Samuel Johns

Yesterday I had the pleasure of photographing up and coming Anchorage musician Samuel Johns. Samuel, a member of the Ahtna native community (a subculture of Athabascan) was born and raised in Copper Center, AK. By the time he was 21 he had already spent most of his life battling alcoholism. Then he had a daughter and knew he had to quit. He's been sober seven years now and spends a good deal of his time giving music back to the community. He writes and performs his own rap songs but also has taken to learning traditional drumming and singing. He performs once a week for Bean's Caffe, a large shelter here in Anchorage, and is making quite a name for himself. I was asked by Cook Inlet Tribal Council to take some images of him for an upcoming feature in their Access 360 magazine. To help Samuel out we also decided to do a little extra work and let him have some of the images for his self promotion.  For these images, in his traditional regalia, we went up into the mountains. It was a stunningly clear evening. In the top photo you can see Denali in the background. It's remarkable to think that that mountain is 250 miles away and still towers over the horizon. The Chugach Mountains are the backdrop for the second image. We'll be doing some "studio" shots next week and I'll hope to have them up here soon after!

Welcome!

        

Welcome!

  This is the first posting of a new blog for Wayde Carroll Photography. I look forward to sharing my images, techniques, thoughts, and inspirations here. Any comments, critiques, questions, or wise cracks are welcome!

 I'm a photographer based in Anchorage, Alaska and I do a wide variety of work to keep paying the bills! From one posting to the next you may find photos from an exotic location or you may find a pair of bare feet photographed for a local hospital brochure. I'll try and limit the foot postings, promise!

  I want to extend a special welcome and thank you to the people who followed me on my Chatalaska blog for so long. I was sad to see it shut down but feel I can share a wider range of topics here.

 This first image of the Chugach Mountains was taken just down the street from my home. I was locking up the house before hitting the sack and looked out the window to find this amazing orange glow filling the sky! I quickly grabbed my Canon 5D and a 24-70mm lens, made sure there was a card and a battery in the camera (I have actually driven out to a spot in the past to catch some amazing light only to discover my battery was still at home charging, just in case, you know, I might need to leave at a moments notice...), and ran down the street to a local park with a nice clearing.

 I was in aperture priority at  F6.3 and had a shutter speed of 1/125 at ISO 400. Because the lens was zoomed out to 24mm I wasn't too worried about depth of field and the 1/125th shutter speed allowed me to hand hold the camera and not worry about a tripod. I knew the color wouldn't last long and after shooting about 15 images the sun was gone and the clouds were grey/ blue. Made it!

 I would have liked a bit more of the mountain range in the image but I was eliminating some distracting homes that were directly in front of me. Not bad for a mere ten minutes work!