Imperial Gallery Show

Thank you to everyone who visited us at Imperial Gallery this weekend for their 2011 Christmas art show.  I'm flattered Rita thought enough of my work to show it, and even more flattered than people took time out of their Thanksgiving weekend to come see us.  

If you'd like to see the pictures again, you can see them here.  That links you to my site where you can purchase prints at various sizes if you like.

The good people at Imperial Gallery do most of my framing work, so if you do make a purchase, I hope you consider them for your framing.  Rita and the crew do incredibly good work.  You simply won't find more skilled framers anywhere.

The Alaska 2009 project started with my second trip to America's 49th state.  I shot over 10,000 individual frames, then spent the better part of 18 months whittling them down the group of about 1700 that you found in the collection.  I was up there 12 days, and broke the project up by each.  Once the images were created, I posted my travel log on this blog page.  You can see those by clicking these links...

Overview - My Summer Vacation, last year

Alaska Day 1 - Vancouver

Alaska Day 2 - At Sea

Alaska Day 3 - Ketchikan

Alaska Day 4 - Juneau

Alaska Day 5 - Skagway

Alaska Day 6 - Glacier Bay National Park

Alaska Day 7 - College Fjord

Alaska Day 8 - Talkeetna

Alaska Day 9 - Talkeetna River

Alaska Day 10 - Denali National Park

Alaska Day 11 - Denali to Fairbanks

Denali Day 12 - Fairbanks to Chena Hot Springs

And if you want you can click here and it will take you to a collection of the entire project, where all 1700 plus images can be viewed, including the set of panoramas in which this one can be found.  I made this picture at midnight in Fairbanks the last night I was there.  This link is the same one in the links section up in the upper right hand corner of this page.  


Also one other note about me.  If you clicked around my Flickr pages you probably noticed it was dominated by my sports work, particularly with the Cincinnati Rollergirls.  I am on staff with the Cincinnati Rollergirls WFTDA Rollerderby team as an official staff photographer.  I travel the country with them during the Derby season, and use Flickr to post the pictures from those events.  It's huge fun and they are a great group of people to be associated with.  I've also done music shows around Cincinnati, and other sports as well as my personal photography work.  All of it can be seen on my Flickr pages.

If you have questions, contact me by email at jsevier[at]gmail.com.  Make sure to substitute the "@" symbol for [at] in my address.  We do that to protect ourselves from spammers on the internet when posting email addresses to blog sites.   

Thank you again for your interest in my work!  Happy Thanksgiving!

Snoopy and Charlie Brown - Saint Paul, MN

Snoopy and Charlie Brown - Saint Paul, MN, originally uploaded by jsevier14.

I’m in the process of catching up after the massive Alaska project. I’ve had several shoots in the queue from the latter half of 2009 and all of 2010. There will be more of these coming.

For now, the catchup project begins in Saint Paul, the site of the 2009 WFTDA North Central Regional women’s flat track Rollerderby tournament. Jason and I shot the tournament for our Cincinnati Rollergirls team, who came in fourth in the competition. That’s the best gig ever for an amateur photographer like me, and one of the perks is I get to go with them all over the country. Good work, if you can get it. I’m happy to be coming back with them for another year.
For now the subject is Saint Paul, and in the downtime Jason and I walked about the city looking for interesting subjects to shoot. Over the course of the few days were there, we shot the Mississippi River, people swimming in it, the usual smattering of buildings and architecture, including the Minnesota State Capital and the Fitzgerald Theater where Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion PBS radio broadcast originates. A little slice of America at its best, that production.

What really caught my eye in Saint Paul though were the bronze sculptures of Charles M. Schultz’s Peanuts characters that were scattered about the city. Schultz grew up in Saint Paul, so the city rightly tributes his contribution to American life with his little cartoon characters, sculpted to larger than fiction but just about right for real life. I remember waiting in great anticipation for the TV specials when I was a kid, and I have at least a few compendiums of Schultz’s work. So with apologies to Schultz and his legacy, I made some pictures out of his characters, like Peppermint Patty punting a football, with best friend Marcy peacefully reading not too far away. “Nice kick, sir…” Woodstock sits quietly off Marcy’s shoulder...

Lucy and Schroeder are there, as well as Linus and Sally with elbows perched on a brick fence, like some of Schultz’s iconic comic strip plates. Charlie Brown is in the set too, with Snoopy strewn across his outstretched legs. That one in particular reminds me of my puppy, as I suppose it should. So, this set is mainly about Schultz, with some other Saint Paul scenes thrown in there for good measure of some of the other things experienced while there...

See the whole shoot here...

Alaska Day 12 - Fairbanks to Chena Hot Springs

Sign Post, Fox Visitor's Center, Fairbanks Alaska, originally uploaded by jsevier14.

Ah, well, it ended too quickly. Creeping dread snuck it’s way in during the previous day’s train ride up to Fairbanks. I’m happy where I live, sure. It’s a nice place, with great people. And I looked forward to getting home. But, still yet, leaving Alaska is the worst part about going there.

Somewhere along the way our car’s guide asked where we were from. Turns out she’s from Cleveland, which is about 4 hours drive from where I live. Of course that brought on an extended conversation that ended with her offering us the best advice of the trip. She told us to rent a car then drive out to Chena Hot Springs.

I didn’t know what to expect from that last day and the thought of renting a car at first seemed like a bad, expensive idea. But it grew quickly on me when I realized it would be an opportunity to direct our own course. The next morning I called around and found a car for the four of us at a decent enough rate, and at the airport to boot. It all came together perfectly. Visions of us sitting at a bus stop for an hour quickly vanished.

So I was feeling good driving myself for the first time in about 2 weeks. This would be the first time I’d driven anywhere in Alaska too, and I was happy to be free of the rigid schedule the cruise line had planned for its travelers. Our red-eye back to Cincy wasn’t until 10pm, so we could pretty much do what we wanted, and that’s what you want when you go to Alaska and you’re there on a glorious summer day.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Fairbanks is pretty much like any other American city. People get up and go to work in the morning, have lunch at a fast food place, and shop at one of two local Fred Meyer megastores. And there would have been plenty to do certainly to keep us busy until our appointed evening departure for home, but the long drive out to Chena Hot Springs was exactly what I needed the last day of the trip.

On the way, just outside of Fairbanks, we stopped at yet another familiar spot, the Fox Visitor’s Center where the Trans-Alaska pipeline emerges from the ground and starts a length of elevated pipe. You can get close enough to climb on the pipeline, and signs warn those not smart enough to avoid that stunt that its not in their best interest to climb upon the metal, round tube some 20 feet above the ground. It’s a good way to get hurt. We were there about and hour before continuing on.

Shortly after turning on to Chena Hot Springs road we stopped at the Pleasant Valley Store, a sort of general store-type place with an adjoining US Post Office that told us the town was called Two Rivers - ZIP code 99716. The ladies bought coffee, I poked around the property taking pictures and talking to a local having a coffee of her own inside the store. It’s common for the locals to ask where we tourists are from in the “Lower 48” as they call it. This particular lady had just up and moved to Alaska to get away from it all and had been there awhile. It’s definitely a different life, and the people seem to be very happy with the challenge and culture that comes with it.

And off we went again, driving out the two lane road built exclusively for the purpose of connecting Chena Hot Springs Resort to the rest of the civilized world. Imagine a 60 mile two lane road built exclusively for a relatively small little spot where hot springs bubble up at a constant temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit and the Aurora Borealis can be seen more clearly than any other place on earth. Sure, the resort is small by any standard, but it’s involved in a lot of other work. A sign on the property close announced a US Department of Energy project where a 3,000 foot well was drilled right next to one of the resorts main attractions, the Aurora Ice Museum. They were determining the feasibility of using the resort’s supply of geothermal energy to supply electricity for the close by Eielson Air Force Base.

Still yet, even with the energy and agricultural research going on, Chena Hot Springs is first and foremost a resort. It is open year round, even in the brutal central Alaskan winter, which I was told is actually the best time of year to be up there.

The cold Alaskan nights make for particularly clear skies, so the Aurora is particularly brilliant during the cold months. Among other ways, visitors catch the lights from the 165 degree comfort of the hot spring pools. They say Christmas is their busiest time of year. People hop in these pools no matter how cold it is...

Photo Courtesy Chena Hot Springs Resort

The resort offers various activities, including snow coach tours to see the lights, or horseback riding. There are various educational opportunities, and they offer several packages for overnight and longer stays.  For a nominal fee of $15, you can tour the Aurora Ice Museum, which has been featured on the Travel Channel and other news documentary shows. The interior of the building is a constant sub-freezing temperature to keep all of indoor fixtures and furnishings in a solid form. And I mean everything is made out of ice. Jousters, a huge chess set, an igloo, a fully functional bar, and even an indoor outhouse can be seen. 

And if you’re really nuts and have $495 burning a hole in a pocket of the giant parka they loan you, you can stay the night and sleep on one of the beds carved out of ice. That doesn’t happen very often. The guide for that tour told us they’d had a couple from New York pay the money to stay not too long before our visit, and they didn’t make it through the night. Seems like the beds would be a little bit firm for me.

If you kick in an extra $5, after the tour is over, you can hang out at the bar where they’ll serve whatever drink speciality they’ve worked on for that day in a glass carved from ice. It was apple martinis this day.

I spent the entire time shooting. The ice sculptures are all highlighted with LED lights that rotate through various colors, and that made it easy for me to forget the time. The intricate detail of the work makes for compelling photography when coupled with the lights. The two jousters have been there over three years.

After the tour, we started our trip home, from Chena Hot Springs to Cincinnati. On the trip back to Fairbanks I was spent, and tired, but satisfied certainly. We hadn’t had much luck with wildlife to this point, and I had no idea yet how many pictures I had taken. I had a chance to peek at some of them. I was disappointed with the 200 or so frames I shot of Denali and had no idea what I’d do with them. I was conversely happy with the eagles, and the glaciers. But the animals eluded me, except for the Dall Sheep and puppies of course.

My Aunt Sharon had said throughout the trip all she really wanted out of the experience was to see a moose. We’d passed a moose on our train trip up to Denali, but that was highly transient. There it is, we wall ran to the window… Is squeezed the release a few times, then it was gone. So that really didn’t count for much and I was a little sad that she missed her chance.

But then, up ahead, there was a car pulled off to the side of the road, doors open, like driver and passengers had quickly jumped out to see something. As I came upon it, I pulled in behind, and found the telltale sign of tourists craning their necks and pointing… We crept up behind them, smiled our greetings, then they pointed for us and there it was!

I’d say this moose is about a hundred yards away. Don't let the closeup fool you, this picture is cropped way down. Between us and her was a swamp or lake of some sort, so we were relatively safe. The moose was clearly content feeding on the other side of the lake from us, and Aunt Sharon could barely contain her excitement.

This would happen two more times on the way back, and we stopped each time. I could sense the clock running, and we were cutting the schedule close if we wanted to catch a bite before going to the airport. But still, these shots even though they’re severely cropped and way too noisy for low ISO daylight shots, were the perfect end to an excellent visit to Alaska.

And thus ends our 2009 Alaska trip. Would I go back? Right now. Risa? When are we going?

See all of Alaska Day 12 - Fairbanks to Chena Hot Springs here…

Alaska Day 11 - Denali to Fairbanks

Carved Bear, Denali National Park, Alaska, originally uploaded by jsevier14.

A friend of mine once asked “What will you do with all the pictures?” It seemed like an odd question at the time. What does anyone do with pictures? I think he thought I was just shooting for the sake of shooting, to consume the image, then hoard it for eternity culminating in a gigantic waste of time. I do have to admit, I often wonder what will become of them generations from now. Another friend of mine inherited an old camera rig with glass negatives. Now that’s longevity. Wonder what will happen to these?


Since I started shooting, I’ve taken tens of thousands of images. That number is greatly enhanced by my Rollerderby shooting of course, where on a given doubleheader night I may bring back as many as 3800 images to sort through. Otherwise, I still have an enormous backlog of images I have not even seen, and they sit untouched, waiting for me to make them into something interesting to look at.


Photography history knows a man named Gary Winogrand, who was a street photographer in the 1960’s of some renown. Now, I won’t presume to compare myself to one of the greats. But, if I’ve been influenced by Ansel Adams (the sharp landscape), Robert Frank (the outsider’s view) and Henri Cartier-Bresson (the photojournalistic candid), then I have to add Gary Winogrand to that list. Missy will sympathize with this.


Winogrand’s style was to walk around the streets of New York shooting everything in sight. I remember watching a film of him in my Baker-Hunt photography class. Sometimes he didn’t even look through the viewfinder. When he passed away prematurely in 1984, he left behind over 300,000 unedited images, and over 2,500 undeveloped rolls of film.


I’m not quite that prolific. And I don’t want to leave behind 300,000 images that have never been touched. There are some, mainly the early film images I shot with my original Minolta rig, that will likely never see the light of day. But in an effort to get through the backlog I came up with this plan to release just a few of them so I could get them done faster. I actually cooked it up after I’d completed the processing of the whole set, and this release plan has been an experiment of sorts. Well, that plan has been a failure. The rules are too confining, and although I’ll follow through and finish up this publishing project the way I started it, I’m moving on to plan B next time around for my San Francisco 2010 set.


Day 11 is probably the most diverse in terms of photographic subject matter, and the predefined limitation I set was simply not adequate. I left some good pictures behind this time around. They’ll make their appearance soon, but for now, editing this set down to the 14 I wanted to represent the day was brutal.


We started out the day packing up at the lodge, then headed out for breakfast at the Alaska Salmon Bake. The place was about as Alaska as it gets, with all sorts of Alaska chotzkies hanging all over the walls, hardwood floors, exposed log beams in the cieling. I’m not much for chotskies, but I do have a few. I saw another of the miniaturized George Parks Highway Alaska Route 3 signs hanging on the wall. I’d seen them in several of our stops, and had taken to hunting high and low for one in gift shops we had visited. They just weren’t for sale anywhere. It seemed like this sign was the perfect little do-dad to go with all the pictures I still plan to print and hang in my house. On the way home it occurred to me that I might be able to find one on ebay. It took several attempts and several weeks after we got back, but I finally did find one sold by a guy in Michigan.

The night before we had walked through a cluster of shops on the lodge grounds on our way to dinner. We came upon this woodcarving place that had dozens of these wooden carved bears out front. They were about 2 feet high, stained exquisitely, and each of them held a wooden sign with one of a several messages that can be swapped out. The one that got me was “Go Away.” Brilliant! I immediately regretted leaving my camera behind. But there would be no sprinting back to the room this time. Photographers, take the shot while you’re there. It may not come again. Although this time for me, it did. That usually doesn’t happen. See the bear pictured above...


Then it was off for our last tour of the day before hopping a train for Fairbanks. Today, a gloriously warm and crystal clear Alaska summer day, we visited the Park’s sled dog kennel, where we found a yard full of real live Alaskan sled dogs lounging around in the summer heat. Now, I love puppies. I’m a total sucker for them, and Alaskan huskies are a personal favorite. I’d happily have one here in Ohio, but it seems unfair to me to have a doggie bred for the sole purpose of hauling sleds around in the frigid Alaskan climate. These dogs are naturally cold-weather dogs, and even though my weather station occasionally tells me it’s colder here than it is in Alaska, it’s not cold here long enough for them. These dogs certainly weren’t suffering, but they definitely weren’t particularly frisky on this day.

Shortly we were herded over to a seating area where a sled awaited. And the next thing we knew those formerly lounging sled dogs were barking and yelping like crazy. Sled dogs are the preferred mode of transport when the Alaskan winter hits, because they’re exquisitely adapted to the purpose. They are bred to run, and to pull sleds. A team of 8 or so dogs also has the benefit of redundancy, which is another reason they’re superior to more mechanized modes of transport, which have a tendency to fail when the weather gets really rough. The question was posed, “If you’re out on a trail in several feet of snow, which would you rather have? A snow machine, with a single motor that might stop, or a full team of barking sled dogs?” The noise back by the kennel made the answer obvious.


The driver could hardly contain them once they were hooked up. With a whistle, the sled took off like a rocket, disappearing around a bend behind a cluster of trees, kicking up dust and gravel in its wake. The mad barking kept on as the dogs pulled the sled around the trail. You could hear its blades scraping along the ground as it came back into view, where a ranger caught up with the lead dogs to bring them to a stop in a cloud of Alaskan dust.

And as the dogs cooled down, I watched the rangers interaction with the dogs. The symbiotic relationship is amazing, really. Just for a little bone and a scratch on the head these dogs would literally run through hell in a gasoline suit (nod to Pete Rose) for the Denali National Park Rangers. You leave the demo with a real respect for these beautiful animals, and their role in all our lives.

Really now, who doesn’t love puppies?


And so that was that. We piled back on the bus back to the visitor’s center, which was an easy walk from the train station where shortly we’d board our last train of the trip. With just a few minutes before the train was to arrive, I had precious little time to peruse what I was missing, which was a lot. There were several hiking trails that started from this point, and a very nice museum facility where there were specimens of Alaskan wildlife on display, namely a full sized adult moose, and some Dall sheep. Too bad we only had time just to walk through it before we had to be at the depot.


When we got there, the train hadn’t arrived yet. Shortly people started buzzing about a delay. Seems a tree had fallen across the tracks some miles out, and it ended up being about a 2 hour delay before departure.


Our crew made its way back to a snack bar, where I toyed with the idea of scarfing an ice cream while the group decided what to do. The toying stopped almost immediately when Missy suggested we sit down to play cards. Now, I’d been fairly patient this entire trip. I realize the camera can be obnoxious, and I have to hand it to my companions because they were very understanding of my obsession through the whole thing. But this was just too much. I blurted out completely without thinking, “You have to be kidding.”


“What? The train’s not coming for two hours. What else would you like to do?”


After a moment of stunned silence, me standing there with 35 pounds of camera gear strapped to my back, I blurted again. “You have to be kidding me. Here we are 3,800 miles away from home in one of the most beautiful spots on the North American Continent, with some unplanned extra time, and you want to play cards?” I really did say “...North American Continent.”


My lovely wife is very understanding. Her next words were “Go, just don’t be late because we’re leaving without you if you’re not on the train on time.”


I think I heard that last part as I was leaving. I’m pretty sure she said it. By now we were down to just over 90 minutes or so, and by the time I got done fooling around the museum I ended up at the McKinley Station Trail head with just over an hour to walk it. I figured I’d hike out 30 minutes, set by my iPhone’s timer, then I’d turn about and head back.

And I made it no problem. The last thing I wanted was to be left behind in Denali National Park. It was a nice walk, and I am glad I did it, but, as usual, I was left wanting more. Schedules. Oy.


The train ride turned out to be way more intense than I’d anticipated. The scenery was spectacular, and perching myself on the back of the train gave me angles on the Nenana River as we chugged past it. This span of track is nice and curvy too, so I was able to shoot back toward the train’s engine as it turned curves well ahead of us.

And on the way as we got closer to Fairbanks the guide pointed out one of the windows where billowing smoke raging forest fires could be seen.

They’d been burning for most of a month. The Anchorage Daily News reported 70 fires were burning all over the state, and I believe based on what I read I was shooting the largest at Minto Flats, about 15 miles away from our position. By the time we moved closer to Fairbanks, the smoke began to block out the sun, making for some spectacular images that looked a lot like the sunset I shot from the bow of the Sapphire Princess the first day of the trip.

And then shortly the train’s guide would sigh into her mike that we were getting close to Fairbanks, back to “real life” as she put it, with concrete and traffic lights and street signs. During the summer, Fairbanks barely distinguishable from any other American city, and here the reality of the end of the trip begins to set in. While this probably isn’t fair to Fairbanks, you spend so much time in the Alaskan wilderness, arriving back in the concrete and steel is a real bummer.


But, we pulled into the station about 10pm, right on 24 hours before we’d board our plane headed back to Cincinnati. I wasn’t done shooting though. When we got to our room, the sun was just setting behind some very dense cloud cover on the horizon, and camera came back out for one last sunset, shot through the trees just off our room’s tiny balcony.

My Aunt Sharon and I took a walk at about 11:30pm out a trail just off the hotel’s grounds. It wound back through the woods, and even though the hour was late there was plenty of light for us to see our way. The trail ends at a small lake, where we stood until the iPhone struck 0:00, when I shot the Alaskan midnight twilight. I thought it would be the last meaningful picture of the trip.

See all of Alaska Day 11 - Denali to Fairbanks here...

Alaska Day 10 - Denali National Park

Tour Guide Steve, Denali National Park, Alaska, originally uploaded by jsevier14.

And so the 10th day of the trip we piled on a bus at the McKinley Princess Lodge early enough to make the 2 hour drive up Alaska Route 3 in time for lunch. We’d be staying at the aptly named “Denali Princess Lodge”, which by all I saw there appears to be yet the biggest game in what there was of the town.

Along the way there is a classic “Weird Alaska” sighting, the famous, or more likely IN-famous Igloo Motel and Gas Station. The bus pulled into the parking lot for a few minutes, long enough for a few pictures maybe, and I did manage to get a panorama using Missy’s point and shoot.

The idea for the motel was hatched by an entrepreneur who managed to get the structure built without the benefit of the proper permits and inspections. When it came time to open for business, the building didn’t meet code, particularly as it relates to fire escape. The building itself has changed hands several times but no one has been able to overcome the architectural deficiencies that made bringing the structure up to code impossible.

Whoops. Looks like it might have been a fun stop.

Further along the way the bus stops at Broad Pass, which is where the Alaska and Talkeetna ranges come together and the Nenana river flows through the basin. It would have been a pretty sight had it not been shrouded in cloud cover and misty rain. 

There are usually plenty of wildlife viewing opportunities, but we were only there long enough to give everyone a chance to have their picture made with the big brown banner that says “Broad Pass - Gateway to Denali National Park...”

Our stay at the park was disappointingly short at a little less than 2 days, with the first day dominated by the 5 hour mid afternoon bus tour. Cars are permitted to travel partway into the park, and if you want to see more of the interior, you either hike it, or you take a bus. The bus tour is actually included in the price of the cruise, so there we were. I’d have liked to have spent another day or two exploring the Day Hike trails, and maybe even driven myself out to the areas where the mountain can be viewed. Good plans for next time, I suppose, but for this trip, the cruise line likes to keep everyone together. And if you’re a cruiser, or in other words, a completely inexperienced Alaska traveller, then staying together makes sense. The park’s brochure states in red letter print “Denali is true wilderness. Before you venture into the park, read the safety messages in the free visitor guide Alpenglow.” What’s missing is “because we don’t want to have to go find you.” It goes on… “Grizzly bears and moose are dangerous.” That seems plain enough.

When we were there before, the place was literally under construction with dirt parking lots and gravel driveways. Now the complex has expanded and become an oasis of luxury way up here in the Alaskan outback.

And so we found our rooms, then darted across the highway for a quick bite at the Denali Dog House, where my photographic exploits apparently freaked out a little red-headed kid watching me intently through the window.

Good Dog. And there I had a conversation with locals who surmised very quickly I was a photographer AND not particularly happy with having to rush of prefabricated tourism and suggested when I mentioned one of my “Next Time” deals a book called “The Milepost” for guiding my next venture. After a short bit of gift shop perusal, we headed back to the lodge in plenty of time to board the bus, where we met Steve, our Fu Manchu’d bus driver pictured above.

I learned two very important things from Steve.

1.) There’s no whining in Alaska.
2.) Don’t mess with Bears.

Missy and I still use the “There’s no whining in Alaska” line on each other when one or the other slips into self-pity.

The bear story highlights why it makes sense to keep yourself surrounded with like-experienced travelers herded by a guide if you’ve never been to Alaska before. One previous tour a bear came into view and started to approach. It was far enough away that the group was able to calmly get themselves back into the relatively safe, iron-clad confines of the school bus used for these tours. After the headcount came up short, Steve found the one erstwhile tourist lining up a shot with his camera of the now dangerously close grizzly. And the bear was none too happy about it either, snorting and clawing angrily at the dirt. Steve says he literally grabbed the dude by his shirt collar and dragged him back to the bus, just in the nick of time.

Then there was the other story about the bear who stalked and killed a moose calf in plain view of another busload of tourists. They were certainly traumatized by this. One so much so that she sent a strongly worded email to the Department of the Interior, chiding them for allowing such things to happen in their parks.

Like I said, if you’re new to wilderness travel, and spend most of your vacations on beaches or amusement parks, better you should experience Alaska by cruise, in large herds led by a professional guide equipped with bear spray and maybe even a firearm. It greatly enhances your chances of not becoming a nominee for that year’s Darwin Award.

Speaking of the Darwin Award, Steve warned us about this pretty purple plant we might find during our stops called “Monkshood.”

Turns out this plant is poisonous, so we were warned specifically not to touch it. The toxins absorb through the skin and mess around with your heart and circulation. Best to leave it alone. And honestly, I’d have never known that had Steve not told me about it. So next time I go, I know not to touch plants I don’t know anything about.

This tour was shorter, and not nearly as eventful as our first trip. That one was an all day affair, complete with a crazy bus driver who had relocated from the lower 48 to a log cabin all by himself. He had a gas powered generator that provided just enough juice to power his coffee pot and cd player (this would have been before iPods). He also had a weird way of saying the word “Caribou”, and Missy and I drop that one on each other every so often. It was kinda like George H. W. Bush would say it… “Carri-boo.” We also saw lots more wildlife on that trip. Dall sheep… Bears way up on the hillside. This time, not so much. All we saw was a mew flying around.

The bus made several scheduled stops, one for and old ranger station, another for hot chocolate, made with hot water that ran from a spigot on the back of the bus, then the final stop was at Inspiration Point...

…where we were greeted by Carol. That’s an oddly European name for an Athabascan native. Carol spoke of the cultural significance of Denali, did some chants for us, and it would have been oh so deep and meaningful had it not been prefaced with “if you could see the mountain…”

Our luck in viewing had finally run dry. Denali should have been right there in the center of the frame. I was so disappointed.

The first time Missy and I were up here though, we did see the mountain, and had our picture made by it to prove it. My disappointment is more greed, really. By comparison to most I’ve feasted on views of Denali. Not seeing it this time was a sharp disappointment, but the 18 months or so that now separate me from that trip have brought things into perspective. We’re lucky to have seen it as much as we have.

Missy and me in front of Denali in 1996

Then we turned about and headed back to the lodge. The trip was so completely uneventful, nothing like I remembered it being from before. But trips into the “true wilderness” are a bit of a crap shoot. Wildlife does indeed have a mind of its own.

The rest of the evening was very quiet. I spent some more time shooting, then we went to a salmon bake dinner show not to far from our room. The cast were all aspiring actors cutting their teeth at Denali National Park, which is not a bad way to spend your college summers.

And after that, another one of our many card games at the lodge. I stole out between hands to shoot yet another twilight. I knew this night the end was getting close. One more night in Alaska, then we’d be on our way home.

See All of Alaska Day 10 - Denali National Park here...

Alaska Day 9 - Talkeetna River

Welcome Sign, Talkeetna, Alaska, originally uploaded by jsevier14.

On the 9th day of the trip, we’re inland at the Mount McKinley Princess Lodge. The big event of the day was a boat tour up the Talkeenta, Chulitna, and Susitna rivers. The weather was cloudy and damp, and again I was taking pictures from a moving platform.

Throughout the rest of the trip you will no doubt notice I developed a fascination with the Rosebay Willowherb. This plant is more commonly known as “fireweed.” While Alaska hardly lays exclusive claim to fireweed, the plant holds cultural meaning for the locals. It’s bright magenta blossoms show up when the weather turns good, then they disappear just before the first snow. After a forest fire, this is the first sign of new life, which might be where it gets its name.

So Talkeetna amounts to a main street, in this case aptly named “Main Street”, where the tourist spots and restaurants are. This sign, Beautiful Downtown Talkeetna, sits at the corner of Main and Talkeetna, the perpendicular cross street that brings people to the town from the George Parks Highway.

We stopped for lunch at a little spot on the opposite corner from the sign named “Sparky’s Drive-In,” which is a little misleading because you really don’t drive in. There doesn’t seem to be any place for you to drive up to a window, or park at a curb. I guess “Drive-In” just sounded right when the place was named. It’s one of those little airport hangar half-circle buildings. What got my attention was the featured menu item of the day, a Salmon Gyro.

Let’s see… as odd as it sounded at first, the idea grew on me. Salmon caught right down the street, pita bread, tzatziki sauce? This was just whacked out enough it could be good. Why not? What could go wrong?

Nothing. Not a thing. This by far hands down without a doubt was simply the best food we had on the entire trip. And that goes for the ship too. I told the cook and his cashier about it too. This, however, was almost a spiritual experience. The cook told me he just came up with it trying to figure out what to do with some pita bread he picked up. So go to Talkeetna, check out Sparky’s and see if they have the salmon gyros. And so it turned out lunch was the highlight of the day. Not that the river boat tour was bad. It wasn’t. Mahay’s did a nice job for us. The gyro was just that good. It was a hard act to follow.

I mentioned the day wasn’t that good for shooting. It as dark, damp, the boat we were on moved around too much and most of the pictures are blurry and unusable. There were a few worth showing… Toward the end of trip the guide shushed us, and pointed a bald eagle hanging out on a big rock over by the riverbank. Just sitting there… The boat stopped and we all stared. It seemed like the eagle noticed us and shot a “What?!?” look back in our direction. Then she lurched forward and took off.

See all of Alaska Day 9 - Talkeetna River here...

Alaska Day 8 - Talkeetna

Denali's Peak, Denali National Park, Alaska, originally uploaded by jsevier14.

And so the cruise portion of the trip ended. I enjoyed my time on the ship, but I’ve said over and again, going to Alaska on someone else’s schedule is really not the best way to go. To experience this place, better to go there with a general idea of a route, then take your time. The sun shines up to 18 hours a day in Alaska, and being rushed through little samples of it, while having certain advantages, leaves something to be desired. You’ve got time, which is one of Alaska’s great advantages.

A cruise ship the last night is a sailing contradiction. The passengers all spend most of that night in their room. You have to put your bags out the by 10pm the night before. Then, by 7am, its time to leave. So the last night is dinner, then a frantic rush to pack. 

College Fjord is not far at all from the cruises’s last stop, Whittier, which just on the other end of Port Wells. It’s about 52 miles. I got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of what there was of the night, and stole a peek off the balcony. We were nearing the port, and I could see the lights of Whittier off in the not too far distance, the end of the sailing voyage was approaching. If my camera weren’t so tightly packed away I would have shot a few frames of it. It was such a stark contrast to the festive mood that dominated the trip.

So 5:54am came earlier than I could have imagined, and after we spent the morning walking around the room like zombies, mindlessly bumping into each other, we were herded into the auditorium, then the next thing I knew I was nursing a Coke Zero on a train as it traversed a dark tunnel.

Soon we would emerge from the darkness, and the sun would come out, and the clouds of the early morning would give way to a brilliant Alaskan summer sun. My camera was still tightly packed, at my feet under our table. Eventually the instinct finally took over, but at that hour, the motivation just wasn’t there.

We hurtled through Anchorage, then zipped past Wasilla, and chugged onward north into the vast Alaskan wilderness, headed for Denali National Park. I have to stop here a moment and say something about this picture. This picture was taken in Wasilla, which we only saw from a moving train. We got through the entire place in less than 2 minutes, and I never imagined I would have gotten anything worth keeping. 

The train finds its end for this day at a little town called Talkeetna. Unofficially, Talkeetna is thought to be the source for the fictional town of Cicely, the setting for the TV series Northern Exposure. It definitely has that kind of whacked out feel to it. It’s tiny, just 772 people, with enough restaurants and shops to serve the massive numbers of tourists that pass through this little town. Some people stay longer to fish, or go rafting, or some other vacation activity, but mostly its a pass-thru for cruisers to pick up their tour buses headed for the first stop just outside Denali National Park. 

We would have more time in Talkeetna the next day. For now, the mission was to make way to the Denali Princess Lodge, where we would spend a decidedly lower-key evening than we had gotten used to. When I got there, I noticed a huge deck with telescopes mounted on the rail, pointed northward. I figured that’s where the mountain, Denali, could be seen on rare occasion of its appearance. I noticed several people taking seats there on the deck, and I wondered what was up.

Turns out they were sitting out there just staring off into the cloudy distance, hoping to catch a glimpse of the mountain. Whether you do or not is largely dependent on fortune. Soon I heard people buzzing, and noticed some pointing. I couldn’t make it out at first, and I pestered the guy next to me, who was nice enough to point, and point again, and then again as I still couldn’t see anything. Then, after staring some more, I saw it. The clouds were slowly giving way, just enough to see one jagged edge.

The last time we were in Alaska, I saw Denali three different times. From the train, which was an extraordinarily rare sighting according to the guide on that trip who informed us of our luck by telling us she had a guy on her last trip who came to Alaska 29 years running just so he could see Denali, and as of that date he still had not found success. And here we were the first time up, with the very first chance possible, and there it was. Then we saw it again in the park, and one more time after that.

So here I was 40 miles away from it and there it was coming out for me again. I hustled back to the room and grabbed my gear, and also called my Aunt Sharon in her room to tell her what was happening. By the time I got back, the mountain was in full, thrilling view. I happily shot about 200 frames before giving up. And I did take time to stop and just look at it. Very humbling experience.

And the pictures, all 200+ of them, came out like crap.

The haze was just really too much. I mean, we were 40 miles away. Between you and the mountain is 40 miles worth of haze. I'm posting the original RAW digital negative file so you can see what I am talking about.  Getting anything worth looking at from these pictures would turn out to be a massive salvage operation, more so even than other days in this project.

Thankfully, I did manage squeeze a little something out of what little I had. It took another crash Photoshop course, and did lot of experimenting, and starting over, and more experimenting. But, I ended up getting something worth keeping and we wouldn’t see the mountain again the rest of the trip. I wonder if that poor guy from back in 1996 ever got to see it...

See all of Day 8 - Talkeetna here...