other worthy note: AWA is currently building a new lodge right near the Aialik Glacier. They were asked to do so by the Native group who controls the land there. They are the only company with such access and starting next year safaris will be based right out there on the Fjords. It’s only accessible by water or float plane. There is a lagoon and a glacier right out the front doors!