Thanks for your patience!

Life is good.

From day photo treks on a glacier to Aurora Borealis Photo Tours in Fairbanks, and many options in between, we’ve got some really exciting tours for 2012.

I was just going back through some of the images I captured while on St. George Island, in Alaska’s Pribilof Island Group, and realized that I still have several to share on the blog. I’ll be posting more images over the coming days and weeks.

Arctic Fox Pup, St. George Island, in the Pribilof Islands, Alaska.

Stay tuned…

You may have seen the video promo for my ‘Wild Lands & Wild Life: St. George Island’ exclusive photo tour. If not – look below!

So, what’s all the excitement about?

First of all – this is an incredible location! Hundreds of thousands of sea birds, thousands of northern fur seals, arctic fox (up close and personal), and mind-blowing landscapes to photograph.

The tour typically runs $6,890. This is an all inclusive price:

• Lodging in Anchorage while on tour
• Lodging in St. George while on tour
• All transportation while on tour including:
• Air transportation from Anchorage to St. George Island & back to Anchorage
• Ground transportation on mainland and St. George Island
• Day cruise with Kenai Fjords Tours in Kenai Fjords National Park
• All meals while on tour
• All guiding & permits (where applicable)
• Photography instruction if requested

St. George Island

This brings the tour price to an unbelievably low $5995 per person for solo travelers

or $5,640 per person for double occupancy!

This brings the tour price to a great deal of $6,390 per person!

One of the greatest privileges I have is the opportunity to show off some of Alaska’s wildest and most beautiful subjects to my tour clients. Many of my clients have dreamt of Alaska, as I did, as one of the ultimate canvases to draw inspiration from. It is my honor to be your guide, to show you what makes my heart race so rapidly, to return to areas that take my breath away at each visit. Since ‘words are so beggared’, we will make the best use of our camera gear to make our own abridged translations through images.

2012 is going be a very exciting year for photo tours and workshops with Sixtyone North. Not only will I be offering 4 incredible group photo tours, but I am also unveiling a completely new series of guided photo tours designed with lower cost, flexibility, shorter duration and complete customization in mind.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

I invite you to visit Alaska on a Sixtyone North photo tour in 2012. Together, we will do as Mark Twain suggested so eloquently. We’ll Explore. Dream. Discover.

Your adventure starts here - Alaska Photo Tours & Guiding

Here’s a quick preview of just one of the offerings for 2012! I can’t wait to return to St. George Island, in the Pribilofs!

Stay tuned…

There is an old-ish saying that I first heard from Galen Rowell,

“The difference between a professional and an amateur photographer is that a professional takes more bad photographs.”

Over the past few years, I’ve been focusing more on my landscape photography. St. George Island gave me a very unique opportunity to shift my main focus to the incredible wildlife, albeit with a few distractions where I was forced to resort back to my landscape roots – as you will see below.

"Visions of the Bering Sea" St. George Island, Alaska. ©2011 David Taylor/Sixtyone North (Canon 5D Mk 2, Tokina 16-28mm @ 16mm. 1.6" @ f/22, ISO 50)

The wildlife photography was stunning though, such a wide variety of subjects – most within close proximity. As we planned for this trip, I lamented not being able to pack a 600mm lens along with a teleconverter. I was concerned that I might not be able to get the images I desired with just a 400mm lens. We decided to go with what we had, and make the most of the situation.

When we arrived on the island, we were met by one of the very friendly and informative locals who drove us to our hotel – we hurriedly unpacked, grabbed our gear and headed out the door. We made a b-line for the cliffs at the edge of town. A two minute walk. As we neared the sea cliffs, I could hear the ragged snorts and bellows of the northern fur seals, and the cacophony of thousands of sea birds. Beyond the bellowing, snorting and screeching, the pounding surf of the Bering Sea reverberated against the basalt formations and rugged coastline.

Horned Puffin, St. George Island, Alaska. ©2011 David Taylor/Sixtyone North (Canon 7D, 100-400 @ 400mm. 1/100" @ f9, ISO 640)

Dozens of  kittiwakes were circling above the ledge, and I knew there was a decent chance at finding other bird species on the cliff walls below. We approached the precipice slowly, worried we might cause the birds to scatter and fly away if they felt threatened. As I peered over the edge, the world fell away and the rocky coastline revealed itself. My eyes were instantly drawn away from the incredible boulder strewn beach to hundreds upon hundreds of birds perched on rocky outcroppings below my feet. Not just kittiwakes though. Horned puffins. Tufted puffins. Parakeet auklets. Least auklets. Common murres. These were not 600mm + a 1.4X teleconverter subjects. These were (often times) just a few feet away! A 70-200 would do well, but a 400mm lens was perfect. Within 20 seconds of standing upon those cliffs, my worries of ‘not having enough reach’ completely melted away.

Arctic Fox Pup, St. George Island, Alaska. ©2011 David Taylor/Sixtyone North (Canon 7D, 100-400 @ 400mm. 1/200" @ f9, ISO 640)

More to come! Stay tuned…

Ps – I’m on Google+ now! If you are a member of Google+, please consider adding me to your circle(s).

No words to describe it. Poetry! They should’ve sent a poet.

"At World's End" St. George Island, Alaska. ©2011 Dave Taylor/Sixtyone North (Canon 5D Mk 2, 24-105 mm @ 24mm. 2.5" @ f/18, ISO 50. B+W Polarizer)

Alaska has been kind to me. I’ve visited locations most photographers dream of & seen things most will never witness. But Alaska is always full of surprises.

I spent the past 4 days at a location that I’ve been dreaming of visiting for several years.

St. George Island sits just 45 miles to the east of the Continental Shelf. In this region, everything about the Earth’s crust is precipitous. If you were able to stand atop the ‘cliffs’ above the Continental Shelf, you’d already be in nearly 600 feet of water. But vanishing into the blackness below would be a drop off that would swallow the Grand Canyon whole. Twice. The sea floor drops over 11,000 feet, nearly straight down.

St. George Island rises out of the ocean to form a varied plateau. The island’s volcanic history is evident along every section of coastline. Basalt columns line and comprise the staggering sea cliffs that encompass the island, geometric patterns reminiscent of The Giant’s Causeway, in Ireland. The cliffs rise dramatically from the crashing Bering Sea, some are over 1,000 feet tall. Inland, the treeless landscape has a distinctly arctic feel, rolling plains and tussocks, interspersed with small ponds. At this time of year, you can’t walk 5 steps without being confronted with vast fields of wildflowers, most notably are the arctic lupine.

But the big draw, for me, was the island’s wildlife.

Arctic Fox Pup, St. George Island, Alaska. ©2011 Dave Taylor/Sixtyone North (Canon 7D, 100-400 @ 400mm. 1/250" @ f/9, ISO 640)

Vast amounts of birds call this area home, between 2-4 million in all. I’m not a great birder, but in our all-too-short time on the island, we spotted several species that I’ve wanted to photograph for quite some time. Not only did we spot them, but they were in numbers. And at very close proximity. Horned and Tufted Puffins, Common Murres, Least Auklets, Murrelets, Red-legged & Black-legged Kittiwakes, Parakeet Auklets and Cormorants. It was utterly incredible.

We (including my good friend, Scott Slone – of Alaska HDTV & my collaborator on our new venture, AlaskaPhotoVideo.com) also had several great encounters with the island’s resident Arctic Fox population. One of the fox families we photographed had 8 very cute pups! Mom was quite busy making multiple runs a day to bring back enough food to sustain the large family. We watched her return to the den with a kittiwake, and saw her carrying a dead puffin another time. Good job, mom!

Parakeet Auklets, St. George Island, Alaska. ©2011 Dave Taylor/Sixtyone North (Canon 7D, 100-400 @ 400mm. 1/500" @ f/7.1, ISO 640)

The people of St. George are very friendly, always offering to help or to tip us to yet another incredible location or situation.

One thing is certain about this location, I can’t adequately articulate the feelings we were overtaken with while on St. George Island. I don’t think it has fully set in yet, how lucky we both were to be able to witness a place so spectacular. I hope my photographs will do a better job at filling in the gaps my words can’t occupy.

In closing, I would like to thank the warm-hearted people of St. George Island. Thank you for welcoming us onto your beautiful island with such grace and helping make our trip such an absolute success. Also, a huge thank you to Pen Air, for providing our transportation to and from the island – the service was great and everyone on staff was fantastic to work with, from beginning to end. Finally, a big thank you to Tanaq Corporation, for all of the ‘on-island’ logistical help, lodging and rental vehicle.

As always, it is a pleasure to travel and work with Scott Slone of Alaska HDTV.

Tufted Puffin, St. George Island, Alaska. ©2011 Dave Taylor/Sixtyone North (Canon 7D, 100-400 @ 360mm. 1/100" at F/7.1, ISO 640)

This was a true collaboration, in every sense of the word. Our success is due primarily to your generosity, hard work and vision. I can not wait to work with you again, and revisit St. George Island, in the future.

Some of you might be interested in knowing that I will be offering an exclusive photo tour to St. George Island, next year. I’m still working on the logistics, but I will announce the full details here as soon as possible. Again, to paraphrase “Contact”:

They still want photographers to go… Wanna take a ride?

I’ll have more images up soon, stay tuned…

One of the clients even cried.

“Wait. I thought you said you had an ‘excellent time’, Dave?”

My client (who shall go un-identified) was seated next to me during one of our aerial photography sessions. I turned towards them mid-flight and caught the glint of a tear rolling down their cheek. I asked if everything was ok. The reply was so poignant.

“It’s overwhelming…”

I couldn’t have said it any better. At the time we were in a gentle right turn in our Cessna 180, banking low over the Bering Glacier. We had just spent the previous day at Childs Glacier, spending much of the afternoon standing a mere .19 miles from the calving face. Childs Glacier is an amazing sight, even for me (a ‘seasoned’ glacier enthusiast). It stands several hundred feet tall, directly across the raging Copper River – which undercuts the face of the glacier when water levels run high in early summer. The ‘terminus’ runs just under 2.5 miles across, and crawls steadily forward from its source, nearly 8 miles up-valley. 200-foot tall blocks of ice plummet downward and crash into the surging Copper River.

Impressive, to say the least.

Childs Glacier & Copper River - ©2011 Dave Taylor/Sixtyone North (Canon 5D Mk 2, Tokina 16-28/2.8 @ 16mm. 1/5" @ f/22, ISO 50)

Compare that to the Bering Glacier, the source of my clients current fascination. The calving face we were passing over runs over 4 miles across. But this is just a small ‘lobe’ of the Bering Glacier, a ‘branch’ off the main ‘trunk’, if you will. The full mass of the glacier can not be represented in numbers, at least not in a way that carries the immensity in a respectful tone. It is 46 miles wide at it’s terminus, and runs 140 miles into the Bagley Icefield. Together with the Bagley Icefield, the Bering Glacier System covers most of the core of the Chugach Mountains and encompasses a staggering 1,900 square miles.

Overwhelming? Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.

One of my favorite photos from the trip was from our flight back to the comforts of the lodge. We had just spent several hours on a very remote beach; miles of powder-like sand, incredible sea-stack islands, dense lupine fields, dozens of bald eagles and several fresh bear tracks wandering the beach.

And a whole lot of a solitude.

We were paralleling the western side of the Ragged Mountains, heading north.

How’s that for a proper moniker?

“Ragged” Mountains. They were true to their name.

I glanced out the window to my right, scanning a bit more ‘fore’ than ‘aft’. Compositions happen quickly in aerial photography, so you have to be ready at a moments notice. A composition that looks brilliant, but caught too late, on the first pass might completely change with slight altitude adjustments, a shift in cloud coverage or turbulence might make a second ‘try’ impossible. So ‘visualizing’ an image from 1/2 mile away (or far less) can make the difference between a great shot and an ‘any way I can get a mulligan’. It’s rare that I use golf terms, so that should carry some weight;)

Just in front and to our right, a patchwork of incredible beauty stretched out to the base of the Ragged’s. I have never seen an area so lush and full of early summer. The varieties of green spanned every shade – truly a rainbow of green. Pockmarking the pools of grass were lines of gray and turquoise – the mighty Copper River Delta spending it’s last energy as it neared the Gulf of Alaska, and the open ocean beyond. Ponds dotted the landscape, taller willows and trees lining each section of water. Laid out like a carefully sculpted and manicured golf course – water hazards everywhere. So many channels and waterways, so much undiscovered beauty, a land bordered by mountains and the ocean, but owning too little elevation change of its own after glaciers plowed over the Delta in the past ice age.

A nearly flat, yet utterly dynamic environment.

"Into the Labyrinth" - Copper River Delta, Alaska ©2011 Dave Taylor/Sixtyone North (Canon 5D Mk 2, Canon 24-105mm f/4L IS @ 32mm. 1/640" @ f/6.3, ISO 640)

It is a zone in transition, first ground to a level plane by crushing ice and rock, then divided and sectioned by rushing silt-laden and near freezing waters, and finally being swallowed whole by the ever present tidal changes of the North Pacific Ocean.

It took my breath away.

So much so, that I’m not sure if I’ll ever catch it.

As professional photographers/guides/educators it is OUR job to make the art more inviting, not alienate people for asking questions. I asked a LOT of questions when I got started in photography – heck, I STILL ask a TON of questions every single day. If more of the ‘iconic’ photographers that I looked up to responded to my questions with “You should have read all of my articles”, I likely would have developed a fear for asking further questions (which would have limited my development as an artist) or turned me off to the medium all together.

It seems that the internet has been The Greatest Thing & The Worst Thing ever for public discourse. On one hand, you are given full permission to discuss (ad nauseum in many cases) every topic known to man with anyone willing to participate in the conversation. On the other hand, the considerable ambiguity of an internet pen name, or the implied relative ’distance’ of the people involved in the conversation allows people to check their respect and dignity at the chat room door.

“We have a fence between us (the internet and all of its wonderful ‘series of tubes’), therefore I can say whatever the hell pleases me with little concern for recourse or impact”.

This has spilled over to everyday life, unleashing the ‘Inner Asshole’ and ‘Barely Contained Bitch’ that Sigmund Freud spoke so elegantly and frequently of… or, perhaps that was ‘Ego’…

The same person that coined the phrases “mental illness”, “neurosis”, “ego” and that studied the part of the brain that could not be controlled (the unconscious), would love the interactions of the internet. If for no other reason that to watch people’s ‘unconscious brain’ swell with pride as they let loose their super-ego on mere mortals less educated than they or lower on the artistic food chain.

Two challenges for you; implement them into your life or suffer the consequences.

1) Icons (or wannabes, like me:D) – accept every question that someone asks, without hesitation. Dwell on it and then respond with a relevant and respectful answer. Thank the person for asking – they thought enough of you to consider you a resource and expert. That is a compliment. Receive it as such. Remember that time that you didn’t know everything, and an Icon had the patience to answer questions from a mere mortal.

2) People trying to learn (and this should be ALL OF US, no matter what our stage or status) – continue to ask questions of those you respect. We (meaning, anyone in a educational role… implied or ‘entitled’) appreciate you being willing to take the time and the confidence of jumping up and saying “hey, I have a question”.  Ask more questions, and if the response confuses you, ask a follow up – heck, ask a slew of ‘em! Thank the Icon for their help. Then later on, when you think that you know everything and someone asks you a question, remember that stage when you asked questions because you were so eager to learn.

Should you have any questions about my work, any techniques, locations, recommendations, best places to find chocolate in Alaska… don’t hesitate to ask. I love this stuff, and it is my pleasure to help.

And now to gracefully step off my soapbox…

Sea otter floating in eastern Prince William Sound, near Cordova, Alaska. ©Dave Taylor/Sixtyone North.

Friday of next week, I’m leaving for Cordova, Alaska, to guide my annual “Wild Lands & Wild Life: Cordova” instructional photo tour. It is easily one of my (if not THE) favorite photography locations in all of Alaska. Who can argue with glaciers, sea otters, rain forests, moose, wildflower fields, eagles, and so much more? All while staying at a beautiful adventure lodge that sits just above the calm waters of the eastern Prince William Sound. Amazing locations, diverse wildlife, plant life and ecosystems, great food & fantastic people. It’s my Hidden, Alaska. This year’s tour is all filled up, but I’m taking reservations for 2012 – and I’m considering offering two (back-to-back) small group tours to meet the demand. Shoot me an email, if you are interested in joining me in 2012.

For the entire month, his video “Alaska Railroad Adventures” (featuring the incredible Alaska Railroad journey from Anchorage to Seward – and back again!) will be featured on Tripfilms.com‘s home page. Tripfilm’s quote says it far better than I ever could:

We are riveted by all of AlaskaHDTV’s stunning shows that capture the natural beauty of Alaska and showcase the people in a new light.

Well said. Congrats my friend. Well deserved!

You can follow Scott (and Alaska HDTV) on Facebook & Twitter.

Without further ado, here is Scott’s award winning video – “Alaska Railroad Adventures”!

This is a quick (very quick – only 3 seconds total) timelapse video of a 13 1/2 minute aurora storm from my first of 2 “Aurora Borealis, Winter Landscapes & Wildlife” photo tours – February 26-March 3 of this year. Winter has left us and we are full into spring mode here, in south central Alaska – but the aurora are still whirling overhead. Tonight, in fact, we are predicted to have a decent showing. Hope to view it from my comfy bed – wish I could make it out tonight to film it, but it just isn’t in the cards. Perhaps this weekend…

Stay tuned…