Kenai Fjords

Close-up of an iceberg, Aialik Glacier and Aialik Bay, Kenai Fjords National Park, near Seward, Alaska.

Here is one from my Kenai Fjords National Park trip from earlier this month.  It has been such a busy month that this trip seems like a life time ago!

I photographed it both ways, this version with the rocks along the bottom, and a version without the rocks.  The rocks give it a visual anchor, and some context, the version without rocks is more of an abstract.  So which do you like better?

I wasn’t going to post the version without the rocks – you can either scroll up until the rocks are out of sight, or use a piece of paper or your hand to block the rocks, and that will basically give you the same image.

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Brown bears, Lake Clark National Park, Alaska.

I have a brief minute so I thought I would share a quick photo from this morning.  We are having a great trip!

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Brown Bear, Lake Clark National Park, Alaska.

The first hour into my Alaska bear photo tour - things are starting great!

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Sunset in Northwestern Fjord, Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska.

Here is the view from the boat from our second nights anchorage last Saturday night.  We had some nice light the next morning as well – what a great trip!  This was our first nights stop:  Aialik Glacier.

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Sunrise over Aialik Glacier, Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska.

I photographed this from the boat during last weekends Alaska photo tour into Kenai Fjords – this is where we anchored for the first night!  And if this view wasn’t enough – we could spot bears on the nearby beach!  This is the same beach we went to shore on and photographed bears and icebergs.

Unlike the cruise-ships, my tour doesn’t offer a formal night – that is unless jeans and xtra-tough boots count as formal ware.   But, I think this kind of view more then makes up for it!

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Sunrise in Aialik Bay, Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska.

I was interviewed recently  by the Manlleu Camera Club in Barcelona Spain.  Since they asked a lot of great questions, I thought I would share a link to the interview here.  I answer questions about my typical year, the best way to sell photos and who some of my inspiration have been.  To read the interview, click on this link:  Manlleu Camera club.

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Aialik Glacier, Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska.

Imagine being anchored up for the evening in front of these amazing mountains and very active tide water glacier!  This is your view as you enjoy dinner and breakfast – tell me what restaurant can compete with this.  When we are not eating meals in front of this amazing view, we are running to shore to a place with wonder fields of wildflowers, in a place that often has numerous black bears.  And, this is just the first evening!

When we aren’t here, we are watching humpback or orca whales, checking out a huge puffin colony, or spending time photographing eagles, sea otters or at one of the numerous sea-lion haul outs.  I have timed this years tour around the peak of the wildflower bloom – the landscape possibilities are endless.  This is an awesome tour.

All this, for less then the cost of a typical 3 day tour into Kenai Fjords without a photography guide!  To learn more, check out our page here:  Kenai Fjords National Park photo tour.   I have room for two more folks.  I haven’t updated the page, but I need to add – the boat I am using now has two separate sleeping cabins, so a couple can now come along and have their own cabin.

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Our tour at our first night anchorage in front of Aialik Glacier, Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska.

I have had a number of inquires, and can now finally say I have my dates for next summers overnight photo tour into Kenai Fjords National Park!

This was our boat at anchor the first night of last years tour.  The boat will look a little different next year thanks to the addition of a second sleeping cabin to the back half – although I’m not increasing the number of participants, so this should give everyone a bit more room and privacy.

Let me tell you a bit about last years tour to give you an idea as to how amazing this trip is.  On the first day, we spent some time with a group of sea otters and then we explored along the coast getting up-close to waterfalls and amazing pinnacle rock and arch formations before finally running into a group of humpbacks   We spent a fair amount of time with the humpbacks, then broke away for some harbor seals and finally a nice pod of dolphin – the dolphins played in our bow wave for a pretty long time.  Later that day we checked out the action at Holgate Glacier, an active tide water glacier, before deciding to anchor for the evening in front of Aialik Glacier – this evening we spotted a black bear on shore and saw some huge calving events on the face of the glacier including one of the biggest ones I have ever seen!  That is the beauty of spending time in such an amazing place!  No one wanted to go to bed in case they might miss something.

The next morning we went to shore and explored a number of lagoons and open fields where we not only saw a number of eagles, but were able to photograph a nice black bear.  After going back to the boat for a warm lunch, we motored over to the Northwestern Fjords where our captain placed the bow of the boat at the bottom of a waterfall – an amazing waterfall that tumbled in multiple places down a 1,000 shear granite wall!  We spent the night well in the Northwestern Fjord in direct site of a couple dramatic glaciers.

For the third day we went out to the Chiswell Islands and photographed puffin and other sea birds.  We took a detour thanks to a report of orcas, but weren’t able to find them.  But we did see a number of sea lion rookeries and haul outs, more eagles and sea otters, as we cut across and worked our way along the dramatic coastline of the East shore of Resurrection Bay.

Every trip will be a bit different thanks in part to our Captain and his many many years of boating /leading tours and working with wildlife researchers in the area.  He will be in touch with the other day tour boats so we will have a good feel for where the wildlife is at any given time – but, we can enjoy it in the nice evening and morning light when all the people are gone!

You can learn much more about this trip on our Kenai Fjords National Park Photo Tour page.  Last year this tour didn’t fill until spring, but given how much faster the bear photo tours filled this year (they filled in about a month despite more then doubling the number), I wouldn’t wait.  If you have more questions, feel free to send us an email or give us a call.

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Orca or Killer Whale, Kenai Fjords National Park, near Seward, Alaska.

Back-lit spray from a couple of orcas from this past August.

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Aerial photo of Aialik-Glacier, Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska.

I’m trying to get caught up on my editing going back to last August!  Here is a little different view of Aialik Glacier taken from a helicopter with the door removed a few months ago.  If you look close, you can see waves in front of the glacier – it must have just calved.

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Bear Glacier, Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska.

Flying into the lagoon where we went kayaking last month.  Bear Glacier isn’t a tide water glacier – the strip of land you see in the distance separates the lagoon from the ocean.  I’m looking forward to spending a couple nights here next summer!

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A pair of killer whales, Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska.

I can be difficult to catch these guys as the break the surface and “blow”, but that task was made much easier here thanks to the nice clear water – we could actually see them underwater getting ready to surface!  This was from my trip into Kenai Fjords National Park a couple of weeks ago.  Some people might be surprised to learn that killer whales are actually a member of the dolphin family.

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Janine kayaking in Bear Glacier Lagoon, Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska.

I thought I would give you a break from my Alaska interior fall color posts and share another one from our trip a couple of weeks ago to the amazing Bear Glacier Lagoon.

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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.

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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!

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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!

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Northwestern Fjord, Kenai Fjords National Park, near Seward, Alaska.

Some interesting patterns in the water from a bit earlier this summer.

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An Aialik lagoon, Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska.

Our recent weather pattern has been bringing us our fair share of rain – that can happen during the summer, hopefully we will see a little more sunshine soon!

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Humpback Whale

I never get tired of watching whales – especially when they are as active as this one was!

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Cataract Cove, Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska.

Although it is hard to photograph, I love this cove!  The cove is surrounded by 500 to 1,000 foot high granite walls covered waterfalls that drop straight into the ocean – it is an amazing sight and sound.  Not only are there lots of waterfalls, but we also spotted a number of mountain goats.

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Dall's Porpoise

It is so fun to watch these playful animals playing in the bow wave of the boat!  We saw lots of Dall’s Porpoise – we had encounters all three days, usually multiple time each day.

Canon 1Ds III and 24-105 at 24.  Exposure of f/6.3 at 1/500 of a second and ISO 640.

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Iceberg, Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska.

One nice thing about cloudy weather -glaciers and icebergs appear much bluer, and this iceberg was especially blue.  On a sunny day, this thing would have looked much whiter.

We had a nice variety of weather on my recent three day trip into Kenai Fjords National Park, everything from rain to sun – it provided a lot of different options for photography.

This image was hand held from a boat at f /8 and 1,000th of a second at ISO 400.

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