“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!
  

“Capturing Alaska”
with Wayde Carroll






Anticipating the Iditarod


   Tomorrow morning is the ceremonial start of the 2008 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, also known as “The Last Great Race On Earth”, or simply The Iditarod. It is truly an amazing event and if you have any interest at all I strongly urge you to follow it through the official Iditarod web site, and the Anchorage Daily News. They give constant updates complete with photos and videos.
   So far, I’m not one of the lucky few who get to photograph the race in its entirety-see Jeff Schultz’s work- but I still get a thrill out of photographing the ceremonial start on Saturday in Anchorage, and then the re-start in Willow on Sunday.
 The first day is interesting because there has been a snow trail laid down throughout the city of Anchorage to allow for the running of sled dog teams. This includes roadways, overpasses and city parks, so there are numerous spots you can park and get to the trail and cheer on the musher’s as they go by. As stated, the first day is ceremonial and most musher’s even have an extra person on board, someone who had the highest bid to be able to ride this leg of the race, but it’s special to see. Often you’ll see racers high-fiveing fans on the sideline as they go by. And it’s wonderful to hear the panting of the dogs and the padding of their feet in the snow as they go by at a leisurely trot. Last year my son was able to gather a bootie that had fallen off one of the dogs. A treasure indeed!
   For the restart in Willow on Sunday, I like to hike down the trail as far as I can so I can get some shots of the teams in a setting that more closely resembles them being out in the great Alaskan wilderness. There, I want photos with no crowds or buildings in the background. And, as you can tell from the images here, I really like to zoom in on the dogs and get action “portraits” of them at work. Their expressions are endless, ranging from intense to casual to comical. They are the athletes of this event and I never cease to marvel at their well-trained, fine tuned, muscular physiques.
   So, in anticipation of this weekend, I’ve put up images from last year. As you can see the weather was beautiful (though very cold!) and exposure wasn’t a problem. For the most part I shot in aperture priority mode. This way I can set my aperture to it’s widest opening, F2.8 or F4, and then my camera will automatically adjust the shutter speed. It was so bright that having a fast shutter speed at ISO 100 was no problem. For any overall scenes with a lot of white snow I added one and a half stops to my exposure to keep the white areas white. Most cameras are capable of doing this even in a program mode-check your manual. For details and close-ups I just left the exposure alone.
   I used my predictive auto-focus mode most of the time so I could easily keep my moving subjects in focus and occasionally I would pre-focus on a spot and shoot a burst of images without moving the camera. This would allow me to set my composition-background etc. and wait for the action to come into the frame.
   This weekend I want to try some new things. I’ll show you the results next week!
 

“Capturing Alaska”
with Wayde Carroll






Fur Rendezvous


     Back in 1935 Vern Johnson and a group of his friends decided that Anchorage was in sore need of some distraction from the long Alaska winters. They decided to start a festival that would coincide with the time of year that miners and trappers were bringing in their winters’ yields. They dubbed the new event the “Fur Rendezvous” to pay homage to the fur trade, which was Alaska’s third largest industry at the time.
   Thankfully, tradition reigns in modern day Anchorage and the “Fur Rondy” continues bigger than ever. There is a plethora of events and characters to keep a photographer busy. I love it because it really gives me a chance to utilize a wide variety of lenses and techniques and hone my reaction skills. Weather I’m shooting the World Championship Sled Dog Race, snowshoe softball, the Running of the Reindeer, the Outhouse Races, the carnival, blanket toss, or the numerous fur-clad persona at the auctions, I’m able to practice my craft non-stop. Wide angle, telephoto, portraits, fast action, details, story telling, the Rondy has it all.
   I highly recommend grabbing your camera and going crazy at this wonderful festival. Bring lots of memory cards, and batteries (it can be very cold, though this year’s opening weekend was quite warm-in the 40’s), and be ready to shoot away!
 During events like this I advise that you sit down and make a plan of action. Break out the schedule of events and write your own list of times and locations. Sometimes I get so caught up in one event that I forget about something I really wanted to get to! Also, if you’re blatantly taking photos of a particular person it’s always wise to get their permission first. Don’t give up if someone says no, there are plenty of people that will say yes.
   It’s a great feeling when, at the end of the day, I look back at all the interesting people I’ve met, and unique events I’ve gotten to witness, all in the name of photography.

 

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Image 4

Capturing Alaska

with Wayde Carroll

Focus on Flora




    OK, so it’s the dead of winter and there’s not a wide variety of flora to be found, maybe that’s why this topic is so appealing right now. I’m really looking forward to the long days and wild plant growth that come rapidly during the short Alaskan summer. Right now we have about nine hours of daylight and are gaining about six minutes per day. It’s starting to feel as though spring may actually come!
  No matter what I’m out shooting I always seem to end up with some images of the local plant life. There is such an endless variety of natural patterns, textures, colors, and shapes that it’s impossible not to be excited over and over again.
  As with any other subject matter, lighting plays a key role in capturing interesting flora images.
  Here are a few examples in different situations.
  In image #1, it was a very overcast day. This is actually beneficial in this specialty in that the sky then acts as a giant soft box spreading diffuse light over the subject. This eliminates harsh shadows and saturates colors. To add to the diffuse effect I shot this fireweed through several other fireweed. Because I used a wide open aperture on my 200mm lens I kept a minimum amount of the image in focus and was able to completely blur the blooms directly in front of my lens. This gave the image a nice soft quality.
  For image #2 I used backlighting. It was a very sunny afternoon in the Chugach National Forest. I was struggling to find any pleasing images that conveyed what I saw in this dense, lush forest. The direct sunlight coming through the trees made for a very contrasty scene. This would have been an ideal situation for the diffuse light of an overcast sky, but, alas, not this day.
  I started to explore my options and as I got down low for a new perspective I noticed the sunlight back- lighting the leaves of the devils club, which is abundant here. This was perfect! I was able to find a composition that highlighted the dense undergrowth as well as show the forest setting in the background.
  Image #3 was taken on a drizzly, overcast, day in Denali. I was hoping to get the quintessential image of Denali mirrored in Wonder Lake but with the inclement weather I started to look towards the ground. In the tundra there are endless fascinating miniature plants. I was particularly drawn to the mushrooms. I took some images but there was no spark to them. I finally took out a gold reflector and bounced this warm light onto the scene. That was more like it!
   In image #4 I obviously used silhouettes to define the grasses around Wonder Lake. This is another use of backlighting. For this technique, set your camera on manual exposure. Achieve a correct exposure for the bright evening sky and your subject, which is in shade, will be rendered as a silhouette.
   By keeping your eye open to the various lighting possibilities such as backlighting, diffuse light, and reflected light you can usually create nice images in almost any situation.
Don’t be afraid to experiment by adding light with your flash either!

Capturing Alaska
with Wayde Carroll





Unexpected Gift!




  The other morning I was heading out to run some errands. Photography was the last thing on my mind. I was going over my to-do list in my head: get coffee, drop off books at the library etc. etc. It was cold, around five degrees, so I was in a hurry to get to the car. As I turned to lock the front door behind me I caught some motion out of the corner of my eye. I looked towards the side of our home where we have a nice sized Mountain Ash tree and was pleasantly shocked to see it full of Bohemian Waxwings gobbling the dried berries that remained from summer. There were at least fifty birds hopping from limb to limb. Some looked lean and healthy while some were positively obese from gorging themselves!
  They didn’t seem too worried about me so I excitedly snuck back in the house and got my camera set up for some wildlife photography in my own front yard! I slapped a 70-200mm F4 lens onto my Canon 20D, which basically gave me a 300mm lens due to the fact that the CMOS sensor in this camera is smaller than a frame of 35mm film.
  I knew I wanted a fast shutter speed so I could hand- hold the camera while shooting and to try and freeze the birds in motion. I set the aperture wide open at F4 and the ISO to 400. This allowed me to shoot at 1/500th of a second and I was able to get plenty of sharp images. The wide-open aperture also gave me a shallow depth of field, which helped to isolate the birds from the cluttered background of branches.
  I forgot to grab my gloves when I grabbed the gear and my hands became quite cold but I was afraid to go back in and frighten the birds away. It was a good decision. After about ten minutes of shooting the Bohemian Waxwings took off as a group, leaving scant few berries in their wake, but one extremely lucky photographer. What a thrill it was to spend such intimate time with these surprise visitors. It’s nice to know that every once in a while good things are just handed to you!