We Were Wanderers in Alaska

Its been 4 or 5 years since I made my first and until now only trip to our 49th state.  But Nicole and I fell in love with Amber, and Amber loves Alaska, and well I love Alaska as well, so we decided that a trip to this magical place over the solstice would be a great opportunity to share something magical with each other, and create something magical to share with you.

Our initial plan of shooting in Skagway and Juneau sort of fell apart due to illness.  The truth about travel is that as rewarding as it is, hoping on a plane, then another plane, then a ferry, then a helicopter, then hiking four miles down a mountain is hard on the body, and hard on the immune system.  We get sick a lot.  Our first trip to Iceland is particularly memorable as two of the most miserable weeks Nicole or I have experienced.  Looking out at this incredible landscape, and being to sick to get out of bed to shoot is hard, and that is what happened to us again in Juneau, luckily we already had a ton of beautiful images from Skagway!

Our plan for Skagway was simple.  Get into the mountains, get to the waterfalls, get to the tide lands, and shoot as much as possible.  The weather in Alaska was overcast, rainy, and windy...my sort of photographic paradise.  The tones you can get on these days are just incomparable, and the incredible landscape was that much better in the beautiful clouds.

Within a couple hours of our arrival by ferry we were off to our first shoot location.  The flats are a long stretch of tidelands that are covered in the shallow ocean water at high tide, and miles of silt at low tide.  We got to the edge of an old dock right as the tide started to come in, and a storm rolled off the mountains, and shot as quickly as possible.  This was my first time taking my 5d MK IV out for a spin, and I was a little frustrated and nervous using the new camera without having had a time to get the feel for how it worked, but that aside, we still took some great images.  I ended up using my 70-200mm F2.8 lens for this, which hardly ever leaves my camera bag, but I was looking for some compression to bring the mountains closer to Nicole as she posed at the edge of the water and in the plants looking back towards town.  

Our first real day in Skagway we hiked to the edge of town just past the old gold miner cemetery, and up to a beautiful waterfall.  If there is one thing that gets my little creative heart racing its fast water, and rapids.  Long exposures, short exposures the texture of water, and how a model can contrast or emphasize that with their pose is just my favorite.  We had to wait out a couple tourists to do these shots, and ask some locals if they minded if we took nude photos, but they didn't care, and despite being a pretty high traffic area, we had almost half an hour to shoot here without any trouble.

The next day we were up early to catch a helicopter to a beautiful lake in the mountains.  Our original plan was to hike all the way up to the lake, and then back down, but we found that they could bring five of us up, and we would only have to do the down hike for really cheap...really cheap, and that sounded pretty damn awesome to us.

We got to the lake, and I was just completely awestruck.  The anxiety of being in a helicopter (I hate flying) melted away as we stuck our feet in the snow, and got to work building a fire to stay warm, as we new the cold water would be pretty brutal, and it was.  I was still nervous about relying on new gear to shoot in such an amazing place, but everything really came together at upper lake.  I am so lucky to have two incredibly talented people in my life, so dedicated to images, and so inspiring.  I wish I could express how much they mean to my work, but I can't.  Amber and Nicole are just the best, and without them I don't know what I'd be doing.

We spent two hours walking around the lake, shooting, drinking a couple beers we brought up, and then started running down the mountain.  By the time we got back to town the day was nearly over, we were completely exhausted, and our muscles were shot.  

Some time inbetween our walk back to our BnB and sundown we were invited to spend the rest of the day eating pizza, and soaking in a wood burning hot tub, so we killed our day doing just that.  I don't know if it was the hike, the travel or what not, but the rest of our trip we spent barely being able to walk, and with the flu.  Double bed ridden Juneau ended up being a blur of rainy days spent not creating, but taking medicine, drinking ginger tea, and seeing how many emergen-c the three of us could go through in two days.  It was a lot of emergen-c.  

Still sick, and slightly bummed we didn't make it out to Mendenhall Glacier we pulled ourselves out of bed, and onto the plane home.  I'm sure we will be back to Alaska sooner rather than later.  I definitely don't want to go years before I return, and I think we have some unfinished business there.

Full Gallery