Skolai Images

Hey Folks

I promise I’m winding down my photos from Denali this year. One more after this one. This is a cross fox, a color phase of the more commonly seen red fox. The black stripe down the back, with another one across the shoulders forms a cross, hence the name we give it “cross fox”. The animal is, for all intents and purposes, a red fox. In the wild, it’s not unsual for various color phases. They can be the typical orange-red, silver, grey, black, or a combination (like the cross fox). All red foxes have a litte tell-tale marking, regardless of their overall coloring - they all have (more…)

Hey Folks,

Well, here I’ve finally got this image done - for now. It took me a lot of working, and a lot of learning, but I’m reasonably happy with the processing - for now. The image is a stitched composite of 5 horizontal frames, to form a big long wide skinny panoramic photo of Denali and the Alaska Range. I got a full moon in there too, which was nice. The moon was absolutely awesome - glowing like it only can glow in Alaska. As the final image didn’t really fit on this webpage very well, I just linked the thumbnail here - if you click the thumbnail it will open up a larger file. (more…)

Hey Folks,

It’s WAY too late for me here in Anchorage - I just walked in a little while ago from this little blues bar, called Blue Central. They have an open mic night every sunday, and I was fortunate to get to play this evening for an hour or more - nice finish to my week.It was tons of fun, and the folks I played with did a bunch of different styles of music, so it was interesting. There’s nothing quite like sitting in with people you’ve never met before, and making music together. It’s all the more fun when they start playing tunes you have no idea what they are, how they go, what key they’re in, or anything else. You just have to listen closely. (more…)

Hey Folks,

It’s a weekend, and I’ve been having a good day. I won’t ruin it by writing much, once again, but I will tell you I saw the Rugby World Cup Final this morning. Even though the Wallabies weren’t there, as I hoped they would be, it was a decent game. South Africa played England, and South Africa won, which I’m glad about. England beat the Aussies in the previous WC Final, 2003, in the tightest of games, and then beat us again in the quarter final this year - so I was kinda hoping the Springboks would win, which they did. Next I went for a short walk with my buddy Charlie, and his 2 dogs, Keba and KebaMusa . Keba is an African name, kinda like, say, John, might be here .. and “KebaMusa” means “Keba’s Wife” .. they’re awesome dogs, except Musa gets mad at other dogs on the trail, so that’s always exciting. In honor of Keba and KebaMusa, I thought I’d post another image of Denali - the link being, obviously, the names I wrote about recently. I’m still working on another image from the mountain I took this summer, and once I get it worked up correctly, I’ll post it here.

I also want to thank my friend Guy Tal, for his help. He’s an amazing fella, a ridiculous photographer, and very generous with his willingness to help out. He’s helped me enormously with learning stuff about photoshop, and computer stuff in general. He’s also super smart, and his writings are always insightful and great to read. Check his site out here if you’re not familiar with Guy - spending some time browsing his website will definitely add years to your life.

For the photo-tech stuff, this is a blend of several different exposures (3, actually) - I’ve always done images like this in the past with either a grad density filter, or manually blended exposures on the computer - this is my first ever image using the HDR processing of Adobe Photoshop. I hope you like it.

I’m off to bed.

Cheers

Carl

More Denali National Park Photos.

Hey Folks

This year seems to be the year for snowshoe hares - they’re all over Denali National Park. What was interesting is that I made 2 relatively short trips to Denali National Park this year, one in late August and one in mid-September, and both trips I saw numerous snowshoe hares, but they weren’t at all in the same areas. In August I saw an awful lot of hares in the first 15 miles of the road into the park, particularly near Savage River. In September, we didn’t see any bunnies there, despite my assurances to my parents that would - well, we did see one, he was (more…)

Hey Folks

Here’s another photo from my little run up to Denali. We’d been tooling around on the shuttle bus system during the day, trying to find some wolves, and had no luck. Later in the day we were heading back to our backcountry unit, and my buddy Doug headed for camp - he was done in after a long day and wanted a nap. I wanted a bull moose. So I pointed Doug towards camp and then proceeded to walk all over the backend of Denali looking for a moose. Finally, I found this fellow. He wasn’t the largest bull moose in the park, he’s not fully grown yet, but he was reasonably obliging for my photos - more importantly, I didn’t find any others. (more…)

hey Folks

OK OK OK .. I’ll quit posting Denali, or Mt. McKinley, photos in a little while! I’m just glad I finally got some! This one was kind of unusual for me. I do like this kind of abstract mountain peak photo, but normally I don’t shoot photos like this when the light is really happening. On this particular morning, I had been camped in this location for several days, already had a number of decent images of alpenglow on the mountain with wider lenses, and decided I would ‘go for it’. I’m glad I did because I got this one and a couple of other similar images that I really like. The alpenglow was warm and juicy, a real treat. (more…)

Hey Folks

I wanted to continue a little with my Denali series. This one I’ve waited for a long time now, and though the reflection wasn’t perfect, it was WAY closer than anything I’ve come close to so far with Denali. Like I said in an earlier post, I’ve camped at this location many, many nights, and rarely even seen the mountain come out - when I did, it was in bad light, windy conditions, and not conducive to decent photography. This trip I did better than ever before. (more…)

Hey Folks

I thought I’d continue on my little slideshow of Denali photos. I got to shoot the mountain more this summer, in one short week, than in all of my previous sojourns into the park. Call it good luck, or call it persistence, or call if what you will, I had a great time in Denali. Mt. McKinley is certainly one of the grand mountains of North America, and probably the world. Denali so dominates the landscape that when it’s out, shooting any other photo, often even wildlife, makes me feel slightly guilty. Sometimes I’ll take some photos of Mt. McKinley, then look around for other interesting compositions or subjects, particularly if the light is good, but (more…)

Hey Folks

Finally back in Alaska, and what better photo to choose for such an occasion than a photo of my favorite campsite in Denali. This one is special as (a) it’s where I took my folks to have lunch one afternoon last month, and (b) shows my newest tent, a 4 season tent from Sierra Designs, by way of my Canadian friends, Carol and Pete Zwiers. Thanks so much Pete and Carol for the tent - you can see I put it to good use already! (more…)