2012 Arizona Calendar.

2012 Arizona Calendar.

This is really cool – Tide-mark published a calendar with 12 of my Arizona photo along with a nice write-up about me – although the photo of me on the inside cover was a risky move that could hurt sales.    I believe these are available through out Arizona, but I see they also sell them on Amazon:

Cover of the October, 2011 Alaska Magazine!

I have had so many other photos to share this summer that I have avoided posting some of my recent covers – most of them travel guide related publications.  But… as an Alaskan, there is no ignoring having a photo on the cover of Alaska Magazine!  It is always a wonderful honor to say the least!  I think this is my third cover for the magazine.

This is a photo of the Tongass National Forest near Ketchikan, Alaska.  Here is the original photo without the text:  Tongass National Forest photo.

Talkeetna, Alaska.

I always liked how  it appeared that the person on the left was telling a typical Alaskan fish story – “it was at least this big!”

I hadn’t seen this cover yet until I stopped to get gas the other day – nice surprise!

HDL Magazine based in Israel did a real nice feature on me – I believe it should be the current issue.  I think it was a nice feature, but since I don’t read Hebrew, I suppose they could be saying a lot of mean things and I wouldn’t know it.  But, I don’t think so – the article was based off of an extensive interview from earlier this winter.

The first 3 photos are all from Kenai Fjords National Park, the rest from Prince William Sound, except for one which was captured in Grand Teton National Park.

Tonto National Forest, Arizona.

Here is another cool cover that came in the mail recently – this photo of Tonto National Forest was used on the cover for the Fountain Hills – Rio Verde – Tonto Verde phone book.

As most of you know, we just spent a couple of weeks just outside of Fountain Hills this winter.  Although this area does sell well for us, I think a big reason we talk ourselves into re-visiting the region is for the amazing mountain biking at the McDowell Regional Park.  If I had to pick just one place to ride – I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I would pick McDowell even over Moab, Utah.  Well, along with the mountain biking, the mild winter weather helps too. 

Ulysse travel guide to Alaska and the Yukon.

I haven’t hit you with any shameless shelf promotion in awhile, so I figured it was ok to work this one in – the cover of the Ulysse travel guide to Alaska and Yukon!  If you look close, you can see that Janine barely survived the crop on the right.  Even at the time I captured this photo I had hoped to place Janine a little more in front of the mountain, but with the land climbing sharply to my right, and Janine being in an area where you aren’t allowed off the trail – this was about as close as I could get.

Long time subscribers here may remember another cover we did for Ulysse.

It is a really nice looking guide book, that is if you speak French.

Cascade Chaos by William Slusher.

Since this book arrived in the mail yesterday, I thought it was the perfect time to throw in a little shameless shelf promotion.    This is the original photo of the grizzly bear from Denali, as you might guess, in the original, the bear isn’t carrying a red rose – the was added by the publisher with our permission.  I haven’t had a chance to read the book, but it is a fictional story about the restoration of grizzlies into Central Washington.  Thanks for the nice signed copy of the book William!

Your Big Backyard magazine cover!

Here is another really cool recent cover – I hadn’t seen this magazine before, but it is a great one for kids produced by the National Wildlife Federation.  This particular issue is on desert wildlife and also includes this photo of an American Kestrel from Anza Borrego.

Cover - Endless Vacation Magazine

It is an honor to have an image on the cover of Endless Vacation – a large travel magazine based in Mexico, so I thought I would do a little shameless self promotion blog post to share the news.

Las Vegas – this has got to be the polar opposite of photographing brown bears in a remote Alaska camp!

Zion Adventure Guide

We haven’t had any cool covers to share lately, but this one is!  This was produced by the Zion Natural History Association.

You might recognize Janine out front trying to look relaxed (it was a long ways down) on the amazing Hidden Canyon Trail.  Parts of this trail are literally carved into the side of the cliffs with just a chain bolted to the wall for support – notice the four people in the background.  It is pretty cool the Park Service even allows a trail like this.

But Zion has lots of awesome trails like this.  The Angel’s Landing Trail climbs way above the valley floor and then traverses along a narrow, very exposed ridge, with again, just a chain for protection.  Or the Zion Narrows hike which leads up a narrow canyon with 1,500 foot high walls and just enough room in the bottom for a river.  The Subway is another amazing hike – after flipping through this book I’m thinking we might just have to add Zion into our Fall travels!

This looks like a great book – lots of photos, maps and charts to go along with the wealth of information.  I don’t see it on  Amazon have a feeling this book is only available in the Zion National Park Visitor Center, but it is definitely worth picking up.

Gallery wrapped canvas print of the Copper River Delta, Chugach National Forrest, Alaska.

I am very, very honored to have an image selected for the Alaska Art Bank.  The State of Alaska hasn’t added to their art collection since 2001, and only selected 17 pieces of art out of 556 entries from 110 Alaskan artists!  I am so proud to be included among such a small group of artists.

I captured this photo a couple of years ago from a helicopter with the door removed.  I have shot from helicopters many times in Alaska and California – it is a blast!

We don’t offer canvas wraps on our on-line shopping cart, but have had a number of people special order them – they turn our great, and are ready for hanging.

Anza-Borrego Desert State Park on the cover of Country Extra.

We made it back to Alaska safe and sound, it is great to be home!  I was hoping to post a new Alaska photo, but rain and ugly weather discouraged that so I thought I would do just a little bit of shameless self promotion.

This was in the mail when we came home – I captured this photo back in a trip in 2008 and I thought it looked pretty cool on the cover of the March issue of County Extra!

Bell-s 2010 Inside Passage Travel Guide

I’m proud to say our photos are on the covers of all three Bell’s Alaska travel guides again this year!!  Great travel guides produced by a wonderful family, I’m proud to be a part of their guides again this year.   You can find these travel guides throughout Alaska at most visitor centers, restaurants and other businesses.  If you are in Alaska be sure to pick them up, they are full of useful information.

To get a feel for just how small the little grizzly cub is in the top photo, keep in mind those are dandelions.  Sure dandelions grow big up here, but still… !   This little guy was outside of Haines, Alaska.

Bell's 2010 Alaska Mapbook

The Mapbook cover was of a sunrise in the Seward Boat Harbor – it was a post on the blog at the time.

Bell's 2010 Alaska Highway Guide

The final cover is of Emerald Lake, Yukon Territory, Canada.

Stanton Lanier December Peace Cover

Sticking with a music theme, we just received a bundle of our mail and in it was this CD by Stanton Lanier.  As I sit here in the desert in shorts and sandals, I gotta admit seeing my snowshoe tracks in winter is a little hard to relate to, but a fun reminder of our wonderful home!

For the many new followers to the blog – don’t worry, I won’t post every time we make an image sale – that would be boring.  But, I do like sharing covers because, well, I think they are fun.  So I post them from time to time under the category Shameless Self Promotion.

To Stanton – we weren’t able to get through to you on email for some reason, so just in case you see this – the cover looks great – thanks a lot, and thanks for the autographed copy.  We look forward to listening to it soon!

To learn more about Stanton, check out his website:  Stanton Lanier.

California History The Journal of the California Historical Society.

I wasn’t sure what I would write about today until I made my daily walk to the Post Office and found this in the box!  It is a thrill and honor to be on the cover of such a wonderful publication.

This photo was captured along the California’s Central Coast near Big Sur a few years ago – I would love to spend some more time along the beautiful stretch of coastline.

2010 Alaska Wildlands Calendar

I have tried to keep the shameless self promotion to a minimum, but I have always kinda liked this photo of Harriman Glacier in the Chugach National Forest, so I was excited to have it selected for the cover of next years calendar.

I believe these are available at most National Park visitor centers in Alaska.  Here are some more Chugach National Forest photos.

Welcome to Las Vegas sign, Las Vegas, Nevada.

Sorry to disappoint – I don’t have some crazy story about a late night last night!

You see, on June 5th, Warner Bros. is releasing a major motion picture with that name.  Like with most movie releases, the actors perform endless promotional interviews telling everyone just how funny the movie is, and how awesome everyone got along during filming.  But unlike most motion pictures, this time, the actors will be doing their interviews while sitting in front of a collage of Las Vegas photos, including our above photo of the Las Vegas sign!  I think that is pretty cool. 

Hopefully it works out better for them then Viva Laughlin!

This year, I'm very excited to report that we have the cover image for all three Bell's Travel Guides!

In my last post, in response to a question I shared information about our top grossing photos.  I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the above photo.  The boxing bear cub image you see on this travel guide hasn’t been used in an advertising campaign, this kept it off the top grossing list, but in terms of total number of sales, it has to be our most popular image.  

These guys are so cute, it is easy to understand why.  Not only has this image appeared on travel guides, in calendars and on post cards, but it receives a fair amount of attention on the internet as well.  In just over a year, it has been viewed by over 100,000 people on flickr!

This photo was captured in early spring of 2005 in Denali National Park.  The weather was clear, so we got up well before sunrise, probably about 3:00 a.m., and started driving across the Park with the hope of capturing Denali “the mountain” at sunrise.  I hadn’t seen spring cubs in Denali for years, and research reports from the Park confirmed for two years in a row spring cubs had not been spotted anywhere in the Park.  That just added to my surprise as we drove around a corner near Polychrome Pass and spotted a sow with three spring cubs right in the middle of the road!

I immediately turned the engine off, rolled down the window and began photographing.  The bear cubs were so fun to watch!  The bears actually walked down the road towards us a bit and got fairly close, before turning around and heading back up the road.  After walking a short distance, the bears left the road into the thick vegetation leaving us with goose bumps and huge smiles!  We watched for the cubs the rest of the trip, but never did see them again.

Cover of the Kenai Peninsula Tourism Marketing Council Travel Guide (KPTMC), Alaska.

This is actually a composite of two of our images combined by KPTMC.  You see, they really liked this photo from Harriman Fiord in Prince William Sound.  Problem was, even though it looked like it could have been captured in Kenai Fjords on the Kenai Peninsula, savvy viewers would certainly recognize this as part of Prince William Sound which is outside the Kenai Peninsula.  So they replaced the background with an image of ours from Kenai Fjords.  They did such a good job that when this arrived last week, I forgot it was a composite – it even fooled me!

A self portrait from a solo backpacking trip along the Harding Icefied, Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska

 Well I’m sure that title got your attention, and my friends are probably laughing and rolling their eyes – I better quickly explain.

Evidently, CBS has a daytime TV show entitled The Bold and Beautiful.  It was explained to us that one of the characters on the show is this guy who does a lot of adventure travel.  Well, CBS contacted us last week and purchased 7 prints of adventure activities to decorate the set that will make up this characters office.  These pictures will appear to be personal photos of the character during his travels and adventures.  The photo of me above is one of the seven.  So star is a big exaggeration – but someday, somewhere, a photo of me just might be visible on the Bold and Beautiful.  lol