A tourist hiker stands beside the shores of Moraine Lake and watches people canoeing on the lake The grand scenery of Moraine Lake and the Wenkchemna Peaks, or 10 Peaks at Moraine Lake make the area a popular tourist destination for hiking, canoeing, photography and adventures. Hiker, Moraine Lake, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada. Click the image to see how good I look in red.

hey Folks

I was scanning through some images recently and stumbled on to this one. Here’s me in stunning mauve at Moraine Lake, Banff National Park, in Alberta Canada.

Most photographers know how much difference putting a person or 2 in the photo can make to the salability of an image. And adding some color makes a difference as well.

But the image must tell a story. For stock photography, the more generic the story might be, the more possible different uses it might have. This could be a tourist, a hiker, someone lost, a photographer, etc. It could even be someone advertising Arcteryx jackets.

But the real story of this photo, for me, is my first time to Moraine Lake. I spend a whole day just soaking up the grandeur of this place. I can think of very few places that are so simply pretty as the Canadian Rockies. They’re almost picture perfect. Many other places have a wonder all their own, and I’d never forsake the wildness of Wrangell – St. Elias National Park, for example, for the Canadian Rockies. But for sheer ‘hop out of the car and be amazed’ classical mountain beauty, the Canadian Rockies have it going on.

I’d been to Jasper National Park a few times, photographing wildlife there. I’d driven through Banff in order to get to Jasper. And I’d thought to myself ‘wow, Banff is pretty’ more than once. But the first time I drive up to Moraine Lake, got out the car and walked over to the lake, it just floored me. I walked along the lake’s edge, and sat and stared at everything. At the detail or these incredible peaks above me, the silence of the montane forest, and that water. That amazing water. It just absolutely blew me away.

They day was cloudy, it was early in the summer, and few people were around; those that were had taken rental canoes out on the lake, and I had the shoreline pretty much to myself. So I just sat and soaked it in. If you ever go to Banff National Park, and I recommend that you do, at least once in your life, give yourself plenty of time up at Moraine Lake. It takes time just to see it – you can’t stand at the overlook, glance around, and see it all. give yourself a day, and embrace the place. Your life will be richer for it.

More photos of Banff National Park.

Cheers

Carl

A young brown bear (Ursus arctos) walks through a stream hunting for spawning Sockeye Salmon. Grizzly bear, or coastal brown bear, Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click the image for a larger version of the photo.

Hey folks

5-6 more weeks and the bears are running around the woods again!!!

I’ll be in the woods for the coming week, but I thought I’d post a brown bear photo, and schedule a couple of other blog posts for while I’m gone.

Catching this young blonde colored brown bear in some nice light was quite a treat. That’s the benefit of spending time in the field. Most wildlife photography, it seems, is done in places where the subject is pretty much a given; places like Homer for bald eagles, Yellowstone for elk, Churchill for polar bears, and Katmai National Park and Preserve for grizzly bears, or brown bears. So what makes the differernce? Light.

The bears are there and perfectly photographable (unless you happen to go during the month of, say March). So really, the only thing to worry about is the light. And that comes with time. Even the gnarliest of storms dissipate. So sit out the rain and the wind and the sleet. Bring a good book to read (or 3), some warm clothes, and plenty of patience. Because regardless how hard you try in the flat grey light of a Katmai Storm, bears look better with some light shining on them – particularly if the bear is in or around water.

A 2 week trip is better than a 1 week trip, and a 3 week trip is better than a 2 week trip. The more time you give yourself in the field, the more chances you give yourself of being there at that moment, when cool things happen.

It’s hard for anyone to really score great bear photos on their first trip to a place like this. Any photo is better than no photo, so it’s tempting to shoot, shoot and shoot some more. But I think it’s better to sit and wait, save some creative juices for when things really happen. And then schedule a trip back again later. It doesn’t matter how many times you might have been to a place like Katmai; the bears are there, so that’s where the photos are. Go back, and go back again. And sooner or later, a nice young blond bear might walk into some sunshine.

Oh, and just to plug it one more time, I’ll be leading a brown bear photo tour this fall that you shouldn’t miss! Come on along.

Cheers

Carl

Comparison of Bear claws - black bear (Ursus americanus) claws, polar bear (Ursus maritimus), grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) and Kodiak bear claws. Please click on the image for a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

I thought I’d post this shot, as it might be of interest to some folks. From left to right, the claws are: black bear, polar bear, grizzly bear, coastal brown bear or Kodiak bear.The polar bear is the only true carnivore out of those species, but it’s claws are but a fraction of the size of those belonging to the great grizzly, and in particular, the coastal brown bear.

Bear claws, and particularly the grizzly claws, were long revered as a symbol of power, both physical and spiritual, to many Native American Indian cultures; wearing the bear claw was often only an earned respect. Anyone’s who’s seen such fearsome weaponry up close can attest as to why.

The relationship of the polar bear and the grizzly bear is interesting. Polar bears are believed to have split off from the grizzly bear lineage approximately 150 000 years ago in a time of global climate cooling – arctic living skills became an advantage. So the polar bears stayed in the north, and the grizzlies enjoyed the warmer climes further south. Rarely did the 2 run into each other.

Now, it seems that global warming is bringing the 2 species into some conflict. Until 1996, for example, grizzlies had never been seen in Wapusk National Park area in Manitoba, Canada. Between 1996 and 2008 there were 9 grizzly bear sightings, and 3 more observed just last summer (source). Though the grizzlies of the arctic are generally much smaller than their polar cousins, they tend to be more aggressive, and will readily drive all but the largest male polar bears off a food source. They also are a potential threat to polar bear cubs. So along with an ever-harder to find food source, polar bears may now be encumbered with a new threat – their old cousins, the big clawed grizzlies.

The poor old black bear sits at the bottom of the American bear tree. His hooked claws, at left, are good for climbing, and tearing open nylon stuff sacks, but he lacks the power to defend himself for his larger adversaries. The black bear’s strength apparently lies in his ability to break into automobiles in National Park parking lots and raid coolers. They’ve also been known to abscond from a backcountry campsite with a certain backpacking guide’s Teva sandal, but that’s another story.

Cheers

Carl

A male Pine Grosbeak (Pinicola enucleator), perched on a small spruce tree in Wrangell - St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click the image to view a larger version of the photo.

Hey Folks,

Here’s a photo I took last spring of a male Pine Grosbeak. I had set up a couple of feeders around the Shack and these gorgeous birds would come in every day and have a good ole time. Other regular visitors to the buffet were Black-capped and Boreal Chickadees, Common Redpolls, Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers, Gray Jays and, of course, the effervescent Red Squirrel. Ravens came by, from time to time, but rarely dropped down to the feeder.  The Pine Grosbeaks were my favorite though.

The grosbeaks are actually a finch, the largest of the boreal finches. A group of these birds together is called, wait for it, a ‘gross’ of grosbeaks. They’re such a cool bird, and very tolerant of my puttering around the cabin; they’d generally ignore my comings and goings.

I grabbed a small white spruce sapling that some snow-machiners had run over and destroyed, and used it to set up the perch. For a background I hung a fleece blanket up and positioned it for a nice clean background. It’s a little bit ‘contrived’, but hopefully it works OK.

It was pretty amazing to see how quickly the birds learned of a new food source. Within a couple of hours of setting up the feeder birds were chomping down. I was able to keep the feeder squirrel free for a month or so, but soon enough the little fellow’s persistence paid off, and I had to reconfigure the setup. After a little while I just set up 2 feeders, far enough apart that the squirrel could feed at whichever one he chose and would tolerate the birds eating from the other one. He’d get pretty defensive if saw anything else eating ‘his’ supper. He regularly chased away Snowshoe hares that were easily 4 or 5 times larger than himself when they came by in the evening. I even heard one story, from a neighbor, of a red squirrel chasing a least weasel off a snowshoe hare carcass it had only just killed. That’s pretty darn awesome!

It was pretty cool to have the same birds drop by every day, and watch them closely. I came to recognize a few of the individuals, but no more than maybe 3 or 4. This male was pretty bold, and would approach readily if I ventured outside with some seed. The birds hung around through the coldest months, but pretty much disappeared by the end of March.

I hope to get back out to the park soon, and will see if I can find this guy hanging around the neighborhood.

Cheers

Carl

A bald eagle headshot, silhouetted against a glowing sunset, Kachemak Bay, Homer, Alaska. Click the image to view a larger version of the photo.

Hey Folks,

I read a great blog on art yesterday, by Paul Grecian. The subject was a play on the aural equivalent of the old adage, ‘if a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it does it make a sound’. Paul takes the viewpoint that art is a human pursuit, and exists only when it has a human audience. “If there is no human to perceive it and translate the experience into an emotion, then there is no art” - I’m not so sure I subscribe to that idea, for a number of reasons.

I think art is a verb; art is something we do. The results of that process might be nice to look at, or not, or nice to listen to, but the essence of art is creating. The act of creating is where art lies, not the products of that process. And we are not at all the sole creators. An American Tree Sparrow calling the tune of the alpine country is as artful as Joshua Bell playing a Beethoven concerto. The dance of the Japanese Red Crowned Crane is glorious. A Bower bird’s building her nest? The song of the wolf pack over the frozen night air is as spell-binding as Aretha or Stevie on a good day, no? What distinguishes human art from the performances of our fellow creatures, other than our own ability (and endeavours) to relate to it?

Art is essentially play. When we talk of making music, it’s no coincidence we use the term ‘play‘. Play teaches us who we are. Play is expressive, creative and participatory. It’s also innate. Play is both personal and communal. Play, unlike work, comes from within, though it may be honed via external sources. Play is in this sense a medium through which expression occurs. Whether that play is Michael Jordan soaring 15′ through the air to dunk a basketball or Nureyev leaping across a stage, I see clear parallels. Animals play all the time; I’ve watched grown grizzly bears play tug-of-war with a stick they found floating in a river.

Paul asks “Maybe it is enough for the creator of a painting, sculpture, photograph, poem, to perceive the work for it to be art, but how much more is it art when there is a second, third, or ten million observers, readers, listeners”? I don’t believe an ‘audience‘ is requisite for art to exist, because I suspect when we use that term we’re framing it awfully anthropocentrically. A wider perspective might be useful.

John Muir wrote that we may ‘receive the good tidings of mountains‘. Many indigenous cultures hold the view that inter-species communication is not just a common occurrence, but the norm. Inupiat Indians, of the arctic north, believe their song to be well-received by the wolverines, ravens and other creatures they share the frozen country with. Tlingkit Indians, of the Pacific Northwest, tell us that ‘glaciers listen‘ or ‘mountains listen‘.

Does a greater audience make something ‘more art‘? I’m listening to Oumou Sangaré sing Djorolen as I write this post, a tune she recorded with banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck – Listen to it here – Track #17. Most likely you’ve never heard of it, yet it’s one of the most beautiful pieces I’ve ever heard. Is the incessant, tawdry bellowing of Michael Bolton ‘more art‘ because his audience is far greater in number? American Idol is a TV show, it’s not a system by which we might seek to explore ‘art‘; if anything, I think we can make a reasonable argument that as our audience increases, the answer to ‘how much more is it art‘ would be a negative. Photography prints, for example, mass-produced and marketed via the Wal-mart world, are hardly ‘more art‘ than the hand-made, singly produced works of an artist in his/her home.

Have you ever seen the elephant art? The argument that the elephant needs to be trained to do this applies equally, I think, to people. I’ve taught guitar lessons for nearly 20 years now, and believe me, nobody picks up an instrument and plays music without some time and effort. Some folks spend tens of thousands of dollars, and more, attending schools to learn how to make art, yet we argue that elephants can’t paint like humans without training?

Some folks say that art is self-expression, though I think that’s a limiting perspective. We can’t even fully understand the ‘self‘, I’m not sure we can grapple with extensions of that concept just yet. But if art is indeed self-expression, then surely not just  animals, but indeed all of nature, engage art. The cry of a the loon, the raucous Howler monkey, the dance of the bumblebee, etc, are most certainly communicative, very clearly expressive. But what of the fading light at sunset, or the storm clouds of a darkening mountain range? Are they not forms of expression? Isn’t fall color nature’s last hurrah? Or the frenetic boreal forest on a sunny spring morning isn’t an expression of the joy of life? The wither leaf voices a life well-lived, perhaps as profoundly as any blues tune might.

Perhaps the art of the wolf pack isn’t the art of humans, but possibly that is the reason both wolf packs and humans exist. Parameters, though, can be funny things, and shifting them, even slightly, can often illuminate things more clearly. Certainly the art of Paul Grecian (a fantastic photographer) isn’t the same as my photography either. Nor is my photography the same as my music. I think more likely we tend to frame things in an extraordinarily humanistic manner; the tireless human ego never lets us down, eh? I might hazard that the bald eagle soaring overhead this afternoon looked down on myself, seated and eating my lunch on the back deck, and wondered why I wasn’t creating the same glorious circles his wheeling, informal glide carried him on, drafting the winds of the sky.

Cheers

Carl

Skolai Pass, the north end; Sunset over Skolai Pass, Wrangell St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click the image to view a larger version of the photo.

Hey Folks,

Skolai Pass has rocked into March 2010. This month’s edition of backpacker magazine, which I wrote about earlier, has a full page image of mine from Hole in the Wall, accompanying an article about hiking the Goat Trail. And this month’s edition of Popular Photography includes another photo from Skolai Pass by photographer Doug Roane, taken on one of last year’s Skolai Pass Photo Tours. Check out a large version of Doug’s amazing photo here. Better yet, take 15 minutes and browse the collection of images on Doug’s website. Awesome stuff!

Skolai Pass, the south end; Waterfalls overlooking Skolai Pass and Russell Glacier - Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, AK. For a gorgeous larger version, visit Doug's website at www.dougroanephotography.com

Doug’s photo was voted 2nd place in the March “Your Best Shot” competition. Huge congratulations Doug, a recognition well-earned. Unfortunately the magazine doesn’t have the image posted online, but if you grab a copy of the magazine, you’ll see it in print. Better yet, for just over a hundred bucks, you can buy a gorgeous 16″x20″ print off Doug via his website; it’s a fantastic photo, and I’m sure the print would like awesome hanging on your wall.

And, for the record, the photo is entirely Doug’s – he found the location, the waterfall, scouted it out, and headed down at first light to shoot it. I had nothing to do with this brilliant composition at all. I was busy sucking down coffee.

As I wrote in my recent post about the Hole in the Wall, Skolai Pass holds a special place in my heart. I saw my first ever grizzly bear there, first Dall sheep, first real glacier. My first ever hike in Wrangell – St. Elias National Park was from Skolai to Glacier Creek, down the infamous Goat Trail, and across the Chitistone River. I’ve spent SO many great times up there. When my parents came to visit me in Alaska for the first time a couple of years ago, I had to show them the place, and we flew over the area.

This year I’ll be back up in the area again, and look forward to the experience. Now Doug has set a new standard for photos from Skolai Pass, so my work is cut out for me. I can’t expect to match his portfolio, but I’ll see if I can at least make a respectable effort. This Sept 02-09 I’ll be there leading a Photo Tour, and will probably hike through the area earlier in the summer as well, en route down the Goat Trail to Wolverine. Can’t wait! If I can come home with an image even half as strong as Doug’s great shot here, I’ll be more than pleased.

Cheers

Carl

Great Horned Owl chick (owlet - Bubo virginianus), in Wrangell - St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. The chicks were just flegding, and learning to fly. This little guy had landed on the grounded, and before long flew off to a nearby white spruce tree in the boreal forest. Great Horned Owl, Wrangell - St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image to view a larger version of the photo.

Hey Folks

Just a quick photo for the weekend. A Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus) chick in Wrangell – St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. The young owls were just fledging, learning to fly, and this little guy wasn’t quite sure what to make of the weird guy with the camera, laying prone on the ground nearby.

Have a great weekend all.

Cheers

Carl

Miles from Facebook; Ross Green Lake, fall, Wrangell - St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click the image to view a larger version of the photo.

Hey Folks,

Remember this post a few months ago, comparing Facebook with Walmart? In that post I pointed out that Facebook had  more than 300 million registered users. Well, now, just 4 months later, Facebook has over 400 million registered users, and in January apparently surpassed Yahoo in traffic numbers, making Facebook the 2nd most heavily visited website in the US. Google, of course, is #1 (Skolai Images is #5 or 6, depending on if update the blog or not). But yes, that’s right, Facebook is now bigger than Yahoo. Until 2008, Yahoo was the #1 website in the world. News article here.

Google apparently love their #1 ranking, and have just released Google Buzz – if you haven’t already, you might want to click on my Buzz profile, follow and add and do all that good stuff, just to stay current. I still haven’t jumped into the Buzz too greatly, as I tend to be a bit slow on adopting new technologies; mainly because I need someone else to figure them out and show me how to use them afterward.

So anyway, Facebook is the #2 website in the US right now. I have just nearly 1300 friends on Facebook, which means around 399 998 700 users have NOT signed up to be my friends on Facebook yet. Better yet, Skolai Images has around 500 fans right now (thank you to each one of you who are Skolai Images fans). I figure that leaves 399 998 500 in my ‘target audience’. I like to think the cream of the crop have already clicked the ‘fan’ button on Skolai Images page, but I’m sure there’s gotta be at least a few potential fans on there that haven’t yet taken the plunge. If you might happen to be one of those folks who’ve yet to sign up as ‘fans’ of Skolai Images on facebook, ask yourself why not. Just do it. Become a fan today.

So what’s all this mean? Facebook has taken off? Social networking is a critical marketing tool? Yahoo sucks? I’m not sure. I do know that a dynamic medium like the web will constantly be chucking up winners and losers, and trying to keep tabs on it all is absolutely impossible. For now, Facebook seems to me to be a useful tool to promote what I do, keep tabs on what some of my friends are up to, stumble across some new and interesting sites, pages, photos, videos and articles, etc.

I think any business is somewhat silly to NOT have a Facebook page at this point, but I do have some friends, artists, who are not yet “down with the face”. I’ll do an interview in the near future to get some thoughts on why not. If my earlier commentary aligning Facebook with Walmart holds any water, I’m not sure ‘the face’ is entirely a good thing.

It’s clearly not for everyone. I wonder if their 400 million registered users include the “unregistered” users as well – including my dad’s account, which I had to deactivate for him last weekend? I’m not sure what the story was there; I got a call from my mum asking would I deactivate their Facebook account because when she tried to do it, it wouldn’t work. In that sense, it’s similar to a virus; you sign on, and it won’t leave you alone.

But surely all this chatter on social media comes with a cost? Do we really need ‘more‘ of anything at this point in the world, be it gossip, photos, updates, friends, clever quotes or information? I sometimes wonder if this frenetic pace will simply implode one day, and the superhighway of the internet will lock up. That probably wouldn’t be a bad thing for a while – I doubt the scene in the photo above would change in the slightest.

Cheers

Carl

Colorful duplex and garden, Orsono, Chile. Please click the image to view a larger version of the photo.

Hey Folks,

I’m depressed. I just watched “Manufactured Landscapes”, (2006) and if you haven’t seen it, I recommend you do. It’s a pretty intense documentary, featuring amazing photography by Edward Burtynsky. Burtynsky creates some powerful imagery of some of the most unlikely subjects – largely industrial wasteland. Coal mines, dams, factories (the opening shot shows the inside of a factory over three quarters of a kilometer long), parking lots, construction sites, destruction sites, you name it. It’s compelling stuff – the beauty in his photos is moving, yet discomforting. The reality he brings to the viewer is a bit overwhelming; this stuff IS our world, today.

The film is set in China, largely, though the narration points out that this industrial development is global; almost all of the products being pieced together in factories throughout China consist of raw materials shipped in from around the globe, then shipped back off to meet demand overseas. The stark reality here is that China’s environmental problem is our problem; insatiable demand from the “developed” world is altering not just the landscape, but the land itself.

Burtynsky captures this sense of the land much as a more orthodox landscape photographer might hope to. His eye for composition presents gripping graphic images; subtleties of light interact with his subjects, creating a tension that, for me, is spellbinding. The paradox of shooting such debris, for example, a metal scrapyard, with such an eye for beauty is unanswerable. The ambivalence or duality of expressing beauty in toxic garbage has me grappling with the situation; and I think THAT struggle is what really gives the film its power.

Comparisons to Scorcese’s “Koyaanisqatsi” are inevitable, but I found “Manufactured Landscapes” somewhat more connectable. It hit home, in part, I suspect, because Burtynsky shot the film with such neutrality. He states in the film that he tries to not say ‘this is bad‘ or ‘this is good‘ in his work, but leaves that open to the viewer. His message is both simpler and more powerful; ‘this is what is‘.

I think the film would lose some of its power had he set out to say ‘industrial development is toxic‘; his knack is to simply show industrial development and leave the judgement to the audience. Here the film becomes more abstract, and an infinite array of questions arise for the audience as a result.

Burtynsky’s film presents the viewer with a reality that we have somehow cultivated an amazing ability to simply not see. We all live this life, and consume endlessly, but largely pretend this is not ‘us‘, it’s always ‘them‘.

Watching a Chinese family sift through piles of metallic debris 150′ tall had me squirming on the couch; knowing I have a 20″ iMac computer sitting on a table in my room right now, that needs to be ‘tossed‘. How do I dispose of this broken computer? I can take it to a recycling center, which is largely a code-name we’ve created to not feel so bad about our waste. The bulk of this stuff isn’t recycled, it’s landfill.

How long will my new computer last? I got barely 5 years out of this last one, and the logic board (it’s 2nd) is gone. I ordered a new computer, and it’s faulty; Apple are now sending me a new one. I got the tracking info via email this morning and a shiny new 21.5″ iMac left Shanghai, China at 6:15pm. Cruel justice that tonight I watch “Manufactured Landscapes“, a film that powerfully exposes this kind of waste, consumerism, destruction and sheer devastation for what it is. The finger points squarely at myself.

And yet, now I sit here listening to “One Quiet Night“, by Pat Metheny, on iTunes, typing a blog on my computer. The kilowatts are, I’m sure to be reminded tomorrow, running up. I just watched a documentary that shows the despoliation of building the 3 Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, built largely to provide electricity to a growing industrial nation. A dam so large it displaced 3 cities, possibly as many as 1 200 000 people, and caused the earth to wobble on its axis as it filled with water.

The electricity generated in China is largely in order to produce commodities for people like myself, far across the world, who have little real need for them.

The other uncertainty in the film is the question ‘what do we do about this?‘ It’s so clearly a problem of such scale that nobody really knows. I certainly don’t. All I can say, unfortunately, is we need to do better. As Burtynsky says in the film; ‘it’s not a simple right or wrong – we need a whole new way of thinking‘.

Watch the film. Amazing stuff. And, if you can, figure out what we do about this mess.

Cheers

Carl

Backcountry cross country skiing (XC skiing), Wrangell - St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click the image to view a larger version of the photo.

Hey folks,

In honor of my ambitious plan to go skiing tomorrow, tuesday, I thought I’d post this scene from last spring – cross country skiing in Wrangell St. Elias National Park. It seemed like every day for the entire month of April was like this last year, and this is pretty much how I spent each morning – gliding over a nice crust of snow, surrounded by snow-covered mountain ranges, wide open spaces, blue skies and wildness.

I’m enjoying my time in Anchorage this year, but am OH SO wishing I were over in Wrangell – St. Elias National Park again. There is no place quite like it.

For those of you who might be newer to the blog, a quick little catch up; I moved full-time to Alaska nearly 3 years to work on a photography book on Wrangell – St. Elias National Park and Preserve, and spent my first 2 winters, or most of them, living in a shack in the woods. Absolutely amazing experience and opportunity that I owe to Jim Edwards and his wife Audrey; more than I can ever hope to thank enough!!! Fantastic people.

I’m still plugging away at my project, though I’ve slowed temporarily to catch up some more tedious office work – website updates, photo editing, etc. I’ve already been making plans for this coming spring and summer to shoot some images of the park in areas I haven’t yet managed to photograph, and broaden my coverage of the nation’s largest National Park.

Tomorrow I think I’ll go skiing.

Oh, and a special note. This time last year I was curled up on the floor, wretched, whimpering in pain. A trip to the doctor and one big fat prescription later, and an entire year has passed with no more gout for me. Gaia bless the inventor of Alopurinol! Gout-free is the way to be!

Cheers

Carl