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…

Wild Lands & Wild Life: Denali Highway Fall Color Tour – 2011

Clearwater Mountain Sunrise, Alaska ©2011 Dave Taylor/Sixtyone North (Canon 5D Mk 2, 70-200L f4 IS @ 200mm. 1/5" @ f/16, ISO 200)

I’m also going to try something new out for the rest of 2011…

Want to make $100? I thought that might get your attention!

Meet the F.R.I.P. – Friend Referral Incentive Program. Don’t you just love acronyms…

5 easy steps:

• Post a link to my Alaskan Photo Tours & Workshops page on your personal blog, website, twitter, and/or Facebook page.
• Refer a photographer friend (or friends) to my 2011 Alaskan Photo Tours & Workshops page
• Have them sign up for a 2011 photo tour with me & mention you as a referral with a way to contact you
• The client must complete the photo tour
• Check your mail for a $100 check

Restrictions?

• Well, you can’t refer yourself. But yes, your wife/husband can…
• The client must complete the photo tour before you get your $100 check
• NO restrictions on the number of clients you can refer, except for tour size limits. Refer 4 people that complete any tour, get $400!
• In order to qualify, you must post a link to my Alaskan Photo Tours & Workshops page on your personal blog, website, twitter, and/or Facebook page.

If you are already a client on an upcoming tour  (or a previous tour) and you refer another new client, you get $200! Again, no limit on the number of people – except until tours are full for 2011. That on top of the already-in-place $200 off for any returning client, and you can really add up some savings!

Not too shabby, huh? Time to start spreading the word!

Super Moon Over Pioneer Peak, Alaska ©2011 Dave Taylor/Sixtyone North (Canon 5D Mk 2, 100-400 @ 100mm. Mountain exposure = 15" @ f/11, ISO 800. Moon exposures = 1/400" @ f/8, ISO 1600)

It’s now 1:23 Am… not quite sure how I managed to figure out how to save this image file to the hard drive from Photoshop… I am ‘plum tuckered out’. Jena & I headed for the “Palmer Moose Flats” area this evening to photograph the so-called “Super Moon” as it paralleled Pioneer Peak in its rise towards the heavens. I had checked “The Photographer’s Ephemeris” program a few days ago and knew exactly where the moon would rise and at what time. I also used the programs “Geodetic” feature to predict the apparent elevation of the moon in relation to the mountains, and found that the full moon should follow a path almost precisely parallel to the northeastern flank of Pioneer Peak. The Geodetic feature showed that it would maintain a fairly constant elevation clearance of this ridge from moonrise to when it would pass the peak, from 9:13 pm to roughly 10:56 pm. So I set out to attempt a series of photographs, 15 in total – 1 every 5 minutes (programmed by my Canon TC-80N3 remote timer). The composition would remain the same, as would the exposure – it would just record the moon’s path over the 75 minutes. After the series was taken (once the moon had moved well out of frame), I took one additional photograph exposing for the sky & mountain silhouette. When I got home, I merged all of the moon images together into one photograph using PS CS5, then merged them with the silhouette/mountain frame. The camera was not moved once throughout the nearly 2 hour sequence.

It was a really fun experiment and I’m happy with the results. For me, the moon seems to making a summit push on Pioneer Peak. I’d like to hear your thoughts, so please chime in below in the comments!

Stay tuned…

Aurora Borealis over Alaska Range, Denali Highway, Alaska ©2011 Dave Taylor/Sixtyone North (Canon 5D Mk 2, Tokina 16-28/2.8 @ 16mm. 15" @ f2.8, ISO 3200)

Gathering Aurora Storm, Alaska Range, Alaska ©2011 Dave Taylor/Sixtyone North (Canon 5D Mk 2, Tokina 16-28/2.8 @ 16mm. 20" @ f/2.8, ISO 3200)

I’ve got a BUNCH more aurora images from this trip to post – including a ‘movie’ of the aurora activity… it blew my mind.

Stay tuned…

Aurora over the Alaska Range ©2011 Dave Taylor/Sixtyone North (Canon 5D Mk 2, Tokina 16-28/f2.8 @ 16mm. 20" @ f/2.8, ISO 1600)

Here are a few more aurora borealis photos from my recent “Aurora Borealis, Winter Landscapes & Wildlife” Photo Tour. The first was taken nearly 12 miles into the wilderness from our lodge. The mountains in the background are a branch of the Alaska Range. The second image was created by turning the camera skyward – straight up in fact – directly at the aurora’s ‘corona’. From this position, I could capture the direct impact of the aurora overhead. The light spilled from above, scattering and swirling in all directions. What an amazing night!

Stay tuned…

Photographers and Aurora, Clearwater Range, Alaska. ©2011 Dave Taylor/Sixtyone North (Canon 5D Mk 2, Tokina 16-28/2.8 @ 16mm. 5" @ f/2.8, ISO 3200)

Just a quick post here with a few more aurora photos from last week. I’m still trying to catch up on lost sleep. In another 3 weeks I should be around par. Then, of course, I leave for round two.

Stay tuned…

Aurora #1, Clearwater Range, Alaska ©2011 Dave Taylor/Sixtyone North (Canon 5D Mk 2, Tokina 16-28/2.8 @ 16mm. 20" @ f/2.8, ISO 3200)

I’m just back from nearly a week deep in the heart of the Alaskan wilderness. I spent six days with 9 very talented South Korean photographers at an exclusive lodge 65 miles from… well, anywhere.

I’m heading back in just 3 weeks for a repeat. Yes, Jena. I promise to start packing earlier for this trip. This exploratory tour turned out to be much more an expedition, than a simple photo tour. We were confronted by extremely cold temperatures (-35 at times), and highs just over 0. The group never once complained about the adversity though – they just kept shooting and producing tons of incredible images!

We went 5 for 5 with the aurora; every night of the tour we lucked out with ‘the best show above the earth’. 3 of the 5 were ‘quite good’ shows, 2 were fantastic, and very early Tuesday morning was… well, unequivocally incredible.

We moved our group to a small knoll a quarter mile from the lodge. Above us and rising over the lodge were the Clearwater Mountains, just south of the mighty Alaska Range. Towering over them was a single band of green. It started around 10 pm Monday evening and developed over the next 2 hours. Just after midnight, it erupted and the sky caught fire. We had every classic auroral formation known: curtains, arcs, striations, pillars and a writhing corona directly overhead. We witnessed green, burgundy, yellows and reds. It lasted for about an hour, and then waned. A bright green haze covered the majority of the sky for several hours afterward.

For the most part, the Koreans in my tour were quiet and reserved people through much of our time together. That changed dramatically when the aurora formed that night. Cheers and a tangible awe rose from that small knoll in the middle of a snow covered wilderness. They reverberated off the mountains and climbed up to greet the incredible light show far above.

It was a night I will never forget. A moonless night where the brilliance in the sky made the ground at our feet glow a soft electric green.

I’d be terribly remiss to not thank my good friends, Claude & Jennifer Bondy (owners of Alpine Creek Lodge and our hosts for the 6 day tour), their lodge employee Kyle (I’ve rarely met a harder worker, especially at such a young age!), and of course my good friend Scott Slone of Alaska HDTV – I couldn’t have done it without your help, buddy.

All the seats have been filled for my upcoming Aurora Borealis, Winter Landscapes & Wildlife Photo AdvenTour (March 26-31), but I am starting a list for next years offerings. So, after the success of the first tour, it is never too early to get on the list for March of 2012 – people are already looking to sign up. This is a destination adventure that you don’t want to miss. Click this link to send me an email to join the list!

Aurora over Alpine Creek Lodge, Alaska. ©2011 Dave Taylor/Sixtyone North (Canon 5D Mk 2, Tokina 16-28/2.8 @ 16mm. 5" @ f/2.8, ISO 3200)

Stay tuned…

Yesterday was one of those days.

After a full day that started at 5 am, Jena and I got home around 6:30 pm. We grabbed a quick bite to eat, took a 45 minute nap and headed right back out again. What for? Well, the aurora were forecasted and skies don’t get any clearer.

The aurora that we were able to chase earlier this year were not substantial. Don’t get me wrong, anytime you see the aurora is substantial. But the storms never climbed high in the sky, they just hovered over the mountains. There was little movement and very little variation in color.

But yesterday, a semi-suprise auroral storm sounded fairly promising. So Jena and I set out before 9 pm to drive out to one of my favorite locations for photographing the aurora; the Glenn Highway. Now, when people from the ‘Lower 48′ hear “highway”, they think of busy roads, headlights, traffic, noise, smog, congestion, street lights, road signs, etc. The Glenn Highway is not your father’s ‘Lower 48′ highway. Once we got past Palmer, Alaska (which takes all of 45 seconds), we were plunged into darkness.

No streetlights. No cars or other headlights. No noise except for the studded tires of my SUV rumbling across the icy winter roads. Smog? What’s that? A road sign appeared out of the thin black air – it read “Glennallen – 134 Miles & Tok – 274 Miles” – and vaporized back into the dark just as quickly. That’s one of the (many) great things about living in Alaska, it doesn’t take much time to remove yourself from civilization.

(Side note) – As I write this, at 11:30 Saturday night (why am I still up…?), the aurora is dancing outside our bedroom window. It’s ok, jealousy is an appropriate response to this statement. I won’t hold it against you.

We wound through corner after corner, the narrow two lane highway rising and falling around a glacially fed river and past mountains and cliffs. Repair bills for cars always rack up over time, but now I’ll have to replace the passenger side door handle from Jena’s death grip. She may be small, but she is strong!

We passed the Matanuska Glacier after about an hour of driving due east. The glacier, despite being almost 4 miles wide at it’s terminus and laying at the bottom of a valley only 2 miles from the road in clear line of sight, was nowhere to be seen. The darkness swallowed it whole, along with the towering mountains around it.

Not long after, the mountains spread further on the horizon, to the north and south of the road. This leaves an open valley with excellent views in almost every direction. We arrived around in this area around 10:30 and waited. Pale green aurora were drifting slowly over the eastern horizon, but showed little activity. After a few test shots and a mild burst of intensity, we moved on to another location and decided to wait to see what would happen.

We didn’t have to wait long. Over the next few hours we were treated to one of the most spectacular auroral storms I have witnessed. Brilliant greens, yellows and whites, deep purples and even very subtle reds shifted from horizon to horizon, arching high overhead and spilling their mixed light over the landscape. Billions of stars dotted the sky beyond the northern lights – it was as if we had been placed below a river of light. This river changed course, separated and converged over and over again, rippling and washing overhead.

Alaska Aurora over the Chugach Range ©2011 Dave Taylor/Sixtyone North (Canon 5D Mk 2, 24-105 @ 24mm. 20" @ f/4, ISO 2000)

It was, simply put, magnificent.

Stay tuned…

I’m really happy with this latest image.

"Winter's Embrace" ©2010 Dave Taylor/Sixtyone North

For me, it speaks softly of serenity. You can almost feel the light fluffy snow cascading off the graceful and towering spruce trees. If stillness can be felt, this is where you can find it in spades. The snow here is at least 6 feet deep, and without snowshoes, you’d surely sink to your waist in the fresh powder.

I’ve never experienced a quiet like snowshoeing through a rainforest in winter. It envelops you, drowning you in calm, and muffling even your own breathing. Every now and again a soft breeze will drift by, swaying the magnificent spruce trees around you. They creak and softly groan, branches clacking together in a random but beautiful symphony. Snow, once held on branches high above, sifts quietly downward in openings in the canopy.

The world’s northernmost rainforest, the Chugach in winter, embraces you.

So how did I create this image?

That’s the purpose of this post, to give you a little “behind the scenes” view. First off, a word of warning – so called photographic “purists” may frown on my take of this scene. But that is exactly what this is, it’s my take. Don’t like it? Well, I’m not going to please everyone who views my work – but then again, I gave up on pleasing anyone but myself with my own artwork a long time ago. I use techniques to draw out not only the scene that I was blessed to see in the wild, but also to pass along the feelings I felt out “there”.

*Note: All thumbnail images can be clicked to see larger versions. Also, the screen captures are not completely color accurate*

What drew me to this scene? Simple. It was a combination of:

- quality of light – warmth and softness due to the nearness of sunset and a thin sheen of clouds at the horizon.

- the dimensionality of the scene – foreground snow “mounds”, mid-ground snow covered spruce trees, and finally the mountain peak and warm sky at the top of the frame.

- the stillness of the scene – it mirrored my experiences of that day.

- it took my breath away. If I look at a scene and am not totally smacked in the face by its beauty, why would anyone else be when they look at the final print?

In the Field

I arrived at this scene and started taking “test” composition shots about one and a half hours prior to making this image. I tried horizontals and verticals of several compositions, but nothing struck me like including these deep snow-covered mounds in the foreground of a vertical image. I moved around a lot, but was careful to not brush or walk into any of the foreground area – I wanted it pristine for the light that would hopefully come. When the light turned “right”, I already knew exactly what comp I wanted to use.

I set up my Gitzo carbon fiber tripod low to the ground in a stamped down area in the snow and mounted my Canon 5D Mk 2 vertically (using a RRS L plate) in my Kirk BH-1 ball head. Now… it’s not about equipment. Well, ok it is a little bit. The correct equipment makes my job easier, which allows me to concentrate more on the composition, technique and light and less on if my gear is going to do what I need it to do. I used my standard wide angle zoom lens, a Canon 24-105L and set it to 24mm. Why didn’t I go wider? Well, ultra-wide lenses are great, but they tend to exaggerate lines and diminish background objects, and I didn’t want the mountain to lose prominence in the frame. I knew that I was going to need some depth of field to get everything reasonably sharp, so I set the aperture at f16. I could have pushed it to f22, but then you run into problems with diffraction. Sure, you get more depth of field that way, but you lose overall resolution and sharpness. Just like everything in life, there is always compromise. See Jena, I’m learning;)

I wasn’t worried about shutter speed; there was absolutely no wind, and nothing was moving in the scene. So I set the camera to Manual mode and enabled my LiveView setting. I adjusted the shutter speed until my LiveView image and the histogram looked correct for the foreground (snow mounds and trees). After I made a note of that exposure, I adjusted the shutter speed until the mountain and sky came into a workable exposure and compared the two shutter speeds. It was about 1 & 3/4 stops difference, so I got out my Singh-Ray 2-stop Soft Edge Grad ND filter and placed it in the bracket on my lens. I positioned the grad ND filter so that it lined up with the gentle diagonal line of the tree tops. I turned off my lens image stabilization – I’m on a tripod, and unless an earthquake strikes, I’m better off not using the I.S.. After disabling the I.S., I zoomed in on my LiveView screen to get an up close view of the base of the trees, which is where I focused my lens manually. With my focus set, I double checked that my depth of field was enough by pressing the DOF Preview button on my camera body. The foreground popped into focus, as did the mountain in the background. F16 was enough to get adequate DOF, without running into diffraction. I set the 2 second timer and started shooting as the color in the sky developed. I adjusted my exposure slightly as the light changed, by changing my shutter speed and even bracketed a few exposures for a “blend”, if needed.

Post Processing

I import all of my images into Adobe Lightroom where they can be keyworded, organized and adjusted to suit. When I first posted this image on my blog this past Thursday, I immediately knew I wanted to rework the image (in post) to truly “master” it. Why? Well, I didn’t really like the transition line across the tree-tops where the grad ND filter intruded on the middle ground space. I knew it could be better. I also wasn’t totally satisfied with the tonality of the upper right portion of the sky, it lacked the beautiful orange glow I had seen.

So I reopened the original in Lightroom. I double processed it, once for the sky and once for the foreground snow with the trees.

I made these adjustments in Lightroom because I like to do as much before converting the files to a “destructive” format, like Photoshop. You can maintain a higher final quality image by doing the bulk of your image adjusting in a program like Lightroom, Aperture or ACR (Adobe Camera RAW). I adjusted color temps to each image, along with minor saturation, sharpness and noise tweaks.

Then I brought both images into Photoshop as 16-bit PSDs. Once they were both there, I went to the layers palette of one of the images (doesn’t matter which one), held down the shift key and dragged the layer onto the other Photoshop file. Holding the “SHIFT” key down as you drag “pins” the image, and as long as you have two identically composed images, will drop the image down perfectly matched with the other image. I organized the layers in the new image file so that the sky was on top of the foreground, then added a layer mask to the sky layer and drew a rough grad across the tree line – this simulates the effect of a grad ND filter. Then I set about “painting” over the trees that blended too darkly into the sky on the masked off area. I use a Wacom stylus pad to do my fine detail work, so I selected a pretty small brush and zoomed in closely and started painting. If the image were viewed at a very large magnification, a trained eye might be able to see the subtle edge of the mask in the fine detail of the trees, but it would need to be quite a large print and under intense scrutiny from up close. At proper viewing distance, you’d never know.

Once the mask had been finished, I set to work on the rest of the image. I wanted to slightly lighten and bump the contrast of the middle ground trees, so I created a curves adjustment layer to make this change. The curves layer affects the entire image as well, so I filled the adjustment layer mask to hide the curves effect, then “painted” the effect in only where I wanted it – namely the mid-ground trees.

I also wanted to slightly bump the contrast in the foreground snow, to draw more attention to their very subtle shades and curves. I used the same technique as above, but used a gradient in the mask to fade the effect into the base of the trees. The effect is subtle I believe, but effective.

This was the end of my Photoshop work, so I saved the file before I flattened the layers (in case I want to do further work). A flattened version was saved separately and then imported into Lightroom for the final treatment.

Everyone complains about vignetting on lenses. Heck, I do to. Adobe Lightroom 3 has a great feature that corrects for known vignetting problems with certain lenses. I applied this prior to doing the initial work in Lighroom, but I like to add a slight amount of vignetting (that I can control) at the end of some image work. With images that have bright sections or colors near the edge of the frame, adding a subtle vignette can help “hold your eyes” in the frame and not drift away.

Lets look at the final histogram. You’ll see that the highlights (on the right side of the graph) are not touching the far right side of the graph, so there is no or minimal clipping. I like to have nearly white parts in a scene if possible, and rich blacks as well – if at all possible. I like contrast in most images. This is one reason why I don’t like the vast majority of HDR images, they lack contrast. It’s a personal preference, to each their own, whatever floats your boat, and so on. In my histogram, the blacks are pushed against the left side of the graph, meaning I have clipped some shadows, but I like the depth it adds to this scene. Again, too each their own.

Winter's Embrace - First Interpretation

"Winter's Embrace" Final Version

So, this is my interpretation of this scene. I realize that most viewers would likely never notice anything “amiss” with the original image, but I am glad I took the extra time to rework the image.

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I have a 2 seats left in the “Aurora, Winter Landscapes & Wildlife Photo AdvenTour” from March 26-31, 2011. So if you are looking for a path definitely less taken, this might be right up your alley. Click here to view the aurora photo tour description page.

Also available are a few seats on my “Cordova: Wild Lands & Wild Life” Photo Tour. This is a one-of-a-kind Alaska destination. It is less visited and holds an amazing variety of subjects that have not been shot to death like so many other places. Imagine, just a small group of like-minded photographers around you, surrounded by an amazing wilderness of glaciers, mountains, rainforest, ocean and sky. All while staying at a beautiful coastal adventure lodge… How does that sound? Click here to view this unique Alaskan photo tour description page.

We were disheartened, and immediately started to consider backup plans. None of which included the large expanse of beauty surrounding us. We thought of hiking all the way back to the car and driving further south to scout other locations. But we both hesitated when we saw another trail branching off. It hadn’t seen the same use as the main trail, but as Robert Frost once beautifully wrote,

“I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.”

No, this image wasn’t created while taking this less used trail. It happened because we stuck around and explored. Instead of packing up our gear and heading for a different location, we settled in and embraced our surroundings. In turn, Winter embraced us.

This seems to be a recurring theme with me. I’ve taken paths less traveled throughout my life. Sure, I went to college. And like many others, I dropped out. But I did it with style, I did it twice. I got a great job with a great group of people in my hometown. It was where I was comfortable, the job was comfortable, the future I saw was… comfortable. I saw myself in five years with a wife, a nice 3 bedroom ranch-style home, two and a half kids and a mortgage. Very soon, that future became less comfortable. In it’s predictability it became dull. Early on I adopted the writing of another writer, Marcel Proust,

“The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

But I needed new landscapes. I needed a new voyage. And perhaps I reasoned that those landscapes needed to be seen with my new eyes. So I set my eyes on Alaska, and upon developing my photography in “The Great Land”. Marcel Proust also wrote about dreaming,

“If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more. To dream all the time.”

I decided to stop dreaming of Alaska and a career in photography and take a chance. My dream became my reality. I took a path that may not have been as comfortable for me, or my parents. But they grew to accept it and have always supported my path. It was a path less traveled by. And it, like my families support, has made all the difference.

"Winter's Embrace", Chugach National Forest ©2010 Dave Taylor/Sixtyone North (Canon 5D Mk 2, 24-105 @ 24mm. 1/13" @ f16, ISO 200. Singh-Ray 2 Stop Soft-Edge Grad ND)

Although this particular image is only a few days old, this scene has been acting out each winter for ages. I just happened to stumble upon it this go around. As day gave way to night, the forest closed in and embraced us once again.

How many times has similar light settled in across this valley, brushed across those trees, glanced upon that mountain, and bathed that cold sky in warmth? Certainly it has done so before and will do so again. Some sunsets are more spectacular, some less – these are “The Challengers”, and they always return.

This was a good afternoon, and if for no other reason than to see “The Challengers”, I will return too.

Consider your path through life. Are you “comfortable” in it? Or is there a path that would make all the difference?

This image has been added to my “Best Nature Photos of 2010″ Gallery.

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“Paths Less Taken”

I have a 2 seats left in the “Aurora, Winter Landscapes & Wildlife Photo AdvenTour” from March 26-31, 2011. So if you are looking for a path definitely less taken, this might be right up your alley. Click here to view the aurora photo tour description page.

Also available are a few seats on my “Cordova: Wild Lands & Wild Life” Photo Tour. This is a one-of-a-kind Alaska destination. It is less visited and holds an amazing variety of subjects that have not been shot to death like so many other places. Imagine, just a small group of like-minded photographers around you, surrounded by an amazing wilderness of glaciers, mountains, rainforest, ocean and sky. All while staying at a beautiful coastal adventure lodge… How does that sound? Click here to view this unique Alaskan photo tour description page.