The Photographers thread: Show us your stuff!!

[KC]

Not far enough.   

Just across the lake. I actually never thought there was danger because I was in a group of people. But, now seeing him tracking me and looking dead in the camera in several shots is a bit of an uneasy feeling.

That bear was hamming it up for the camera ... He thought you could get him a walk-on part in a Clint movie!

[Matt]

Happens all the time. 

[Matt]

This area is the Idaho Inlet, west of Juneau.  Saw some humpback whale spouts, but pretty far off in the distance.




Lots of otter, dolphins and harbor seals. This one poked his head up while we were kayaking. 

[Richard Earl]

Nice pics Matt!

[KC]

That seal wants a part in the movie, too!

[Matt]

We spent two days in Glacier Bay National Park. Day one was awful weather. Just cold, rainy and a low mist covered everything. We saw a tremendous amount of otter that first day, and as I'm going through my photos, I'm finding that I didn't get any good shots. The lighting was bad, and I don't think we got close enough, though I can't remember if I tried using my long zoom. But, although I didn't get a good shot of the otter, I do love this scenic shot. All those "bumps" in the water are otter, mostly swimming on their backs with their four feet in the air.  A shot of trivia here -- can anyone say what a group of sea otter are called?



Sea otter are now one of my favorite animals. They are so cool.  This article is really interesting, if anyone is interested in learning more about sea otter. Also, you can see some good pics, which are waaaaaay better than anything I got, and a nice video at the bottom:  http://www.alaskamagazine.com/articles/featured/the-rebound-of-the-sea-otter/

[Matt]

That seal wants a part in the movie, too!

This seal really wants a part in the movie.

[KC]

A shot of trivia here -- can anyone say what a group of sea otter are called?

An otter-bahn? 

[Matt]

An otter-bahn? 

An otterwise great answer, but no. It's a raft of otters.

[KC]

This seal really wants a part in the movie.

He otter be in pictures!

[Matt]

Ya otter got it, or ya don't. 

(I had to use a Boston accent to make that one fly).

[Matt]

The 2nd day in Glacier Bay was as dark and gloomy, and cold and rainy as the day before. This was a bit disappointing for photography. We were in the midst of gorgeous glacier country, and we could only see what was a few feet ahead of us. This is Marjorie Glacier, which was kind enough to calve just as I was ready to photograph it. That's the big "explosion" you can see at the base of the glacier in this photo:



The glacier itself was about 200 feet tall, and we went out on a skiff to get closer to it than we could in the bigger boat. Without a size reference, it's hard to image how tall these are. But, if you see the iceburg that broke off in the foreground, our skiff would be about half to a third that size, or roughly the height of the small dark area on the bottom left side of the glacier.  Behind the glacier, which we can't see at all, were beautiful, tall peaks topped with glaciers of their own. The challenge, photographically speaking, was keeping the lens dry.

A few hours later, the rain stopped, and though we still had a thick mist, and not much background scenery, I was happy to have enough natural lighting to get some good shots of this small island area inhabited with at least a hundred seals.



I have a wider shot of it elsewhere, but I like this one because a flock of puffins flew by just as I shot this. Puffins aren't extremely rare, but they're a lot more rare than the cormorants and seagulls. So I was happy to get them in the shot.

No puffins, but I prefer the composition of this shot. This may be the one I blow up and frame. Still looking for the right photo for that. But there's still lots more to look through.

[KC]

Gorgeous, keep 'em coming.

By coincidence, another friend of mine is in Alaska right now, but the only pictures she takes are with her iPhone. NTTAWWT, but ... yours are better.

[Matt]

It looks like her weather is about as bad as it was when I was there. Is she in the Juneau area?

[KC]

They've been up there for a few weeks ... I had this note from her on August 11:

Until today (in Anchorage) it was sunny & warm, but now it rains.  The air is good however, the salmon are running (we're watching), and we enjoy ourselves.

And a couple of weeks later, this picture, helpfully titled "Sky, beach, clouds, mts."

[Matt]

Nice! It looks like she's on the rails that travel from Anchorage to Denali (and beyond). Some of the people I met on my trip had also been to Denali, and they spoke of the amazing wildlife they saw there. If I go back to Alaska, I'll probably go up to that area. I've complained about the rain, but in actuality, as I've learned, this is the true Alaska. When the sun shines, the locals call it "cloud failure".  Southeast Alaska is a temperate rainforest, so all those pictures of Alaska with the gorgeous blue skies and the striking glacier-topped mountains are anomalies. The week before I was there, the locals spoke of the gorgeous rainless week they had -- bright skies and warmer weather. It was the only nice week they had the entire summer, and they flocked outdoors to enjoy it. It sounds like your friend was there for that week as well.

Here's a wide shot of that island of seals. The pictures don't tell the whole story. They are great communicators, and you could hear them barking far away. Although it looks like they're just lying about, there's always a few sliding down the edge of the island into the water. They're fun to watch, and I did take a fair amount of photos of them.

[Matt]

I like this shot because you get a peek through the clouds, and out of nowhere you see these huge mountain peaks right in front of you, which you had no idea were even there. At first, you think you're just seeing blue sky, and then you realize what you're looking at:



As the sun battled the clouds, trying to negotiate just a few hours of time where it could shine, I took this shot. It looks like it was shot with a blue filter, but it wasn't:



The sun wins the fight with perfect timing. We anchored down for a sunset stroll along the forest trail of Barlett Cove in Glacier Bay National Park:





Beautiful lush moss covers everything but the man-made pathway. When you walk on it, you sink a few inches with each step. I've never walked through a rainforest, and I thought it was beautiful.

[KC]

Those are all gorgeous! I love the radiant sun at sunset especially, and the one where the sun won the battle with the clouds.

Could you see any of the eclipse way up there? Of course ... even if you could, it was probably cloudy all through it!

[Matt]

No one bothered even trying to look for an eclipse. The day I just posted was the day of the eclipse, which probably happened about the time we were at the glacier shown in that photo with the calving. It was just so thick with fog, we didn't see the sun until (as you see) just an hour before sunset.

How about in NYC? Did you get to leave the library to go outside and see anything?

[KC]

Yes! I had hied over to the local camera emporium B&H the day before (Sunday morning) and queued up for some of the last eclipse glasses to be had in New York City. They only came in five-packs, so I had four extra pairs to share with my colleagues in my office. My appreciative boss sent around an e-mail saying anyone whose schedule allowed it (some people work on public service desks) should take the opportunity to go outside and take a look. In our location, the peak time was about 2:45, which I arranged to coincide with my lunch hour. I got the following shot on my phone by pure happenstance:



You're seeing an office tower just south of the Library, where I was standing on the wide plaza off  Fifth Avenue with a whole mob of other eclipse gazers. When I snapped this picture, the sun was slipping in and out of light cloud cover. You see the actual partially veiled sun at the upper right corner of the tower ... but look on the facade. That crescent spot is a reflection of the sun's reflection, about 70% eclipsed.

I had no idea I had captured that until a couple of days later when I was looking back through my photos.