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...

Alaska Day 7 - College Fjord

Calving, Harvard, Glacier, College Fjord Alaska, originally uploaded by jsevier14.

Just before the first time Missy and I went to Alaska I bought my first serious camera. In fact, I think this was the first camera I ever bought for myself. I had a nice Minolta point and shoot I received as a Christmas gift. But I’d always wanted to get into Photography and this trip seemed like the perfect excuse.

On that trip, I shot 23 rolls of 35mm Kodak negative film. If you figure 37 pictures per roll, that added up to 851 pictures. I bagged a deal at Kroger, had them developed, and of those 851 pictures, exactly 1 of them was worth keeping. One.

So here on this trip I found myself nearly exactly in the same spot where that picture from the first trip was made. The first time I was there, we had a way better day for shooting. Crystal clear, bright blue sky, and if you strain, you will see the moon rising over the hills there. This time around in College Fjord, the sun was nowhere to be found. It was cloudier even than the day before at Glacier Bay.

College Fjord is not too far away from Anchorage, by air. It is dead in the middle of Prince William Sound, and it was the last sightseeing stop we would make before we disembarked excruciatingly early the next morning. The ship got to College Fjord early in the afternoon after passing Bligh Reef, the spot where 21 years prior an Exxon ship deposited 11 million of gallons of crude into those very waters. The spill covered an area the size of Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island combined. The oil contaminated fishing waters over a 10,000 square miles, certainly including the area I photographed on this day.

College Fjord essentially two big glaciers, Harvard and Yale, then a bunch of little glaciers that mark the landscape as you cruise through the narrowed Port Wells arm off the sound.

The forest intermingles more with the glaciers here. Where Glacier Bay is relatively new in terms of geology, having been formed by recent melting of the glacial ice, College Fjord is much older. The coastline is heavily forested, except for the glacial paths, which long ago uprooted any growth that might have been there.

I spent this sightseeing trip on our own balcony. This turned out to be a much better shooting vantage point. Toward the end of our visit within a mile of Harvard Glacier, the ship’s captain executed a full 360 degree turn right in the middle of the sound. The turnabout made for a brilliant panorama opportunity, and I certainly took advantage of it. Because of the way I’ve chosen to upload these, with the best images in small groups first, the panoramas will have to wait until I am done with the entire trip. Stay tuned for that.

In the meantime, the dark cloudy conditions and later afternoon light brought the blue hues in the Harvard Glacier ice out a little bit more than Glacier Bay…

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Alaska Day 6 - Glacier Bay National Park

Margerie Glacier, Tarr Inlet, Glacier Bay National Park, originally uploaded by jsevier14.

I sat down to prep these for publishing and as I reviewed the all too wordy and flowery draft version of this blog, I realized that entry was created about a year ago today. The first line reads “I’ve been working on these glaciers since the last week of September. It’s December now. So, it took me several months to get these done.” That’s December of last year, when I wrote it.


These pictures without a little crafting were flatly awful, so I spent the better part of three months taking pictures that looked like this…

...and turning them in to this:

So, aside from my other photographic work, this day and several other similar efforts are what took the bulk of the time I needed to get these done.

We got to Glacier Bay on a cloudy, dark, almost depressingly cold day. It was not a good day for picture-taking. These Alaskan glaciers are big, complex sheets of jagged blue ice. They have all sorts of textures, and because of that, they tend to have deep shadows, especially on a cloudy day.

Glacier Bay’s headquarters and lodge are somewhere just north of the little town of Gustavus, population 429. If you wanted to make a vacation of Glacier Bay, this is where you would find Beds and Breakfast, or maybe an Inn, or you could always stay at the Park’s Lodge. If you’re a glacier fan and want to get up close and personal with them, then a cruise is not for you. Staying in Gustavus or the park is. You can get a guide, charter a boat tour, or just hike on your own.

The area was discovered by Vancouver in the middle of the 18th Century, but it was completely frozen over and impassable and he skipped on past it. The entire area that is now Glacier Bay was covered in one giant sheet of jagged, earth shaping ice. The ice flows reached all the way out to the aptly named Icy Strait, 53 miles away from Margerie Glacier, our viewing stop for the day. What Vancouver couldn’t have known at the time was that this ice was actually in the process of melting (well before the Industrial Revolution). By 1907, the ice had receded all those miles to Tarr Inlet, and the Margerie Glacier is what remains of it. The glacier is still receding, letting those calved ice chunks off every so often. The sound of calving ice is like distant thunder, following a loud crack. It rolls over the water and engulfs the surroundings all around. Very majestic, and humbling.

Except actually photographing a calving is nearly impossible. The glacier itself is 2 miles wide at the mouth here where we viewed it. It's also hundreds of feet high. So you watch, you hear the boom, then of course sound travels slower than light so you don't know where to really find it and by the time you get your camera up, oh, you missed it. I feel very lucky I got anything at all of these events.

Glaciers are made of compressed ice, built up over a very long time. The glacier ice itself is compressed to the point that it reflects only azure or sky blue light. As the seasons changed, and the air warmed up, earth would stain the top of the glacial ice, then a new layer of ice would come the next winter. This gives glaciers a striated appearance.

After we spent an hour or so exploring the glacier, we turned about and headed back for the Gulf. And that was it for the camera on this day. Or so I thought. After we turned around I packed the gear away and we started getting ready for the second formal dinner night. On our way to the evening’s entertainment, I wandered out onto the deck of the ship, simply to see what could be seen. Shortly I was running back to the room for my rig. At Missy’s encouragement, mind you.

I looked out over the Gulf of Alaska and saw still waters below and parting clouds above. The sun was low in the sky, but obscured by a cloud. Below it, a brilliant orange reflection spread across the horizon in a narrow band right where the water meets the sky. The immediate background was darkening, so the effect was even more stunning. It was as compelling a sunset as I’ve seen, and my camera was 4 decks and half a ship away from me. I only heard “Go get…” By the time she got to “...your camera” I was in a full sprint back to my room. Happily, I got back in plenty of time.

Go see Alaska Day 6 - Glacier Bay National Park here...

Alaska Day 5 - Skagway

Summit Lake, Dichromatic Lake, Klondike Highway, Alaska, originally uploaded by jsevier14.

At its birth, Skagway’s sudden appearance made it grim and lawless, full of gruff men prepping or returning from their 500 mile hike out the Chilkoot Trail to the goldfields in the Canadian Klondike region. Now, 110 years later, Skagway has become a great big Alaskan shopping Mall full of bright cheery vacationers. The Chilkoot Trail still exists, a 33 mile piece of it anyway, and hard core hikers use it for a recreational 3 day adventure. Modern Skagway stands as a blatant contrast to its past.

I thought Skagway would be a day of rest, really. Maybe some light shopping. Certainly plenty of picture taking… But, for the most part after the hectic day before in Juneau, it seemed like this would be a good day to just wander around.

You get off the ship and you’re greeted by vacationer graffiti made over the past few decades. Right at the bottom of our ramp was a big boulder stuck into the side of a mountain. It was painted blue, with the words:

“I’ve seen shops and mountains,
And roads that are pitty.
But now I must return
To my own home city.
When I get there I’ll tell them all
‘Skaguay is GREAT!’
I know ‘cause
I’ve been there
In ’78!”

The whole hillside is painted with these landmarks.

On past the walkway as we entered into Skagway, we were greeted by the Pullen Creek Fish Passage and Habitat Improvement Project, an extension of the Taiya Inlet Watershed meant to improve the habitat for the local salmon populations. My first trip here this water was teeming with salmon. I guess we were too early this time.

I didn’t know when I shot this old building what a prominent figure Jeff. Smith was in that past. I just thought it was a cool old building that has been preserved for over a century. But, the guy who operated this “Parlor” was a bit of a gentleman scoundrel. I’ll let you read about him here if you want, although I’ll have to say his funniest gag was selling $5 telegraph messages several years before telegraph service was actually set up for Skagway.

And really, what lawless, Wild West town full of desperate (in more ways than one) men would be complete without full service brothel? Seems every southeast Alaska town had one, and Skagway was no different.

This is the Red Onion, and an unknown tourist who looks none too happy to be part of my show. The Red Onion is now a simple tourist bar, again showing the contrast of modern sensibilities with those of the insulated and isolated untamed west around the turn of the last century.

This guy cracks me up… He almost looks guilty, doesn’t he?

Almost everywhere I went in Alaska there were dogs. Your own dog is a virtual requirement in these parts, it seems. I have plenty of dog pictures in these sets...

Puppies always seem to know how to work the crowd for a little extra attention...

I did a little walking off the beaten path and found surprisingly normal looking houses just a block away from the main street. Then there was a row of 1950’s Cadillacs parked alongside one of the streets, and no shortage of Alaskan pride. One odd thing I noticed is that the satellite dishes look like they’re pointed at the ground. I saw this everywhere up north. If you’re at the top of the planet you have to point your dishes downward to get a signal.

Shortly I met up with the crew, back over by the Days of ’98 theater on (aptly named) Broadway, the main drag in Skagway. While waiting there with Missy we met Charlie. A couple of shots of the building was all it took for Charlie to surmise my tourist status, so he began the sales pitch for a bus tour out the Klondike Highway, opposite the Skagway River, where on the opposite ridge rests what’s left of the White Pass & Yukon railroad, with its 3 and a half foot wide track and $100 per passenger tourist runs. Charlie’s a Seattle transplant, and spends his summers in Alaska working for the theater, where he sells tickets to shows, and the bus tours. I had no idea who this guy was, but, the more he talked to us, the friendlier he seemed, and the more interested in the trip I became. The bus was way better than the train. On the train, you can’t get off. The bus stops a few times. Bonus! Then there’s the fee, which was by comparison to other tours up there, a paltry $40 bucks… Another score! So why not? Well, Missy knew why not, and she and her mom went back to the ship for some R&R.

Pretty soon Charlie was writing up a ticket for Aunt Sharon and me.

I understand Missy and her mom caught a movie while Aunt Sharon and me shared the bus with another whole family of mom, dad, two rock throwing maniac pre-adolescent boys, and two older kids who just seemed way above this sort of kitschy touristy nonsense. One of them slept most of the trip. There's $40 well spent.

And a good decision to go it was it was once I settled that some horrible unplanned fate did not await us. My neurosis led me back across the street to the little cookie stand where earlier I had scarfed what easily has to be the world best chocolate chip cookies. The lady that ran the stand seemed trustworthy enough, and when she explained the rules of tourist engagement in Skagway, my little silly fears about returning late or being left for dead someone in western Canada were permanently laid to rest. I mean, if someone with cookie-making-skills like that vouches for Charlie, that’s good enough for me! And seriously, these were the best chocolate chip cookies I ever ate. Warm, gooey, still melting chocolate chips… Wow.

And so me, Aunt Sharon, and The Obnoxious Family piled in the bus driven by Dave, a player in the Days of 98 Theater who hangs out in the offseason and, of all things spends his Alaskan winters working construction…

We all headed north toward the Continental Divide and the Canadian border. You can imagine the scenery. And he did stop as promised, many more times than I anticipated, so you don’t have to completely imagine it. We saw Dall Sheep...

...Pitchfork Falls, which is actually runoff from a hilltop lake called “Goat Lake,” which provides all the electricity needed by Skagway and a neighboring town… 

Then there was the Fairweather Fault, where we crossed the Moore’s Creek Bridge, a rare Single Point Cable Stay Cantilever Suspension Bridge, which is constructed such that if there is an Earthquake along the fault, the entire bridge structure will disconnect from the far side, saving it from collapse…

This was one of those moments where I saw the bridge approaching, and I one of my favorite photographic subjects is bridges, so I immediately started wishing we could stop.  We drove over it, went on our way, and then Dave stopped right in the perfect spot for me to shoot.  Of course I couldn't get off the bus fast enough.


Then there was the dichromatic Summit Lake, colored such because on half of it is full of glacial silt (pictured above). On the way back we stopped long enough for me to get a shot looking back northward along the Klondike Highway. Those poles off to the side of the road… Those are not lights. Those are guides for snow plows so they know where to go when the snow piles up, sometimes as high as these poles.

Go see Alaska Day 5 - Skagway here...

Alaska Day 4 - Juneau

Devil's Club, Mendenhall Glacier Trail, Tongass National Forest, Juneau, Alaska

originally uploaded by jsevier14.

If you want to fork over huge amounts of cash, cruises offer bunches of prepaid tours. Again, using the logic that this would be a once-in-a-lifetime adventure, it would be easy to sign up for $1,000 worth. But, I just did the one, a “Photo Safari” in Juneau. Actually Missy signed me up for it. I probably wouldn’t have done it on my own, so Missy did it for me, while her mother, Aunt Sharon, and she took a whale watching tour.

The tour started out at Mendenhall Glacier, which is within the Juneau city limits. This was another repeat appearance for me, and I am sure it is obvious at this point I don’t mind that. All of these places bear a second look, certainly. And I am not particularly fond of dramatic declarations, but, when you pull into the parking area at Mendenall, you whip around a parking circle then BOOM, there it is, this massive sheet of ice slowly making it’s way into Mendenhall Lake. It’s truly breath-taking.

We had a nice group, one couple from not-too-far-away-from-home Louisville. The gentleman won the cone of shame I believe when he amused the tour guide by telling her he wanted to see a bear up close. She shared an experience with such an opportunity of her own that made the suggestion even more ridiculous. Seems she’s only still with us because one of her hiking companions was alert enough to carry Bear Spray, and even with that her party’s escape was narrow. Trust me people, cruisers do not want to see a bear up close. Bears want to be left alone.


Oh, well, anyway… The hike, yeah it was total awesomeness. Views of the ice, lots of local plant life, including Devil’s Club (pictured above). If you’d like an authentic Alaska souvenir, consider taking home a thorn from one of these little monster plants. Get one of these spines embedded in your skin and, well, that sucks. It is incredibly hard to remove and it hurts like crazy. You’ll see in the pictures how nasty sharp and long they are. So, we were warned to stay far far away from it. Well, we, except me. Stacy, the tour guide, told me I could do what I wanted, so I climbed right up there right underneath of it with my macro lens. And no I didn’t get a spine to take home with me. :)


So you look at this plant and think “DANGER, STAY AWAY” but believe it or not, to the natives this is an incredibly rich plant for human consumption, both as a medicine for treatment of Type II Diabetes, and also as a food, if you get to it before the shoots grow the prickly’s. A little butter, a little spice of choice… I’ll take their word for it that it tastes pretty good.


That was the first half of the tour, a hike on one of Mendenhall’s trails that ended by a road not to far from the parking lot, where we saw on one side a pond with a Beaver City constructed in it, and on the other, a bus waiting for us to pile on it so we could go catch some whales. Well, more like see and maybe photograph some whales, which turned out to be pretty hard. The water in Auke Bay was choppy, and the boat was moving most of the time. The pilot stopped a few times, but the choppy water still had us bobbing up and down. Then there was the small issue of whales staying submerged most of the time, only popping up for a few seconds, then disappearing again. Shooting whales requires more than a half hour on a boat. But, I managed to get a few anyway. They were “Bubble Net Feeding”, a relatively rare phenomenon where whales swim in a tightening circle, blowing bubbles upward below a school, somehow trapping them for at least a few seconds. The whales then open wide and swim upward, wiping out whole schools all at once. This makes them very happy, and playful, so they bob up and down, swat their tails on the water, and pat their fins.

And then just like that we turned around and headed back to the dock. On the way we found a raft of sea lions sun bathing on a buoy, which made for some fun pictures on the way back to the dock.

The tour would amount to half the day. I figured my companions would be craving some serious boat time after their tour, but no, they were up for the Mount Roberts Tramway ride up to the top of well, Mount Roberts where the featured attraction is a stunning panoramic view of the Gastineau Channel, of which I happily captured and will include in the final panorama set. Another hike back from the visitor’s center, and we found on the way a large cage with the beautiful “Lady Baltimore,” a bald eagle who survived a poaching attempt by shotgun in 2006. She was blinded in one eye, which makes her survival in the wild unlikely, so she’s kept in the cage and fed as much as an eagle can eat in return for giving all of us a close up look.

Look close to our right just above the beak and you can see where her eye was gouged out.  Shameful.  But, she survived it, and she seems to thrive in her role as teacher for the rest of us.  

Go See Alaska Day 4 - Juneau here...

Alaska Day 3 - Ketchikan

Hand Carved Pieces, Totem Heritage Center, Ketchikan, Alaska, originally uploaded by jsevier14.

Okay well the ship is cool, and I really hated to leave the butter sculptures behind and all, but, early in the morning of the third day, much earlier than I would be waking up, we pulled alongside in Ketchikan. We were up in time for breakfast, and then for some inexplicable reason I had an urge to call into work, and spent several minutes salivating at the scenery below from the top deck after breakfast while I tried in vain to resolve some silly problem with our help desk. I was definitely ready to get my feet dirty.


We had sailed all night through the Reviliagigedo Channel, which is just north of the Georiga Strait. After that we entered the Tongass Narrows, a thin little passage where Ketchikan is located. Generally these little coastal towns are built where the fish are, and where the boats can get in, so a lot of them are land locked, which means you can only get to them by boat or plane. Ketchikan is such a town, and it’s loaded with Tlingit and Haida totem poles, including a replica of the Chief Johnson Totem, which stands 55’ high near the center of the city.


As the story goes, Chief Johnson, whose real first name was George, helped a tribe of natives move from Canada to a close by island after some sort of a dispute they had with the local church. There was a deserted village on Annette Island and for pointing the erstwhile natives in the right direction the made him honorary Chief, which required a totem for his front yard not too far where today’s replica stands. Totem poles were never meant to last forever, so the best that can be done now is a replica. Why it wasn’t the original 66’ in height I’ll never know. But, there it is in the set if you want to see it, all 55’ feet of it.

We hopped on the local $1 all day bus, which took us a ways up a hill and back into the town close to the Deer Creek Salmon hatchery, where close by I found a baseball field...

...then a Corvette sheltered by a surprisingly flimsy for Alaska car port, and the Totem Heritage Museum, which Missy and I visited the first time we were there. This time I went back with my Aunt Sharon for the short visit before getting back on the bus headed back into town where we walked along the Creek Street shops, through the old bordello houses that have been turned into small residences and shops. The creek churns below the street, and if you’re there later in the year like we were the first time, you’ll see lots of spent salmon and cats crawling around everywhere.

Too bad our time was so short. We were back on the ship by 1:30. I got the chance to shoot a lot, and talk with a storekeeper who told me this summer job selling cheap sweatshirts and jewelry to tourists is how he makes most of his living. The tourism industry is huge for the locals. I just wish I could have stayed longer.


Ketchikan - Home of Dolly’s House, where “The Odds are Good, but the Goods are Odd.”


Dolly’s didn’t make the initial cut, but she’ll be along with the rest later on for the hard core viewers who want to see all of what I got that’s worth showing.


So by 2pm we were back on the ship headed back out thru Clarence Strait, where hazy shooting conditions and compelling subject matter made for oddly difficult pictures to both shoot and process. And so an aimless walk back up the the bow of the ship revealed my first whale sighting of the trip. I managed to catch this tail just before it submerged back to the water...

And then it was gone...


Go see Alaska Day 3 - Ketchikan here…

Alaska Day 2 - At Sea

Sun over Hecate Strait, British Columbia originally uploaded by jsevier14.

In order to sail to Alaska you have to traverse the space between Vancouver and the Dixon Entrance, where U.S. territory officially picks up. That’s not even the halfway point to the first stop, so Day 2 ends up being entirely on the ship.


It was a bit of a photographic letdown really. Even though the scenery outside is exotic and compelling in its own way, it gets a little monotonous, especially when considering the cloudy conditions that dominated most of the daylight. The day included a fair bit of non-photographic goofing off.


After the Day 1 sunset shooting wrapped up around 10pm the night before I managed to make it another two hours before collapsing in an exhausted heap. The movement of the ship through the water, and the open sliding glass doors letting all the peaceful sailing sounds from outside filled the room made deep slumber easy. Since midnight was really 3am to me, I managed to make it just 90 minutes shy of being up 24 straight hours, so this was almost the equivalent of an all-nighter.


So 8 hours later I was up and at ‘em, in time for breakfast, where I amazed my Aunt Sharon by slurping down a plateful of smoked salmon for breakfast. This, and many other things, was a bit of a culture shock. But she managed to deal, certainly. It was just new. “Fish for breakfast?” Oh yeah… Mmm…


While the ship was meandering it’s way through the Seymour Narrows I’d signed up for a ship tour given by an Assistant Cruise Director. Nice enough chap, but the reason I signed up for that gig was to get a look at this monster boat’s bridge. I’d had that experience before on the original Crown, which has since been sold off. No such luck on the Sapphire, a mild bummer, really. We got a tour of the bars and restaurants, and the shopping haunts. Waste of time? No. Highlight of the trip? Uh, no.

We had heard of some sort of presentation in the ship’s main auditorium, and we ended up leaving that one early. I’d thought it would be some sort of “look at all the cool stuff you can do in the port when we get there” deal, but it ended up being more of a listing of the money-spending opportunities.

We all sat there 20 minutes then the presenter said something about a “shopping emergency” and that was all it took for me to head out to find some free ice-cream.


And it stayed dreary outside most of the day, until the end of the afternoon, about the time I had to go get dressed for dinner. It cleared up enough to get a picture of sun shining over the Seymour Narrows monotony (pictured above), which was a fairly accurate representation of this slightly boring, very restful day.


If you found this and the pictures uneventful, that’s pretty much what happened. The pictures get better from here, because Day 3 is when the trip really begins. Stay tuned...


Go see Alaska Day 2 - At Sea here...

Alaska Day 1 - Vancouver

Twilight, Strait of Georgia, British Columbia, originally uploaded by jsevier14.

The first day of a cruise is mainly about getting you and your stuff to the boat on time, getting there, then getting a lecture about the difference between a “boat” and a “ship.” Whoops. Boats are much smaller than ships. Got it.


So, some absurdly early time on a Saturday morning came, like 5am or something… My early ambition for this day was simply to engineer as quickly as possible the cramming of two weeks worth of four people’s stuff into the trunk of my Aunt Sharon’s car so I could get into the backseat and take a nap. By 8am we were on our way to Minneapolis, where we’d connect and head on to Vancouver, B.C., which is in Canada so we had to go through Canadian customs. Customs means long lines, answering silly questions about fresh produce and firearms, then another long line, this time for U.S. customs because see the next time you set foot on dry land it will be back in the U.S. So let me get this straight… You get off the plane, go through Canadian customs, then you get on a bus, and then go through U.S. customs. Why couldn’t we just board in Seattle?


And so there we were, on the bus when we turned a corner and caught a full view of this massive ship, the Sapphire Princess. And my thought was “wow, that’s a big boat.” I mean it’s like a 95 story building (951 feet long) floating in water on it’s side. And so after the second trip though customs then yet another line for ticketing, we were on the ship, hanging out in one of the rooms waiting for the launch, which was, well, like a ship pulling out of port. When the announcement came I grabbed the rig and headed up to the top deck with Missy and her mother, where like any good obsessive amateur photographer, I immediately started shooting. After shove off and a mildly enthusiastic response from the big crowd, we were sailing through the Burrard Inlet, barely making it under the Lion’s Gate Bridge, which caused me to wonder what they do if the tide goes up… But we made it underneath the bridge, and sailed off into the Strait of Georgia, headed North to Alaska.

After the launch, we went and grabbed some chow, and that was about it for the ladies. By this time it’s almost 8pm, and Missy’s mom only had to announce that it was really more like 11pm to them before the yawning began. Not me, no way. I don’t go to bed that early even when I am sick.


So I grabbed the gear again, wished everyone a good night, and headed forward to the very front of the ship. The sky looked ready to give us a show and several people with big cameras and giant lenses were holed up alongside the running track, which was protected from the wind by panes of not quite clear enough smoked glass. I met a guy there from LA and after a few shots I invited him out front into the elements with me, which was immediately rejected by his wife. He stayed behind, and I compensated for my lens envy by being the only shooter outside. July or not, the Strait of Georgia at sunset, forward on a ship, is cold. But, I staked my spot bracing my body against the rail for handheld shots of the stunning deep yellow sunset, which finally gave way to brilliant twilight about 9:30 in the evening. That was 12:30am the next day to me.


Go see Alaska Day 1 - Vancouver here...


(Remember, I am only posting my top 14 images from each day until I get through Day 12. After that, I'll do a set just for panoramas, then I'll complete the rest of the sets.) http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffsevier/5191962611/in/set-72157625306077905/lightbox/

Our Summer Vacation - Last Year

My Mother-in-Law took this picture...

Over the last year and change I have been working on a project selecting and processing pictures from our 2009 family vacation in Alaska.  When I got back from the trip I completely underestimated how long this would take to get these pictures ready.  I shot over 10,000 images on that trip, and there were plenty that required a lot of work in Photoshop.  

Hands down Alaska is my favorite place to visit.  Missy thinks I am crazy but I think I could live there.  Since my first trip, a cruise for our honeymoon, I’ve always wanted to go back.  And, after going back, I can see where I could make a regular habit of it as long as it didn’t involve another cruise.  Don’t get me wrong, I like cruises fine, they’re certainly  fun if you like to eat a lot and ride on a big ship for a week.  And sure, who doesn’t like endless reruns of The Love Boat?  Then there’s the closet sized bathroom with the scary vacuum toilet and itty-bitty kiddie sized shower.  So yeah, cruises are cool, but the people who design them fix it so you get not quite enough of what you’re really there to do because they have to get you to the next stop on time.  It ends up being a nice little sampler of what you could have done if you weren’t tied to someone else’s schedule.

So there we were, in Alaska…  me and three women - Missy, my mother-in-law, and my Auntie Sharon, whom Missy invited along to be her mom’s room mate.  The three ladies disappeared a lot, going off to do their own thing.  The result of this was 10,021 individual pictures shot by me.  

So okay, 10,000 pictures… Even I was surprised by that.  But hey, if you want pictures, ya gotta shoot.  So I knew this would be a big project, even when I promised people I’d be done processing by last Thanksgiving.  I really had no idea it would become as involved as it did.  I got the first few days done in well, a few days.  Then came the glaciers.  Big, massive, blue photographic nightmares, every one of them.  Glaciers.  Glaciers shot on a sunny day, with nasty shadows, blown out highlights, and of course color casts.  Then there were glaciers shot on cloudy days, still somehow with shadows and worse color casts.  Blue, white, brown, with silt infused waters in the front… Crevasses and cracks trapping light… Blown out highlights on otherwise underexposed shots… The printable ones all ran through a massive salvation effort in Photoshop, and it took forever to get through it.  Those middle days of the trip took several months each to complete.  

And now, I am done, and the day has come for me cut these loose into the wild.  

I broke this project down by each of the 12 days of the trip.  I’ll let one of them go at a time to, you know, build suspense (or more like prevent overload).  I’m starting with snapshots that were taken by Missy and her mother.  If you’re part of the family and only care about the silly posed pictures where we look back into bright sunlight and force smiles, this is where you’ll find those.  I'm getting these out there up front.  If you want to see dorky shots of me?  Yeah those are here too, including that one at the top of this post, which was taken by my mother-in-law, which I find oddly hysterical. 

Then after that, it’s my images, day by day:

Day 1 - Vancouver

Day 2 - At Sea

Day 3 - Ketchikan

Day 4 - Juneau

Day 5 - Skagway

Day 6 - Glacier Bay National Park

Day 7 - College Fjord

Day 8 - Talkeetna

Day 9 - Talkeena Three River Boat Tour

Day 10 - Denali National Park

Day 11 - Denali to Fairbanks

Day 12 - Fairbanks to Chena Hot Springs

I'm picking out the best 14 of each set, leading with those posted to my facebook account.  The entire shoot for each day will be posted back to Flickr.  Gimme a couple days between postings to get everything ready.  

And so, for my Aunt Carolyn, who finally gave up oh, about February of this year on ever seeing these, and for my cousin Risa, who grew up in Alaska and misses it every day, for my traveling companions on this trip who in spite of their disappearance each at one point or another had to wait around for me… and for my friend Vicki, who can now stop giving me a hard time asking “hey when are we going to see those pictures from Alaska?”, here we go… 

Click here to see the whole snapshot set on Picasa...

Moving to SSD

I use Photoshop and it's little brother Lightroom for my digital workflow. Lightroom is especially handy for the massive image collection I make for Derby bouts. The usual image count after a night of Derby shooting is well north of 3000, and I need a tool that allows me to easily and quickly browse through each of those images. I copy the RAW files from my CF card directly to a queue directory on my MacPro's boot drive. Once the cards are emptied into a queue folder on in my Pictures directory on my boot drive, I set up a Lightroom import with all the keywords and file renaming rules for each bout. The Lightroom import then reads the images from the queue directory, then one by one renames them with that bout's format, then copies them to my 3TB RAID array drive where the images are stored permanently. For this import, I set Lightroom to render 1:1 previews, so I can load them into the Loupe module and view them quickly one by one, filtering out the final set that goes on for further processing. Since I use MacOS X, I have a built in Veritas based backup tool that periodically checks the drives I have assigned for backup for changes. The new images certainly meet that criteria, so when that process completes I have three copies of each bout. One on the CF cards which do not get erased until my next shoot, then the ones in the queue drive, then the copied images on my image array, then the set that gets copied into the 4TB network backup array I have set up on an old Macintosh G4 plugged directly into my router in the basement.

Lightroom uses a local database to catalog images. There are actually two database files that are created. One for the references to the images on disk, then another for the previews that are created for expedient editing. These database files exist as a MacOS X packages, which essentially is a directory that acts like a single file when viewed in the Finder. The problem comes in when the previews package grows to a massive size. Lightroom has to read and sort through this previews package to operate, and just before this exercise that package had grown to 52GB in size. This creates a number of problems, such as space consumption, but the size of the preview repository creates the real problem: Crappy performance.

When Lightroom loads, it reads through this 52GB file to re-link the images in the catalog to their corresponding previews. OS X goes through a massive number of reads during this process. These reads can be viewed in the Activity Monitor tool in the OS X Utilities folder. This read process is the real problem, because once this file gets very large, it performs very poorly. The file is so large, it takes a very long time to process, and the noise coming from my hard drive is disturbing. The disk is incredibly busy, thrashing continuously for a very long time, to the point that I think maybe I am jeopardizing its longevity. It would suck very much if this drive failed, even if I am completely backed up over my home network using Time Machine.

To solve this problem and get back to the snappy performance I need to process bouts quickly, I decided to rig up a fast SSD drive for booting. I picked up two of these. OCZ has a pretty good reputation in the business. If you're thinking SSD, right now Intel's drive and this one are good bets. I chose this one because it has insane read-write times. Check the specs on the link.

I also picked up a spanky new MacBook Pro. I him-hawed over the size for a few months before I made the jump. I also wasn't amused by the fact that the smaller MBP runs on the Core Duo architecture, rather than the Core i5 or i7 with the bigger MacBooks. Turns out there are potentially good reasons for this. If you don't feel like read Ars Technica after this windy tome, basically because of the small form factor, Apple woulda had to have stuck with Intel graphics, which suck in comparison to nVidia's offering. So, having settled that, I landed on the 13" MBP. I toyed with the concept of calling it MacJr, or LittleMac, or the terminally pseudo-cool L'il Mac, but, no such thing is happening here... I'm sticking with our internal naming, which, you can think about on your off time if you care about such things.

But the temptation really in giving this thing a pet name like that is it's an incredible little machine made even more incredible by the swapping out of its silly little 5200 RPM 250GB hard drive with one of those fast OCZ SSD drives. It's small, lighter even now, has a snappy little LED display, and boy now is it fast.

I was also nervous about opening the case up to do surgery on the thing not 24 hours after taking it out of the box. If you know anything about Hyper MacGeeks that event is a near religious experience. I'm not a HyperGeek, just a geek, so, I was able to take it out of the box without shedding tears...

Of course you want to clone the drive that came with the machine first, which took about four times as long to complete than the actual drive swap-out. I picked up a reasonable external 2.5" case at the local MicroCenter, then I seated the the SSD in it long enough to run Carbon Copy Cloner to create a full image of the original drive on the new SSD. That took about 45 minutes and created a perfect copy of the Apple installed drive on the SSD, complete with all the root and hidden files that give Unix OSes all their charm. After identifying the SSD as the Mac's boot drive, it was time to shut down and perform the outpatient procedure.

Now what's really incredible about iEngineering is the form factor of this little machine is very elegant. If you read the Ars Technical article, you know everything is pretty much crammed in the case, which makes it hard to work on. That is unless your objective is a simple hard drive swap. That turned out to be ridiculously easy, well, except for the nasty surprise that you need a Torx T6 Screwdriver to unscrew the drive-mounted anchors, then screw them back onto the replacement drive. That little bit of info wasn't mentioned in the user manual, which happily included otherwise complete instructions for the hard drive replacement process. Unscrew 10 tiny screws off the bottom, pop off the aluminum cover, unscrew the drive anchor thingy, disengage the drive from its SATA connector, pop the other one on it, screw the case back together, then prepare for Nerdgasm.

So with the operation complete, it was time for the real test. If you've ever hit the power button on a MacBook you know that can be a scary experience. MacBooks are notoriously quiet, and it takes a few seconds to cycle up to the Apple logo screen, then a little while longer to go through the spinner. On my old PowerBook, I used to hold my hand on the case to feel for some sort of vibration. Happily the MBP has a light in front that confirms operational status. So, from the time the light shone to the time I could click the first icon...

27.4 seconds.

Insane.

As it turned out, that was just the warmup. I have this bad habit of starving myself, then going on these big sprees where I bag all my stuff at once, so, having spent the load on the MacBook, why not get a new SSD for the big Hoss main computer, the Xeon based MacPro that heats up my upstairs office every night...

And so it came to pass. And, all that glorious ease of install I enjoyed on the MacBook, well, you can forget that. I have the first Intel based MacPro, which means my Optical drive bays are no SATA. Since I have all four of my drive bays occupied (one for the 250GB previous boot drive, two for a 3TB RAID array for photography, and one holding a 640GB iTunes library which feeds my hungry AppleTV, my only option for the 2.5" SSD was to mount it in the one open bay I had left, the second ATA 5.25" optical bay. Happily, there are two free SATA ports on the MOBO. Unhappily, they're stupidly wedged behind a fan casing that makes them nearly impossible to use except with a lot of fussing, sweating, and finagling, and eventually it turns out a pair of angled needle-nose pliers. Seating the 24" right-angle SATA cable in the motherboard turns out to be the easy half of the problem, for the next task is to route the thing through a nearly full rectangular opening in a metal plate that separates the optical drive bays from the motherboard. This turned out to be even more painful, because the MacPro uses these really cool drive bays with mounted SATA ports, which are jammed in the back of the case, as you would expect. You have to route the SATA cable such that it does not cross the path of the drive sled, which ultimately meant I had to unscrew one of the SATA ports to get the cable routed behind it. Happily Apple chose to use captive screws for this, which made the job way way easier.

It took some effort and the angled pliers again to complete the routing, but, once that was done, and the power connected, it became a matter of seating the drive in the 3.5" to 2.5" converter, which was mounted in turn in a 3.5" to 5.25" metal converter, then slid securely in the removable bay. Once I got that done, I could taste victory, but not before another obstacle had to be overcome.

With Missy hanging out watching the proceedings (and the sweat rolling off my nose), I tried to close the deal by reseating the drive mount. But, it would not go. Being intelligent enough not to force it, I started playing with the cables to no avail. Talking to myself didn't help either, and eventually I realized I had flipped the lock switch on the back of the case that Apple uses to secure the hard drives in their bays. Flipping that back open was the last step in the job. I was done. A week after I started, and one false start when I had to learn the hard way the SATA ports would require a special tool (or worse, removal of innards, which I had no interest in doing), I had the SSD mounted. That was last Friday night.

The MacPro spent Saturday deleting files I didn't need to clone, then actually creating the clone, then restoring the files I deleted from TimeMachine, which was a pain since I dropped over 75GB worth of data temporarily. I know, I could have created a handy Unix script to skip over that part, but, using Time Machine was faster and less risky. Having done that, by the time the guests left on Saturday it was time to see what impact the SSD had on my setup.

Boot time:

40 seconds.

Huge performance gain. Booting easily took 3 minutes before. I timed my work PC today, it took 6 minutes, which is ridiculous but I presume has to do with our network... But the real test would be real-world applications, which, in my case means Lightroom and Photoshop, and I am happy to report huge performance gains there. Do I have stats? No. But what used to take many seconds is now happening almost instantly.

Of course, SSDs are problematic given the technology's unique erase requirements. Because essentially released disk has to be zeroed before it can be rewritten, some SSDs suffer laggard performance after they've been written to and erased several times. There is a technology solution for this called TRIM, but Apple doesn't support it because they're under the impression they don't need to. At least one technical resource tends to agree...

So, who knows. Recently a reference to TRIM showed up in the latest MacOS X update, so perhaps it is coming. Perhaps it is not necessary. Stay tuned...