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Ocras, Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska.

Last week, the day following my trip to the amazing Bear Glacier Lagoon, I went back into Kenai Fjords National Park for about a 12 hour boat trip – the highlight had to be the two hours we spent with a large pod of orcas, also known as killer whales.  I captured a lot of photos of them I liked, but this one with the mountains in the background was one of my favorites.

Bear Glacier Lagoon, Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska.

Can you see the kayaker?  I paddled around this massive iceberg to include Janine on the far side of the old tunnel to put the scale in perspective. She was well back from the arch and the iceberg, so that exaggerates the appearance of scale a bit, but it wasn’t safe getting any closer – but still, this thing was huge!

This amazing place is less then 15 miles from Seward – I have been trying to get in there for years and was finally able to this week, and all I could keep thinking was wow!  The icebergs are mammoth.  Hundreds of feet long, and maybe 50 feet tall – maybe more.  Truthfully, those are just wild guesses because I have no sense of scale out there.  The place is amazing!  The place is also crazy dangerous.  Icebergs would roll or break without warning – we watched 6 seals get thrown unexpectedly into the lagoon when a berg they were resting on rolled.  The 34 degree water coupled with the fact we were the only two people in the whole area just adds to the risk.

Gosh, I had more bear and puffin photos from Lake Clark National Park I was going to post, then we went to Denali, I still have a number of wolf photos from there I wanted to share, but now I have had a couple of great days in Kenai Fjords to share!  It has been nice to have a really productive couple of weeks since I really didn’t get too much photography done in the first half of the summer – I did get a ton of office work done, but being in the field is way funner!

Kenai Fjords Tour boat, Resurrection Bay, Seward, Alaska.

We had our first break in the rain in about a month late last week, and I was able to take advantage of our brief bit of nice weather to do an aerial photo assignment for Kenai Fjords Tours.  I love photographing from a helicopter with the doors removed, it is such a rush.  I have been able to do it many times in Alaska for clients like the Alaska Railroad, National Park Service and the Forest Service, and have even chartered helicopters in Los Angeles and San Diego.

I think one of the things that makes it so much fun is the challenge – and that started with the comment the pilot made before we took off.  He said if I lean out the door and have my head phones blow off that they would get sucked into the tail rotor and we would crash and die.  OK, I think I can remember that now.

So between the thrill of looking straight down to the ground, and having to think that your life depends on not dropping head phones or a camera lens, you have so much more to think about.  The composition is constantly changing, as is the light, background, exposure and focus.  You need to coordinate with the captain and pilot, anticipate when I’ll have a open shooting window, watch to keep prop out of the scene, because it will show in photos even though you don’t see it in person, keep track of the background.  I think you get the idea  – lots of action and excitement, an hour can really “fly” by!