Capturing Alaska

with Wayde Carroll

More From Last Summer

     Lately I’ve been doing a lot of work that is good and pays the bills but isn’t particularly interesting photography for an Alaskan photo blog. I’m in the process of going through all of my images from last summer and I came across a group from the Kenai Fjords and Resurrection Bay that I liked a lot and are not the typical images you see in the travel brochures that try and only reveal the sunniest of days to the potential customer. The  various Kenai Fjords boat tour brochures usually show a whale jumping out of the water on a sunny day. That does indeed happen but more often you’ll find days similar to the images shown here. The good news is wonderful images are possible no matter what the weather. The lesson is don’t decide against a tour just because the weather is off, unless it’s just a torrential downpour. The captains of these tour boats know exactly where to find animals, and ice. Also, all the boats in the fjords keep in touch with each other and if there are any whales etc. in the vicinity your boat will hear about it and know exactly where to find them.
   To me these images represent Alaska more than the perfectly sunny day images and I get  a more interesting feel, or mood, from the fog, mist, and overcast light. I love it when you can hear the bark of a sea lion or the incessant shrill of thousands of gulls before you can see them. The sight of a large, dark, mass of jagged rock rising out of the mist ads to the sense of wonder this great state always provokes from me. So if you’ve made the effort to get  to Seward, or any of the beautiful coastal towns of Alaska, don’t  pass up a tour because of weather. I’ve been out many times, in all sorts of weather, and never regret it.
   As I’ve mentioned before, when shooting from a boat you need to use a fast shutter speed. A tripod doesn’t do much good on a rocking boat. Sometimes you may have a very calm sea but usually there’s motion! I try and stay  above 1/500th of a second.  If you have IS or VR lenses this is a great time to use them.
   On days where you’re  in the midst of fairly bright mist and fog it’s good to add about a stop and a half of exposure compensation to your shots. Your cameras meter will try and take the overall “white” of the scene and make it grey. You’ll then lose a lot of detail in your subject and gain a lot of ugly noise and color aliasing when you “brighten” the exposure later. Keep an eye on your histogram!