Glaciers, Cliff faces and cloud covered mountains..

Well, someday I will sit down and write a book about the drive from Anchorage to Seward, but today will leave  you with select pictures. . 

The railroad goes parallel to the highway and close to the water edge. Next time we will definitely go by rail on this same route. Folks we met who had come to Seward on the train said that they stop the train every now and then when any whale sightings happen! 

Apparently the purchase of Alaska from Russia for less than 8 Million dollars way in those days was called the "Seward folly" as people of that day thought "what a waste of good money to buy a land so desolate just because it has a few natural resources".

The place below reminded me of Jurassic Park. Apparently the 9+ earthquake that wiped out Seward in the sixties, originated here and triggered a massive tsunami! Time does heal things.. the place was teeeeeeming with life.

Mr. Seward, I am glad you bought that land and made most of it National parks and sincerely hope that the money minded politicians of today don't sell this back to Russia for a few million again in return for crude. 

The glaciers were a sight to behold. The boat crew fished out a few ice chunks and I got to taste Glacial ice water. Don't know why Global warming so difficult to comprehend for most Americans. What is the loss of a glacier or two, if you are never going to see them in your lifetime?! 

We saw this one break off a huge piece and crash into the water with a thundering sound right in front of our eyes.

Tried to take a few HDR shots of the glacier by stabilizing camera on Boat's side rail. It works as long as the boat is not moving too fast and you are set to a fast shutter speed, high ISO and f >14 (just a tip!).

 

After seeing the Glaciers, the boat took us to one last spot. The captain gave it a lot of hype as a potential "National Geographic Moment". In order to be ready for this I asked one of the crew, what is he talking about and the answer was "he is going to show you a place where Puffins nest on the rock face. It is a rare sight!".  If you have been photographing all day switching lenses back and forth on a moving boat where you can't feel your hands anymore in the cold, what would you do? I switched to the long 400x setup to catch a puffin or two on a rock, given a puffin is a small bird. 

Was totally not prepared for the beautiful scenery that unfolded in an area called the "spires". By the time I switched to a wide angle the boat had moved into the spires. Was hoping he would go back the same way he came, but nope. Ended up on the other side of the boat. Definitely going back to see them at close range on the next trip.

It was indeed a National Georgaphic moment! 

A new year begins..

With more pictures..

from the day trip to Elkhorn Slough..

There was a good chance of rain so the entire camera gear did not make it to the hike. We will definitely visit this place again at sunset!

Bridge to nowhere!

We got some great clouds. It had just stopped raining..

This was funny if it wasn't dangerous. One minute, I am sitting down on the tracks taking photographs and suddenly there is a train horn and this commuter train goes through.. no gates, no restrictions! It was cool though..

We did catch some birds but they were more impressive on the binoculars than on the 200mm zoom through the lens. Why cant we just take digital pictures off of what we see with those awesome binoculars?! 

There were many other birds that either looked like versions of sparrows or egrets and a bunch of hummingbirds and the whole place was filled with bird sounds. 

Will strongly recommend a walk around the slough as a day trip.. weather permitting!

Local trips to the rescue

FIL and BIL are visiting.. we spent a lot of time in the house, playing with a three month old baby that is delighted to find its own voice and in providing us with hours of amusement and happiness!

Jr. and the little one finally declared they wanted to go places. Their preference was indoor fun ... read "shopping" and we cleverly steered them outdoors.

We went to Christmas in the park for a little over an hour yesterday and the kids enjoyed it thoroughly!

Today the sun was not out but it stopped raining and the backyard was bright green. So off we went to a place that has been on our radar for a long time but we always drove past it.. 

Elkhorn Slough near Moss Landing on the way to Monterey. The drive was only an hour and the visitor center folks were great.  We went on a long hike for almost 2 1/2 hours and saw tons of birds and enjoyed the walk..

The photos are still a processing.. but here is a nice sample!

More tomorrow..

Death Valley trip Panoramas

Day 4 trip photos are here..

Day 5 of the trip was our return from Ridgecrest to San Jose with a stop at Lake Isabella for 15 minutes to enjoy the serene waters. There were two other vehicles there and the rest of the way we did not cross a single vehicle on either side for almost a good 20 miles!

It was a beautiful drive along the Kern river which at places was moving rapidly and having calm waters to catch reflections of mountains.

These stitch shots are actually really large. Each of them is ~ 100 Mb and the originals are 12000 to 16000 pixels wide by 3000 to 5500 pixels in length. Have resized them to a 1200 pixel max width for the website. 

They were all made by composite merging 8-21 photos all taken in portrait orientation while panning the landscape in full manual mode with the same setting for all the photographs. 

An example is below:

You get one gigantic image from which you crop the right section and play with it to get this...

Plan to print one of these as a 8 foot by 2 foot poster which should still be good at 96dpi ! 

Hope you enjoyed the pictures. We sure will go back and look at these pictures as our new screensaver.

Would definitely recommend an extra day or two for Death valley trips to enjoy the Kern river, the lake etc. on the way in and see other things like Titus canyon, Racetrack Playa etc. 

Knowing what we know now, next time we will probably stay inside death valley at the expensive furnace creek inn for at least two of the 5 days and will be renting a jeep in advance!

A photograph can only do so much justice..

It was a great idea to go work today instead of doze off at home. No pills, visited the hot room and now feeling a lot better. 

So the thought of visiting those 3000 odd photos from last week came to mind. 

After spending 2 hours on just 6 photos calling it a night.

At the end of the day a photograph even if done in Photorealistic HDR doesn't recapture the wonder of Death Valley!

This one photo below is of the Ubehebe crater. This is a composite of 7 shots stiched together. The individual shots were taken at 17mm in portrait format on a Canon 17-40mm L lens using a ND filter in manual mode with manual focus, then cropped and adjusted. I tried pulling the whole thing off with auto exposure bracketed shots in HDR and that did not work. Guess even my Mac quits at some point..

Sure there are not that many pictures like this of Ubehebe out there. We are on a rim of a crater which is around 100 feet! you get a feel for the size of this by looking at the people on the right edge.

The ND filter kit was part of the birthday present specially for this trip. Made a big mistake. Like a person who wears spectacles for the first time forgeting the specs at odd places, I left the ND filter kit on the crater rim. 

If you happen to read this blog and fate has it that you were on that crater rim between 11/21 or thereafter and you happen to have found it.. please email me.. 

Was almost in tears when we realized this at our next stop later that evening. By that time we had already driven a good 60 miles away from the crater and visiting it again in hopes of recovering filter kit was moot!

There were few good shots with the filter in the 24 hours of use like this sunset over the freeway. We didn't realize the sun sets before 4:30 in death valley! A lot earlier than the previous day when we were out of the valley. The valley is below sea level and the lowest point in the US is right here.. should have expected that!

or this one from Mosaic canyon..

These two photos en-route to Darwin falls at Panamint area..

and finally a butterfly that was everywhere in the desert.. they were even there in the salt flats. Don't know how they survive the harsh environment. 

Learned one more thing in the editing process. The canon photo stitch utility does not work on photos taken at 17mm! So figured out how to stitch them in Photoshop. Starting to really love Photoshop now. For all that Adobe hating because of Flash Player.. there is a new found love for Adobe because of CS5!

More photos tomorrow...