Mat-Su Fall!

Chickaloon River

    Fall and early winter have been unusually busy for me. It's been great business-wise but I've struggled to make the time to stay connected here! Luckily, that gives me a lot to catch up on.

    In mid-September I spent the day in the Matanuska-Susitna region in search of fall color. The peak colors in Alaska only last a couple of weeks but can be absolutely stunning! I ended up spending most of my time scrambling around Chickaloon River just a little further up the Glenn Highway from the town of the same name. I took a lot of long exposures, about one to four seconds, to get the silky look in the water. The sky was pretty dull with heavy clouds so I added a blue gradient to make the white spaces in the composition less distracting.

    Here are some favorites from the day:

Black & White Images w NIK Silver Efex Pro 2

Chichicastenango, Guatemala

  A couple of years ago I bought the Complete Collection of NIK photo editing software. I bought the set mainly for the Color Efex Pro and the noise reducing program Dfine, both of which are terrific. I wasn't thinking too much about black and white images but thought it could be fun to play with Silver Efex Pro at some point. It was probably six months before I finally started experimenting with it but once I did it it was a game changer. It brought me back to the days of black and white film and reminded how magical it was taking images based on solid composition and the contrasts between dark and light.

  This isn't a tutorial on how to use the software, there are a lot of those available on the NIK website, but rather an endorsement of how well it works. It provides a lot of ways to be creative and adjust the images to your vision. Most importantly, I actually look for great black and white possibilities when I'm out shooting again. It's changed the way I think when I'm editing images from various trips and assignments in that I'll label any images I think will also be great as black and white and I'll submit those versions to clients as well.

 I encourage you to embrace black and white image making again!

 Below are some of my favorites from the last two years.

Barb Franks, Anchorage, AK

Quinhagak, AK

Denali National Park, AK

Antigua, Guatemala

Anchorage, AK

Terzah Tippen-Poe, AK

Stretching Salmon Skin, Smithsonian Arcttic Studies Center, Anchorage, AK

Tanzania

Tanzania

Anchorage, AK

Kenai Fjords National Park, AK

Guatemala

Guatemala

Penn Valley, CA

Fairbanks, AK

Placer County, CA

Lake Clark N.P.: Landscapes

  As I stated earlier, I had almost as much fun photographing landscapes as I did bears out at Silver Salmon Creek this summer. It was wonderful to have wildlife AND stunning scenery to photograph. It was almost too much stimulation. Seriously! Here are some faves from the trip. BTW, I'll be leading another trip to Lake Clark in August of 2013. details soon here: wayde@waydecarroll.com.