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...