I have lived in two rather large metropolitan areas: the Twin Cities, with its two million people, and Los Angeles, with, well, way too many people. I chose to move to Anchorage eleven years ago not because I was looking for urban, but because I was looking for wild with just the right amount of urban. I have grown in my knowledge over time that I had made the right decision, enjoying many years hiking, biking and Nordic skiing on Anchorage trails, enjoying fishing for salmon in its streams, savoring moments paddling in my canoe on its lakes, and enjoying picking berries in its forests and alpine slopes. Most of all, over those years, I have enjoyed photographing in the wild places of Anchorage, in its greenbelts, watersheds, valleys and coastal areas.

I have lived here only eleven years, but I get it. I get why Anchorage is a special place. I get what makes it stand out against Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York … all the cities where I have been. Anchorage has actual, real wild habitat within the confines of the actual city, and most of that is accessible by the public. You can see bear, moose, red fox, coyote, even wolves within the confines of the city. You can fish for salmon only a five minute walk from downtown. You can enjoy the call of a loon in the evening if you live near a lake. You can be on a mountainside picking blueberries after only a twenty minute drive or so.

I get it. But our mayor, Dan Sullivan, sure as hell does not.

About two years ago, I made contact with the Great Land Trust to put my photography to use in helping them to secure wild places so they could be set aside for conservation purposes. Simply put, the Trust works with private landowners who have property of some greater value to habitat, public use, or some other aspect that makes the property worth while in preserving for public use or conservation.  The Trust raises money to purchase the land, then either maintains ownership of the land and makes it available for public or conservation benefit, or donates the land to the state or local government, with the caveat that the property is preserved in a conservation trust, often in the form of a conservation easement.  The Trust will also negotiate with private landowners to obtain a conservation easement over the owner’s land, allowing access to public lands that are otherwise not easily reachable. Sometimes that involves purchasing private land outright so that existing parks and preserves, like Chugach State Park and the Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge, have more public access.

Last year, I met up with someone from the Trust to go photograph the Campbell Creek estuary in the Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge. Not that the estuary itself is not already protected to some degree, but the purpose of the visit was to highlight the estuary to assist in fundraising for purchasing private land that would provide public access to the coastal refuge in that area and ensure greater protection for the estuary by limiting development. You see, there is no legal public access to the coastal refuge on the west side of Seward Highway from all the way down by Potter Marsh to all the way up to Kincaid Park. Why not? Because half of the land is all privately owned, and the other half is blocked by an easement for the Alaska Railroad. The Railroad, a State-owned entity, considers it trespassing to cross the tracks to access the Refuge, and I have been threatened by Alaska Railroad security before for, God forbid, trying to access public land so I could photograph it.

So I took these photos of the Campbell Creek estuary in hopes that the Trust would be able to meet its goal to purchase the land. I saw the value of having the access, of making more of the coastal refuge accessible to the public. There is no reason that a handful of property owners should be able to block access. I had not heard of how the Trust was progressing in its effort to secure funding. Until yesterday.

I felt my stomach sink when I saw the headline on the Anchorage Daily News website yesterday: “Mayor turns down deal for park at Campbell Lake.” I read the article, and became increasingly furious as I read. I will not reiterate all of the idiocy that spewed from the mayor’s lips and translated to a few statements in the article, but the most egregious were his assertions that there is not enough money to manage the parks as it is, and the land would be better used to plant thirty or forty homes anyway. But the worst, the absolute worst, is his claim that we have too much parkland already. Among the too many parks that the mayor identified is the Lake George Preserve, which can only be accessed by float plane. Yep, I bet a lot of people can freely get out there.

I have to wonder if our mayor even uses the parks. Has he ever been to Jewel Lake on a hot day? How many families enjoy just that one park over a weekend? I will bet you anything, because I have seen that park on busy days, that it is a lot more than thirty families. The whole point of having parks is that they are enjoyed by the many – by whoever wants to – not just the few. They provide recreation, solace, peace and enjoyment to anyone, regardless of their station in life. They add VALUE to a city that a subdivision never could. When you look at national listings for livable cities, do you see a category for “Developable Land”? Or, do you see a category that highlights park and recreational space in the city? I think we know the answer to that question. Anchorage has not been named an All-America City four times because of the amount of its developable land.

And, I am sorry, but it is a lame, pathetic, hollow and convenient excuse to say the city cannot afford to maintain another park. The main point of this property purchase was to provide public access to the coastal refuge. You know what that takes? A trail. I have maintained hiking trails before. It is not that challenging, and certainly not rocket science. Given this mayor’s financial decisions to date, the fact that there is not money in the budget to maintain more parks, or maintain the existing ones better, is not for lack of money. It is for lack of respecting the value that those parks and open spaces provide to our city.

Instead, the city is more than willing to throw all sorts of tax breaks for developers to tear up the land and install ugly, gaudy, rapacious strip malls or other monstrosities, with little or no control over aesthetics. If our mayor wants sprawl, he can move to the Midwest. I would prefer if he moved to some smalfl suburb that really is a city wannabe, and he can sprawl and develop to his heart’s content. I just don’t want him to do that with our city. Providing $2.7 million to set aside this land along the Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge would provide more long-term value to far more people than any other expenditure of $2.7 million for private development could. And that is really the problem here, our mayor has no interest in the public good; his interests lie more in how much money someone can make on selling land to build thirty homes.

And let us not forget that it was a private landowner who made the decision to partner with the Great Land Trust to set aside this land for the public good. If we are so respectful of the rights of landowners to make decisions on the disposition of their land, why does our mayor not value that decision when it benefits the entire community?

I share images from Alaska with people from all over the world, whether on my website, my blog or my Facebook fan site. Quite often, the most feedback I receive are from images I have captured right here in the Anchorage bowl. People are often so amazed that so much beauty in the land can exist in an urban environment. They share their envy when I show them images of wildlife I have captured within Anchorage’s many suitable habitat areas. They tell me how lucky I am.

There is a reason that the Anchorage Convention and Visitor’s Bureau chose “Big Wild Life” for its marketing slogan. Anchorage is not great for its restaurants, its museums, its live music, its theatre, or all the other things you can find in other cities. That is because you can find them in other cities! I cannot think of another city this size in the United States where you can do all of the things you can do, see all of the wildlife you can see, in the outdoors, that you can do in Anchorage.

The mayor has simply reached a new low in his total and complete disregard for the values of green and wild spaces, wildlife and habitat in this city. If he does not see value in greater public access to designated park and refuge lands, if he does not see value in protecting and celebrating our wild and green spaces, if he does not see the value of our wildlife (see earlier comments this summer on brown bears by our mayor), if he does not see value in promoting what makes Anchorage great, then he is the mayor of the wrong city. I urge everyone to call, write, email, fax, or even make a personal visit to City Hall and tell the mayor’s office to reverse his position and allow the funding to go through for the purchase of the land to provide the access to the coastal refuge and provide even greater assurances that the Campbell Creek estuary will be protected and enjoyed.

I was up in Turnagain Pass last weekend, with a goal of working the flowers in the landscape.  I spent the night with some other photographers at the Granite Creek campgrounds in Turnagain Pass, just a short drive toward Seward from the actual pass itself.  During a recent drive through the area to go rafting on the Kenai, I noticed that the flowers were in abundance.  It turns out, they were just getting started.

A few years ago, my wife Michelle and I went down to the legendary Texas Hill Country near Fredericksburg to photograph the wildflowers.  Blue bonnets and Indian paintbrush dominated the landscape, with the occasional white poppy and other flowers.  What we had blooming at the time in Turnagain Pass rivals what I saw in Texas those years ago.  A dense mixture of wild geranium, chocolate lily, yellow paintbrush, northern yarrow, and scattered lupine provided a rich carpet of color.  While it was overcast, the textures in the clouds helped to add some interest to the sky other than a flat white backdrop.  As much as I would have preferred sunshine and some blue skies in there, I was glad it was not raining.

We spent time photographing a cascading waterfall along Bertha Creek, then photographed the meadows for the rest of the evening and again in the morning.  We stayed up late, chatting over a nice fire, enjoying the peace of the woods.  Although we could occasionally hear sounds from the Seward Highway, it was much quieter and removed from the confines of home, where so many devices and distractions can turn quiet into chaos.  Somewhere around 1:30, we turned in, each going to our separate campsites.  The sky was mostly clear by then with the occasional scattered clouds.  I set my alarm for 5:30, hoping that the clearer skies would remain.

When I awoke to flat overcast, I decided it was not worth it to get up and went back to sleep, occasionally waking to see if the skies had improved.  I eventually got up at 7:00 to still flat skies and woke the other photographers.  I had promised them coffee and a breakfast of eggs, bacon and blueberry pancakes.  It was time to get to work.

By the time we left, the skies were starting to again show some texture in the clouds, so landscapes would be possible.  The key to photographing landscapes with cloudy skies is to use a graduated neutral density filter to darken the clouds enough so that they are not blown out and show texture.  We went back to the meadows at the pass for about an hour or so, then headed down to the lily pads near Placer Valley.  Since I had photographed the lilies recently under overcast light, I tried a few new things this time, like photographing a group of leaves floating in the water or capturing some Infrared photos of the scene.  I learned that lily leaves are highly reflective of Infrared light.

And since the lupines were looking good along the Twenty Mile River, we stopped there for one last photo session on the way back to Anchorage.  The Arctic lupine patch that grows there along the highway had been in some decline in recent years.  The last good blooms were before I started shooting digital, which was back in 2004.  This year, however, there was a thick, solid line of lupines along the edge of the tide line, mixed up with the driftwood logs that had taken station along the high tide mark.  As much as the lupines themselves make great accents to any landscape photo, I enjoyed shooting the wood and the slough that runs through the mud from the river.  Again, the slight texture to the clouds helped to make several of the scenes really work nicely.  I keep hoping and waiting for an evening when the sun is out and reaching back into that far corner of the Turnagain Arm, but so far, no luck.  If I miss my opportunity this year, I can only hope that the flowers will be just as good next year.

After hearing the Violet Green Swallow chicks in the bird house above our side door for the last couple of weeks, and seeing parents fly in and out to feed them, we finally got our first glimpses at the chicks on Friday evening.  They had reached the stage in their growth and boldness to be sticking their fuzzy little heads out into the opening to speed up the feeding process.  On Saturday, I had a bit more of a chance to observe and photograph them as Michelle and I were outside working on the yard and house.

I set up my 500mm manual with my Nikon D300 on a Gitzo tripod with the Wimberly Head for greatest stability.  I simply wanted to frame the shot, then sit back and wait with a cable release.  My cue to start the shutter clicking was when the chicks would open their mouths - that meant a parent was on final approach.  At the stellar burst rate of 8 frames per second I get with my D300 in RAW mode, the entire feeding transaction would typically only last about four frames before the parent was off again.

But it was not until I was able to look at the still images and zoom in on the feeding parent that I realized how much food was being brought each time.  In one count, I saw as many as ten mosquitos in the mouth of the parent before it literally stuck its head inside the mouth of its chick to, presumably, spit out or regurgitate the food quickly and take flight again.  I had to wonder how the parent kept so many bugs in its mouth while still going out and catching more.  Of course, I knew it was one of the reasons why we like having swallows on our property; their propensity for eating mosquitoes.  It is the same reason we installed a bat house as well; no bats yet, but it can take a couple of years.  But when they do move in, they, too will contribute to the mosquito abatement by eating up to 5,000 mosquitoes per bat in a day.

Every once in a while, after the parent fed the chicks, we could hear some furious beating of wings from inside the house.  The chicks were building up strength in their wings, getting eager to fledge.  I knew they would not be ready to go on Saturday, but imagined it would happen sometime in the next week.   Later in the afternoon, I think the parents were starting to get a little tired of the constant hunting.  They started to take turns taking a brake on the peak of the roof top, just a few feet above and out of sight of their chicks.

On Sunday afternoon, we had some friends and family over for a little grilling in the back yard.  Later in the afternoon, one of the kids noticed a fledged swallow chick in the grass.  She wanted to tell the boys - oh, how cool they would think THIS was!  NO!  We advised.  We certainly do not want the boys to know there is a vulnerable animal in the yard, that is, if we want it to survive.  It seemed calm resting in the grass and clover, and we wondered what to do with it.  Soon, it was decided we would try to put it back in the nest.  We simply assumed it had come from the bird house above the door, as we were not aware of any other nests nearby.  Michelle put on gloves to handle the bird and I positioned the ladder and took a look inside the bird house - both chicks were there.  Michelle tried to put the swallow chick in the bird house, but it wouldn’t go - perhaps realizing that it was best not to invade a foreign nest - and flew/glided back down to the ground.

Knowing the number of outdoor cats in the area, we thought it best to take the chick and put it up someplace high.  We chose a corner of the roof over our large storage shed.  Our friend Joe go the idea to try to feed it an ant … no success.  The little chick, which Michelle and I later named “Icky” (short for Icarus), kept a tight beak.  We decided to build him a nest consisting of a small terrarium, a towel and some grass, and covered it with a towel to help keep in warmth.  After our guests left, Michelle and I wondered what we could do to help Icky gain his strength to where he could survive on his own.  Clearly he had been abandoned.  He soon stopped chirping out to his parents, perhaps succumbing to his fate.

We decided we would try to figure out how to feed him, then perhaps investigate whether the Bird Treatment and Learning Center could take him in.  I could not find anything using Google on feeding abandoned swallow chicks (just when you thought you could find anything using the Google), so I found the Bird TLC website and called their number.  As luck would have it, they have a relationship with the PET Emergency Treatment center.  PET takes in all abandoned or injured birds that need care after Bird TLC’s hours.  So, we called PET, learned what we needed to do, and took Icky over there.  They would feed him and keep him warm until Bird TLC could take him in on the next business day.  Eventually, he will be strengthed and cared for until he is strong enough, then released into our neighborhood so he could return to his original habitat.

The last time we had been to PET Emergency was under some very unhappy circumstances, so it was nice to be able to go there for a good reason.  And while we did not aid in natural selection by helping Icky out of his pickle, Michelle and I discussed on the way home how it is our ability for compassion and empathy that truly sets us aside from the other animals.  In the wild, it is unheard of to accept even animals from the same species into your care if they are not from the same family unit.  Yet we as humans have the capability to accept and care for all sorts of animals from various species, and have even spent thousands of years in genetically modifying wild animals to make them more compatible as companions.  Natural selection still has plenty of opportunities to take care of business.  There was no need for it to have success with our little feathered friend.

Shortly after I first moved here almost eleven years ago, I often heard people talking about “the Kenai.”  What “the Kenai” is really depends on the context.  Sure, there is the Kenai Peninsula, and there is the Kenai River, but there is also Kenai Lake and the town of Kenai.  Certainly, this body of land has met its share of creativity-free land planners who were at a loss at some point on what to name things.  But it also reflects how “the Kenai” is not just a place, but an idea.  It is often referred to as Anchorage’s recreational back yard, and so much of that is true.  “The Kenai” is where you go to get away for the weekend, whether it is to fish on “the Kenai” River, go camping on “the Kenai” Peninsula some where among its several public campgrounds, or float “the Kenai” River.

I went with a group of coworkers recently to do the latter, putting in at the common public landing near the Cooper Landing bridge over the headwaters for the Kenai River, and taking out at Jim’s Landing, just off the Skilak Lake Road.  All-in-all, a trip of some 12.5 river miles.

There are not many ways you can have a great, low-key seemingly backcountry rafting experience in Alaska than on the Kenai River.  The rapids, such as they are, never exceed Class II, you get lots of opportunity to see wildlife, you can take your time and relax while floating with a pole in the water (our raft caught a Dolly Varden that we released), and it’s not too crowded.  The main challenge is when you approach the confluence of the Russian River at this time of year, you have to run a gauntlet of anglers on both banks of the river fishing for the running sockeye salmon. 

I kept my camera gear in a Pelican case while floating and had ample time to take photos, as my boat had a single set of oars manned by Steve.  It was his wife, Karen, that caught the fish.  As is often the case, we stopped on a gravel bar a little more than halfway down the float to have a trail lunch.  Austin took out his fly rod and, often joined by his faithful retriever, Carta, tried his luck at catching something while wading out in the stream.  No luck.

The three-boat group continued on, taking out at Jim’s Landing.  I went with the group of drivers back into Cooper Landing to retrieve all the vehicles, then headed out to Skilak Lake to secure a couple of  public campsites on the lake, which lies in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.  It was cloudy, but with nicely-textured, dramatic clouds, rather than those flat, overcast clouds.  With a 0.9 Lee GND, I was able to really bring out the texture in the clouds and get some balanced exposures of the landscape.

Had an unexpected couple of nights chasing the aurora when I was down in Juneau on Memorial Day weekend.  Unexpected because you just get accustomed to there not being enough darkness for the aurora in Anchorage come early May.  I knew there was a good forecast for the evening, but had not expected I would get a chance to see it.  But there I was with my friend Chris Beck photographing departing cruise ships at night when we looked up and saw the aurora faintly dancing in the sky.  The party-goers who were enjoying bonfires nearby on Sandy Beach let out whoops and cheers of celebration.  Good to know even Alaskans can get excited about the northern lights.

The exposures were a bit challenging, to say the least.  My usual approach for a less-than-vivid display would be to open the lens all the way open to f/2.8, set the ISO to 400 or 200 and enter a manual exposure of 15-30 seconds.  But, in both cases on these two nights, I had to deal with an additional light source - either the city or the glaring bright lights of the cruise ship.  I found myself shooting at aperture priority and having as fast as 1/5 second exposures.  In retrospect, had I thought of it and had the time, I would have put my Lee graduated neutral density filters on - upside down so as to darken the city or ship.  But, the displays happened quickly and did not last long.  Unfortunately, at least for the cruise ships, I will not likely again have the unique combination of elements taking place to create the images.  And sometimes, that is all you get - one chance.

On our second night, after shooting the aurora with the skyline, we headed over to Mendenhall Lake in the hopes that we could get some aurora displays over there.  But, after much waiting, the aurora failed to revive for us.  So, instead, I captured a few images of the clouds moving across the moonlit sky, as well as the offending full moon peeking through some trees along the side of the road.

So, I am just a little behind in getting some blog posts caught up.  It happens.  Usually when I am visiting a location, my routine is to shoot in the morning, come back to wherever I am staying when the light gets bad so I can download and blog post, then take a nap.  In the late afternoon I head out, take more pictures, then come back and do the computer thing all over again.  Unfortunately, when I was in Juneau, I did not have that time in the middle of the day because I was photographing the state high school soccer championships.  My days started at around 4:00 so I could get up and go to some location for first light, and ended around midnight when I finally made it back to my hotel after a day and evening of shooting.

On one such early morning, I took the advice of friend and photographer Chris Beck to head out to Mendenhall Glacier and explore the Montana Creek area of Mendenhall Lake.  He suggested this area because of the accessibility of the lake and the different perspective on the glacier (as compared to the other side of the lake where the visitor center was located).  I explored the area he suggested for a little bit, photographing the calm reflections of the lake and some icebergs on the other side.  But I felt that when the sun did eventually come up, I would not be able to take as good of advantage of it from this side of the lake.  So, I drove over to the visitor center and started to hike along the western side of the lake, crossing several rather cold streams in my Teva and no socks-covered feet.

My goal for this particular morning was to just get a sense of Mendhall Glacier and its surroundings, particularly tracking first light as it hit the scenery.  I knew I would not have the time required to go out and explore for any great period of time, so I focused on the elements I could find that made the setting interesting.  A beaver dam here, a chunk of ice stranded on a beach there.  The relationship between the icebergs in the lake and the toe of the glacier, the juxtaposition of floating ice with a flowing waterfall.  So much of landscape photography for me is capturing the relationships among the various elements of a place; this is where my creative eye typically takes me, rather than what would look good on a postcard.  It’s ironic, too, because all of the photos I have ever seen of Mendenhall Glacier did not give me a sense of place.  I did not recognize any aspect of the glacier or its surroundings from any of the photos I have seen before.

 How far ahead someone selects the photographer for their wedding really varies.  For some, it may be within just a few months of their wedding.  For others, like Amanda and James, it could be as much as a year and a half out.  That’s why, much to their surprise, when Amanda and James approached me in the winter of 2008-09 looking for a photographer for their May 2010 wedding, I was not surprised.

Then, out of the blue several months later, Amanda called me with some terrible news.  Her father, Grant, had been diagnosed with cancer, with a rather gloomy prognosis of only a few months to live.  There was discussion of moving the wedding up to December 2009, and would I be flexible and able to move the date.  Of course, I responded.  But, ultimately, her father convinced her to keep her original wedding date and have the wedding she had dreamed of.  That got me to thinking about my role as the photographer and what I could do to help.  I always include an engagement portrait session in all of my packages.  I called Amanda and suggested that, instead of an engagement portrait session, why don’t we do a father-daughter portrait session?  Amanda liked the idea, and she was able to get David’s Bridal to have her wedding dress available for the session; Grant was able to secure a tux.  I set up lighting in her parent’s living room, and we spent about twenty minutes taking pictures.  Then, Amanda and her father had the dance that would have been the father-bride dance at the wedding reception.  I was grateful that I suggested the photo session, and even more so that Amanda and James had planned so far ahead.

Grant passed away five days later. Fortunately, I was able to process the images and post them online so he had a chance to see them with his daughter before he went beyond the veil.

Six months later, Amanda and James were able to have the wedding that they had planned for all those months.  The ceremony took place in Club Room 2 of the Hotel Captain Cook, with a view to the west and north over the Cook Inlet.  The reception was just down the hall in the Quarterdeck.  They went with the best for cakes and entertainment: Superstar Pastry for the cake, and Martin James from APE for the music and emcee.

But what Amanda and James also had going for them was a desire to do lots of portrait photos, and wanting to have fun doing them.  That really is what can make or break a photo session: the desire of the couple to take the time to relax, have fun, experiment a little and go with the flow.  As a result, I had several firsts for wedding portraiture: my first couple-in-a-tree portrait and my first Infrared portrait.  The IR photo can be a little challenging because the couple needs to remain perfectly still for thirty seconds.  But, Amanda and James pulled it off nicely, and we had the foliage of Town Square Park to help.

And throughout the evening, well after I was gone, a framed portrait of Amanda and her father sat on the parents’ table, watching over the evening’s festivities.  In the over twenty years I have been taking photos, that session with Grant and Amanda turned out to be the most rewarding thing I have ever done.

It is finally summertime in Alaska.  Time for hikes in the mountains or woods, time for gardening, time for things to grow and be green.  It is also when I start thinking macro.  And this thought process continues on through the end of summer and into the autumn.

You do not need a dedicated macro lens to do macro photography.  Many newer DSLR lenses have a macro feature that essentially bypasses the normal minimum focal length of your lens so you can move closer to the subject.  And that is the key challenge to taking macro photographs - your focal length.  The minimum focal distance of your lens depends on the focal length; that is, whether it is a 24mm lens or a 500mm lens.  The higher the number, the farther away the minimum focal distance is.  That is why many times you have tried to take a close up picture but realize that you need to back off to get in focus.

So, aside from having a lens with a macro feature built-in, there are other ways to reduce that minimum focal distance without having to have a dediced macro lens.  My favorite way is to use extension tubes.  Extension tubes are added onto the body just before the lens and, depending on the number of tubes and their size, can allow you to greatly reduce the minimum focal distance.  I have used extension tubes with my 300mm lens to produce great macros.  But the key for good images is to use them in conjunction with a lens that has a lens collar.  This allows you to shift the center of gravity to accomodate the extra length added on to the lens.   To further boost the power of your extension tubes, you can also add a standard 1.4X  teleconverter on the camera body before the extension tubes.  What does this do?  Like with a lens, it magnifies the power by 1.4X of anything that is added on after it.

Another good way to boost the macro capacity of a standard lens is to add a close-up lens to the end of the lens.  Screwing on much like a filter, a close up lens looks very much like a magnifying lens, only thicker.  While I am a Nikon shooter and use Nikon lenses, my favorite close-up lens is a Canon 500D.  So, for some really crazy magnifiying power, you can add a couple of extension tubes on in front of your lens and a close-up lens at the end of it.

But reducing that focal length is only one piece of the puzzle.  The other technical part involves stability.  You generally must have a solid tripod in order to produce quality macro images.  This both provides stability and allows you to take the time necessary to compose a good image.  In addition, you need a shutter release cable because even the act of pushing a shutter button (even if you do it gently) will produce camera movement.  Finally, if you have a camera body with a mirror lock-up capability, engage that when taking macro photos.  Every time you take a picture, the mirror that bounces light into your viewfinder flips up when the aperture opens to allow light into the camera.  That creates a slight amount of movement that could be the difference between a sharp image and slightly fuzzy one.

Now you are ready to take pictures.  There are no hard and fast rules of composition when it comes to macro photography.  There are many general elements of composition that you should always consider, even when taking macro photos.  The main elements of design are typically texture, color, lines, patterns and contrast.   A good example of contrast would be including warm (reds and yellows) and cool (blue) tones within the same frame.  You also want to control your depth of field and framing in order to manage your background.  Many times, macro subjects will have a lot of distracting elements (grasses, stems, twigs, branches, etc.) in the background, and choosing a shallow depth of field (f/4.0 or f/5.6, for example) will eliminate those elements by bringing them out of focus.

When working with such shallow depths of field, it is also important to control the angle of your camera with regard to the subject.  When shooting at a very shallow depth of field, only subjects that are parallel to the plane of your lens will be in focus.  For example, if you are taking a picture of a flower and you want the entire stamen area to be in focus, where you place your camera depends on the angle of the flower.  If the flower is opened straight up to the sky, then shoot straight down on the flower.  If the flower is tilted to the side at a 90 degree angle, then you need to get your camera low to the ground so that it is level with the flower and pointing straight at the face of the flower.  If you are shooting the underside of a fern to photograph its spores, then you need to get your camera under the fern and shooting up at the underside of the ferns.  Otherwise, you will not get the full face of your subject in focus.

The final issue to consider is lighting.  Bright mid-day sunlight does not do flower subjects any justice because of the harsh shadows and washed colors.  You want either diffuse light or early morning / late evening light.  This type of light will give you a better opportunity to highlight the colors and textures of your subjects.  If you find a great subject but it is mid-day light, you can still control the lighting to a certain degree.  Create a shadow to cover the subject (standing in between the sun and the subject is one way of doing it) or use a diffusing screen that distrupts the sunlight.  Such screens are commercially available or can be made at home using nylon mesh (like the type used to screen hops for making beer).  You can also consider directing light onto the subject.  If you have a backlit subject in the morning or evening and want to take advantage of that golden light, use a reflector to bounce light into the shaded areas.  In overcast light, consider using a little fill flash to add a pop of light to bring out the color and texture of the flower or plant.  The goal is to produce a lighting effect that is barely noticeable.  Using a TTL, off-camera flash with the exposure compensation set around -1.0 or so is a good start.  You will also want to use a soft box with the flash to avoid harsh shadows.

Now the only thing to do is get out there and look for the many subjects that await you on the ground, in bushes, and in trees.  And don’t forget to look at rocks, too, for lichens and interesting patterns in the rock itself.

I joined up with fellow photographer and friend Chris Beck who lives on Douglas Island to explore the evening sun.  We went to the end of the road, then hiked out on a boardwalk trail to the channel to watch for whales.  We saw only one, blowing way off in the distance.  The light was simply fantastic, and there were several boats out fishing for kings, along with the occasional kayak.  Given how calm the water was, I would like to have joined those kayaks in the water.

Afterward, we headed across the bridge over to Juneau to get a bite to eat.  Unfortunatley, the entire food industry in Juneau shuts down by 10:00 at night - pubs, fast food, even grocery stores.  We had to go over to the “Valley” to settle for McDonald’s.  I found it surprising that an entire city would stop serving so early, even with cruise ships in town. 

So, I flew down to Juneau this evening to spend a few days in our state capital photograhing the state soccer championships.  Since I have never flown to Juneau before, I got to see a lot of new scenery.  After taking off from Anchorage, we headed straight up the Knik Arm, over the College Glacier, and over to the Prince William Sound.  It is so easy to forget how close the Sound is; you certainly cannot think of how close it is when driving up the Old Glenn Highway. 

Since I was on the right side of the plane, I saw a lot of ocean and clouds after leaving the Prince William Sound behind.  The next thing I new, we were over some of the largest glaciers I have ever seen.  They were spilling out below me, sheeding ice through calving into what looked like a massive lagoon on the inside of a long barrier shoreline.  A little while later, we were making our way through the maze of islands, channels and bays leading into the Juneau area.  As we approached the airport, I saw no fewer then five cruise ships out and around in various parts of the Inside Passage, with two in port in Juneau.  Evening light cast a golden hue on downtown Juneau, with the two white ships glaring like beacons. 

While not as good as aerial photography in a small plane when you can ask the pilot to go around again for another shot, or to bank or lift a wing, I captured some of my best aerial images ever from a commercial flight.