Alaskan Flare…

So…I just got back from an Alaskan cruise – it was…different.

It’s not your typical tropical destination – but the colors were bright – and when out – so was the sun. In fact – the sun, as even just part way north as the Inside Passage isn’t really that far up, doesn’t set till later up there…so sunsets – pretty spectacular. Granted no palm nor coconut trees a la Hawaii / Cali…but, I think the massive mountains and crazy sky make up for it.

The most impressive part of the cruise and by far the source for most of my images – was the 2-3hr mini cruise we took up the Tracy Arm Fjord after climbing down onto a smaller vessel. We got extremely lucky – only a few days a year are as beautiful as the day we got here…the water was glorious, the glaciers spectacular, the icebergs brilliant, and the mountains, massive.

That last bit, from an image making perspective was really breathtaking – the sheer size. Well the size and the lens flare – but we’ll get to the latter in a minute. First the size – everything in Alaska is, well, bigger. No pun. I could tell, simply because I knew I had a pretty darned wide lens on my 5d2 – I rented a 16-35 especially for the trip – a bit of a trial run – as that is a lens I covet. And honestly – I couldn’t barely fit some of the scenes inside of that wide frame – stunningly massively gigantic.

Now to the latter – who knew lens flare due to massive light would be such an issue – in Alaska?! Well, so many views I captured – I purposely was shooting into the sun – and, I guess, I just embraced it. I think the light was gorgeous – and this image sits as my wallpaper at work…

I probably shouldn’t forget the critters – we saw a few – though I didn’t capture many in frame – here you see some black or brown(??) bears on the shore – they really are large – but alas even cropped in – they look tiny as so many things did, amid the massiveness of the surroundings…

How massive you might ask, is everything really – not to belabor this theme – but BIG. In the next image – smaller tour boats, are but specs amongst the glacier and icebergs…you can’t even make them out – I can see them if I crop to 100% – but they aren’t much to look at – so, eh, trust me:)

Oh, and I probably shouldn’t forget the calving glacier – I guess it’s special that it did it whilst we were there – but then, we did have a bit of magic with us, so…