Skolai Images

Hey Folks,

Here’s a photo of the arctic coastal plain, near the Canning River, ANWR, Alaska. This is the now infamous ‘coastal plain’, known as Section 1002, the area that is so frequently proposed be open for oil drilling. One of the big arguments made in favor of opening the area to drilling is that the coastal plain is ‘boring’, or ‘empty’, or ‘nothing’. I disagree that it’s boring. I found it stimulating - the place simply feels alive, vibrant. There’s an energy here (more…)

hey Folks,

This is another photo from my series of photos from ANWR. This particuar evening I was returning back to camp about midnight when this rainbow appeared. It had been a pretty long day, and I was actually ready to hit the sack. At first the rainbow wasn’t that special, and I kept trying to convince myself it was ‘just a rainbow’, and not worth heading over to photograph it. As I got nearer my camp, the rainbow started to glow stronger, and then a second rainbow appeared behind it. I grabbed my polariser (filter)and started looking around for (more…)

Hey Folks,

Here’s another image from my trip to ANWR in 2006. This particular afternoon was early in the trip, and we hiked up around some ridgelines, not far from the Upper Marsh Fork river. It was an awesome afternoon, and we spent several hours clambering around the hillsides. The wind picked up pretty strongly, after a while. I had carried a tiny little gitzo tripod with me, and it really wasn’t up to the task of holding up my camera gear in wind this strong. So I kept hiking around, (more…)

Hey Folks,

Here’s the second photo from this series on ANWR. This photo was taken in the middle of the night. It doesn’t get any darker than this in the arctic north during the summer months, unless there’s serious cloud cover. I had camped near the junction of the Marsh Fork and Canning River, just north of the Continental Divide in the Brooks Range, ANWR. After dinner I set out on a walk to look around and to maybe make a few photos. I hadn’t gone far when the mosquitoes starting driving me crazy. My hiking buddy said he’d “had enough” and returned to the safety of his tent. I trooped on, (more…)

Hey Folks,

Next I’m going to do a short series on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, known as ANWR, in Alaska. I’m sure most of the readers here are reasonably well versed in the situation in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, with the seemingly constant proposals to open the coastal plain to oil drilling. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, a quick summary would go like this:

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge sits in Alaska’s far northeast, extending from south of the Continental Divide in the Brooks Mountain Range, north over the Divide, stretching across the coastal plain to the Beaufort Sea and the Arctic Ocean. (more…)