Category Archives: photography

THE YELLOW HAMMER

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_dsc9410TAKING OUT THE TRASH  A female northern flicker bursts out of her nesting cavity with a fecal sack.

A pair of beautiful northern flickers has again taken up residence in our big back yard to raise a new generation.  Their distinct repertoire of territorial calls and hammering adds a welcome touch of wilderness.  These yellow hammers are perhaps the most striking birds of the northern boreal forest. As they dart about their forest territory flashing their brilliant feathers of gold I am unable to resist the temptation. I simply must try to capture some of their uncommon beauty with my cameras. Continue reading →

LAST HOMESTEAD

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aurora borealis-15-115Our home in the wilderness.

This post is in support of the recent story that appeared in the February 2016 issue of Country Magazine.  The story is about our families life in Alaska.  The following photographs are some that did not make the final layout in the magazine.  Several Country Magazine readers have requested to see more photos.  This is for you. Continue reading →

CURSE OF THE WIDE-ANGLE

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Picture1Spectacular Wrangell Mountains in Alaska seem insignificant in this ineffective wide-angle photograph.

I remember my own fascination with the wide-angle lens. My first was a 24mm.  The wide view had great appeal to me.  It was thrilling to look at the landscape thru my lens. I could fit entire mountain ranges onto my tiny Kodachrome slide!  And there lies the problem. A wide-angle lens often includes too much information with detail that is too small.

We expect the camera to record what we see.  But, the fact is, we humans see things quite differently than any camera.  Humans see their subject subjectively.  We concentrate on our subject and don’t notice much else, missing details that we should be paying close attention to.

The camera records everything within the viewfinder, it sees objectively. Right down to all those distracting details we failed to notice.

In contrast, when we look at a mountain range or desert, we see the mountains, the terrain, we feel the wind, we get dust in our eye, we feel the cold or hot, We smell the pines or the sagebrush and the delicate fragrance of wildflowers as our gaze dances from flower to flower and bounce along with a foraging bumble bee.

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