One of my new Steller sea lion images is featured in the Alaska Exposed section of the December 2010 issue of Alaska. Typically, it takes me a few months to process my new images before I get them on my website or submit them to my agents. However, Alaska saw this image on my blog back in September and immediately contacted me about publishing it. In my experience this is an unusually quick turn-around from creation to publication.
I was recently interviewed by the Gesellschaft Deutscher Tierfotografen (Society of German Nature Photographers). Previously interviewed photographers include Andy Rouse, George and Verena Popp, Norbert Rosing, and Kevin Schafer. My interview is currently featured in their triannual magazine Forum Naturfotografie. It spans 14 pages and showcases 12 of my favorite photographs. The double page opener is my image “East Pond Vent 1”, taken in Volcanoes National Park in Hawaii. You can view the entire article here, however, it is in German.
My image “Spray Park Wildflowers 1” is featured as the double page opener of the hiking feature in the June 2010 issue of Seattle Met. Spray Park is my favorite alpine location at Mount Rainier National Park and is the closest side of the mountain to my home in Seattle. During the brief summer hiking season, I depart my house in the early afternoon, drive for about 3 hours, and hike the 3 miles up to the wildflower meadows to photograph the sunset. It is both a blessing and a curse if the wind is not blowing, a blessing because the fields of lupine and paintbrush are not blowing around in the wind, but a curse because of the swarms of blood-thirsty mosquitoes that rival any that I have seen in Alaska or Canada. Spray Park is higher than Paradise on the south side of the mountain, so the wildflowers peak about 1 week later, typically mid-August. Based on the cold summer that we are having, I estimate that the wildflowers are going to be a little late this year, which is similar to the year that I created this image during the last week of August.
I am pleased to share my latest cover image on Alaska Airlines. This is the 3rd time this year and the 2nd month in a row that they have selected one of my photographs for the cover of their in-flight magazine. I photographed this brown bear diving for a salmon when I visited the McNeil River State Game Sanctuary & Refuge in August 2006. My buddy & I were fortunate to be the only visitors the last week of August, so the ranger gave us a private tour. Even he said that he had never been to some of the areas that we hiked to. I had applied several years in a row for the lottery but never got a permit. Like most people, I had applied for the height of the salmon run and the bear congregation in July. This time I applied for the last week of the season and received a permit. So did 8 other people, but none of them showed up. I’ve was told that it is also easy to get a permit for the first week or two of the summer. So, keep those shoulder season dates in mind if you ever want to photograph brown bears and have McNeil River all to yourself.
One of my underwater humpback whale images appears on billboards in New Zealand this month. (Anyone in NZ able to send me a picture?) When I first set out to make a living as a professional photographer, I initially found success selling fine-art prints through galleries & art shows. That business model ceased being effective with the down-turn in the economy, so I turned my focus to my website. Many of my modest sales now come from having good SEO. This sale is a perfect example. A design firm contacted me a few weeks ago after searching the web, offered me a reasonable usage rate, I emailed them the file, and they wire-transferred the money to me. How easy was that?
I am pleased to share my latest publishing accomplishment. My “Paradise Wildflowers” image from Mount Rainier National Park is the June 2010 cover on Alaska Airlines! This is also my 2nd cover with them this year. This picture is my all-time most successful art print and has been licensed numerous times since I created it in 2003. Most of my regular readers will know that I shot all of my landscape images up until last year with a Pentax 67 system. One of the challenges of that system was that I had limited depth-of-field compared to a 35mm system. In order to overcome that limitation, I created this image with Toyo 4×5 view camera, a Rodenstock 65mm large format lens, and a Horseman 6×9 roll film back. (Did I lose you, yet?) With the large format camera, I tilted the lens so that the flowers would be close to the camera while keeping the summit of Mount Rainier in focus. I also used my Singh-Ray Warming Polarizer and 2-stop Hard Graduated Neutral Density filter with Fuji Velvia film. I think that the exposure was about 10 seconds at f32, which is a life-time when waiting for a slight breeze to stop rustling the wildflowers. Now when I photograph flower landscapes like this, I use my Canon 5DmkII with a wide-angle lens with camera settings more like f16, 1/4 second, and 200 ISO. Since this was the first image that I ever took with my 4×5, I was still learning how to use it that morning. I mentioned that I used a 6×9 roll film back. All of my images that I shot were the 6×9 format except for 1 frame that overlapped the frame before it. That image perfectly cropped itself in the camera to 6×7 which is my favorite photo that you see here. Beginners luck?
My Reflection Lake Sunrise image is featured prominently in a new Washington State tourism advertisement. This ad will be shown in markets throughout North America during the next year. If you are looking for an exciting travel destination, Washington offers an incredibly diverse experience. It is one of the few places where you can experience islands, beaches, mountains, glaciers, forests, & deserts all during the same trip. I always recommend early September to first time visitors. It has the most reliable dry weather and the summer crowds are gone. Are you ready to experiencewa?
I am pleased to announce that my article about using my own boat to photograph Southeast Alaska is in the May issue of Popular Photography! The opening double page image is of a humpback whale swimming along with its mouth open after bubble-feeding. My article features 10 landscape & wildlife images from my last 3 summers in Alaska. I look forward to working with Popular Photography again in the near future.
Coincidentally, it is almost summer, which means it is time for me to photograph Alaska. My summer plans include using my boat for several weeks in May-June to visit Icy Bay on the south side of Wrangell-St Elias National Park and Russell Fjord in the Tongass National Forest. Later in the summer, I will photograph humpback whales, and in August I am shipping it to Whittier where I will base it on Prince William Sound for the next few years. Wish me luck!
My image “Racetrack Sunset” will be the April cover photo of Outdoor Photographer! The Racetrack is a seasonally dry lake located in the northern part of Death Valley National Park and is famous for its moving rocks. With the right combination of rain and wind, the rocks move slowly across the surface of the playa, leaving a track as they go. I photographed this amazing rock at sunset during my first visit to the Racetrack in January 2006. I was enthralled with the unusual arc that it had created as it was moving. This rock was still in the same location during my recent Death Valley National Park Tour.
I am pleased to announce that my image is featured on the cover of the February 2010 issue of Alaska Airlines magazine! Be sure to check it out if you are on an Alaska Airlines flight this month. Also, the opening double page image to the humpback whale article was photographed by my friend Brandon Cole during a previous trip that we took together. I have the exact same image, since we were next to each other in the water when we both almost got run over by a humpback whale mother & calf. Photographing whales above or below water is my favorite kind of photography. It also helps that I am comfortable swimming in the open ocean in 10,000 feet of water and enjoy staring down into the blue depths underneath my fins.
This is a great blog post to transition from my dramatic landscape photography to more of my new wildlife images from the last year. I’ve been tightly editing my image archives the last few weeks and have come across a few keepers that are worth sharing in the days ahead. If you are like me and admire these creatures, check out my gallery of available humpback whale photos.
