Following the lead of my friend and colleague, Patrick Endres, I thought I’d try to hone down my top 100 images of 2014 to my favorite 10. Turns out that selecting ten images is much more difficult than selecting 100. As Patrick found in his selection, most of mine stand out to me because of the experiences related to the image, rather than the image itself. After spending a half hour selecting and deselecting, I came up with these. Here they are, in no particular order:
I suppose if I had to pick just one from the year, this image would be it. This photo of the Kongakut River, I made in late August while I was guiding my final trip of the season for Arctic Wild. After dinner, my clients and I hiked up to the top of a rock outcrop above the river, and 500 vertical feet over our camp on a riverside bench. You can just see our tents near the confluence of the tributary creek. The light was stormy, as the day’s rain cleared off the river. The light was pink and orange, and it reflected from clouds and autumn colors alike. I think I can still feel the breeze.
I like this photo. It’s not super creative or dazzlingly composed, but it tells a story, and it’s scene I’ve not viewed before or since. I was on a day hike up a tributary of the Kongakut in late August, with a couple of clients. The first snow of the year fell the night before and was still sticking to the mountainside. We had to bush-whack a bit through a big willow-choked flat along the creek. There were dozens of little rivulets to step over, and some small ponds here and there. In one, we found this big moose antler laying beneath the clear surface of the pond. One of the wonderful things about photographing in wild places is that the views I encounter are likely unique to me (and my companions). I very much doubt that anyone else had stumbled on this antler. This image is unique, and that’s pretty cool.
The two people in this image are my parents. My mother, to celebrate her 70th trip around the sun, decided she wanted to hike the Chilkoot Trail. It’s not an easy hike, and the day I made this image, the weather was utterly miserable. We were ascending the infamous “Golden Staircase” the crux of the hike, in a drenching rain and fog. I wonder what adventure my folks have in mind for their 75th and 80th years? The Pacific Crest trail perhaps? (Check out my original post about the hike HERE.)
Well the aurora borealis just can’t be avoided during any “best of” post. 2014 was a good year for the lights. This display, full of rare purples and deep reds occurred in January of 2014. And I made this photo just a short walk from my front porch.
The winter of 2014/2015 also started out with a lot of glowing skies. Usually, I get lazy and will just shoot around my property. But on this particular night, I wanted something new. I loaded my fat bike into the car and drove to the top of Murphy Dome, a mountain just north and west of Fairbanks. The top is above tree line, but is always packed with cars on a good aurora night, and there is light pollution from an Air Force radar station and some ugly new radio towers, so I strapped my tripod to my bike and descended a snow machine trail down to some rock outcrops on the north side of the dome. The only model I had available was me, so I used a wireless remote to trigger this shot.
In September, I was contracted by a conservation non-profit to document some wild country in far western Alaska. My friend Ben and I flew out and spent a week, hiking and packrafting over 80 miles down a extraordinarily remote river. Though I don’t know for sure, it may have been a first descent. For this image I scurried up a riverside bluff and photographed Ben as he paddled by beneath me.
I don’t photograph wildlife with the enthusiasm that I once did. Yet sometimes the opportunity arrives and things just go right. Back in May, I flew to Juneau, Alaska for a board meeting of Audubon Alaska. The last day of the trip was set aside for a day trip to Admiralty Island to watch bears at the Pack Creek sanctuary. It was a good day. Started off with a few decent views from a distance, and rounded out with this amazing encounter. This lovely dark female was first spotted far down the beach, but over the course of 10 minutes she approached within 20 yards. A beautiful animal. (Check out my report on this experience HERE.)
In early August I guided a canoe trip down the Yukon River through Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve. I didn’t expect much from the trip, expecting a big, brown, fast river and lots of forest. It was that, in part, but so much more. The Yukon is a chimera, shifting and changing into different beasts every time we came around another bend. The river flowed silver in thunderstorm, mirror-like in a sunset, matte brown in a blistering sun. I came away loving that river, and hope to paddle it again. I made this image from one of our camps on a riverside gravel bar, late at night using a multi-second exposure to blur out every riffle on the river.
Kluane Lake in the Yukon Territory. Amy and I camped a short walk from this spot during our drive down to Skagway in July. Yeah, it’s a lovely spot.
Another of Kluane made just moments after the one above. Here the lake, blown by wind, looks more menacing. Few natural elements have moods the way the lakes and rivers do. A different light, a shift in the wind, even peering a different direction can completely change the way the water appears and feels. It just occurred to me that I did not include a single image from my month long voyage in March/April up the coast of South America. Interesting. There was one that I almost included, but in the end it didn’t make the cut. I just make better images of the places that I know and love the most, and that’s Alaska. Thanks 2014 for a great year of images! I can hardly wait to find out what 2015 will hold.