My favorite 6 Images of 2011- Part 1

Jumping on the end of year retrospective bandwagon, here are my personal 6 favorite images from 2011, and the stories that go with them. These are my favorites for a number of reasons, but it is the memories that go with them that make them special. In no particular order here are the first three:

Sunrise, Grosvenor Lake, Katmai National Park, Alaska (Top Image)

I made this image the first morning of a nine day paddle around the Savonoski Loop in Katmai National Park as I was guiding a trip for Arctic Wild. The trip had started out less than perfectly, as Penn Air, had failed to bring our bags from Anchorage to King Salmon in three consecutive flights. Finally, after a long battle with their customer service people, I was assured that our bags would arrive on the final flight of the day. Surprisingly the bags actually arrived and Katmai Air was gracious enough to squeeze in one more flight to take us out to upper Grosvenor Lake just as night was settling across the park. We scrambled to set up camp in the growing darkness, ate a light dinner and flopped gratefully into our sleeping bags. After too few hours of sleep I woke the next morning and peered out of my tent door to see the lake covered in rising steam, the early morning sun lighting up the water in an orange glow and the glaciers of the distant volcanoes lit up with alpenglow. I rose and grabbed my Canon S95 point and shoot and made a few quick landscapes when I looked up the beach and noticed one of my clients enjoying the view over the lake. Within hours the clear blue skies were gone and the drizzle that would follow us for almost the entire 9 day trip had moved in.

Dwarf Fireweed, Great Kobuk Sand Dunes, Alaska

The Kobuk Sand Dunes are an otherworldly place. A few square miles of the sahara dumped into the middle of the boreal forest north of the Arctic Circle. It is harsh looking landscape, with dunes and desert-like vegetation. The comparatively lush forest surrounding the dunes, makes the contrasts even stranger. I spent a couple of days at the dunes this past July, leading another trip for Arctic Wild. It was a basecamp trip, two night in the dunes, and two nights in Gates of the Arctic National Park. My clients, two couples, were on missions to visit every national park in the country, and for one pair, Kobuk National Park (where the dunes are found) and Gates of the Arctic were the final parks on their list. We spent our one full day in the dunes on a long day hike that carried us 10 or so miles around the central and western part of the dunes. The hiking was exceptional, the night before it rained- hard and long, and the following morning the dunes were packed like concrete. We worked our way along a creek that cuts through the middle of the dunes and then up sandy ridge-lines and down to the western side. I made this image mid-way through the hike. The dunes are surprisingly rich in wildflowers but this bright patch of Dwarf Fireweed, or River Beauty stood out in the otherwise gray and brown landscape. I wanted to emphasize that contrast so I composed the image to include much of the dunes and the dark triangular spruces in the background. This image was shot with my Canon 7D and a Canon 17-40 f4L lens, handheld.

Grass and Sand, Great Kobuk Sand Dunes, Alaska

I made this image the same day as the one above, but later in the hike as the dark clouds grew and threatened. We were rushing back to camp, hoping to avoid the downpour which never actually arrived. Despite the storm-like skies it was nearly dead calm. Often, I make images in color and later convert to black and white as an experiment. But this image I envisioned in black and white. This scene was nearly monochrome in life, the only color the subtle browns of the sand, and the muted greens of the grass. I shot a series, moving steadily closer to the clump of grass. When shooting on and sand or snow, you can’t move forward and then decide it looked better farther back because your footprints will mar the texture of the foreground, so it is important to work only forward. I liked this image the best of the series because I think it accurately portrays the stark, almost barren looking landscape of the dunes. The brooding skies provide another level of texture and mood to the image: cold, foreboding, and bleak. Shot with the Canon 7D and 17-40 f4L, handheld.

Check back soon for my final three favorites.

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