Capturing Alaska

with Wayde Carroll

 

 

 

Two Weeks in Caly!

 

Raindrops caught in spider web. Shot with a 100mm macro lens.

 

 

Raindrops on leaf.

 

 

Raindrops on garden flower.

 

 

Santa Cruz garden. Shot with wide open aperture (F2.8) to blur the background and isolate the subjects.

 

 

Pelican at the Santa Cruz pier.

 

 

Boogie Boarder, Jack Carroll! Seacliff beach.

 

 

Train passing by the Santa Cruz Boardwalk.

 

 

Santa Cruz still life.

 

 

Detail from the side of a newspaper stand.

 

 

Still-life from inside a mexican restaurant in Santa Cruz. Somehow this scene just touched me.

 

 

The REAL THING! Coke in a glass bottle! You can't buy these except through mexican stores and restaurants anymore. The plastic bottles taste terrible! We drank two a day as an indulgence!

 

 

Yellow scene with bike. Capitola, Ca.

 

 

Red scene with bike, Capitola, Ca.

 

 

Sandy Wool Lake sillhouette, Ed Levin State Park, Ca.

 

 

Ed Levin State Park, California.

 

 

Ed Levin State Park, California. Taken with polarizer.

 

 

Ed Levin State Park, California. Taken with polarizer.

 

 

China Town, San Francisco, Ca.

 

 

China Town, San Francisco, Ca.

 

 

China Town, San Francisco, Ca.

 

 

China Town, San Francisco, Ca.

 

 

China Town, San Francisco, Ca.

 

 

China Town, San Francisco, Ca.

 

 

China Town, San Francisco, Ca.

 

 

China Town, San Francisco, Ca.

 

 

China Town, San Francisco, Ca.

The colored bamboo was woven onto vases. You can see one started on the left. Beautiful.

 

 

Here is the artist at work.

 

 

China Town, San Francisco, Ca.

 

 

China Town, San Francisco, Ca.

 

 

 

 

  Me and my family spent the last two weeks in California. We were lucky enough to have friends loan us a condo near the beach in Aptos so we spent some wonderful family time there before running around visiting friends and reletaives in San Jose and San Francisco.

  I didn't ever go out just for photos but I brought the camera everywhere and I was still able to "grab" a lot of decent images. The above photos are some of my favorites for the trip.

 I had a ball playing with the macro lens and capturing details around the beachfront communities of Aptos and Santa Cruz. It was so wonderful for all of us to see so much greenery and flowers in bloom after a long winter here in Anchorage! My daughter and I took several walks just to be outside and look for flowers and bugs. Wonderful.

 My son was dead set on trying his hand at boogie boarding. The first day we were there the weather was perfect. The ocean was cold but still swimable for my son and I. We bought the boogie board that night.

 We never had another really warm day at the beach but my son was determined to use the board. He and I went out around 6pm one day and he gradually got used enough to the water, waited and caught a couple nice waves. He was freezing, I was proud. Brave boy!

 Photographically, I had the best time wandering around China Town with my children. That's about has close as you can come to being in a foreign country without leaving the USA. Surrounded by skyscrapers and crazy streets, China Town seemed a world away. Chinese shps filled with strange sea creatures, chiken feet, and dried sea cucumbers. It was truly a thrill. I can't wait to go on my own and spend a couple of days shooting there. What character!.

 As great as the trip was we were all very glad to be back in Alaska, and for a change, the weather here was better than in Caly. It's been stunning.

 My son and I head to Cordova for five days for the shorebird festival so hopefully I'll have some great new Alaska images next week!