Highway 37

I've finally made it to the Yukon in route to Alaska. Driving up Highway 37 from Hyder to the Alaska Highway may have been one of the coolest drives ever. Sharp turns on dirt roads without borders, great climbs, and beautiful scenery. It was straight out of a car commercial. There were multiple times I broke into an ear to ear smile when I saw the next streatch of road. 6km from the junction with the Alaska Highway the pup car of a gas tanker fell into a ditch on the road and from then on the trip turned a bit. Three hours and countless mosquito bites later they let us squeeze through (one at a time with instructions to close our windows and not to smoke).

The campsite I ended up finding when I got to the other side had more mosquitos than I've ever seen in my life. By the time I got my tent up I was pretty much covered in bites. When I awoke mosquitoes had gotten under my tent covering and were covering the mostquito net layer of my tent. Lucky there weren't any holes in that but I stoped counting at thirty mostqutoes sitting there. I don't usually sleep in when camping but the thought of getting up and battling the mosquitoes put me right back to sleep.

The Car

I can't let a day (or more appropriately an internet connection) go by without an update on the status of my beloved but battered Subaru. Sporting new tires from Seattle, new oil from Portland, a new window from Omaha and new brakes from Chicago, the Subaru is holding up pretty well as I've been taking it off paved road on almost a daily basis.

On a plus note in Langley (close to Surrey) British Columbia I passed a Wolfe Subaru dealership. Stopping in I scored some license plate covers that say Wolfe Subaru. I didn't get to meet Gordon Wolfe, the owner, but hanging out with the amused salespeople was still pretty cool. So now my car is pimped out with the Wolfe plate covers and a bumper sticker that reads "Stop Continental Drift"

The First Glacier

After days upon days of driving today I saw my first glacier of the trip. It is a small hanging glacier outside of Stewart, BC. I'm not sure of the name yet as it is not on any of the local maps. I also saw the better known and much larger Bear and Salmon glaciers, both in British Columbia although you have to take a dirt road from Hyder, Alaska to get to Salmon.

Cedar Rapids Flooding

Near Iowa during the recent flooding I passed down through Marion, Iowa to hire a small prop plane to fly over Cedar Rapids. Here are a few of the selects.

Car Trouble

I have made it out to Portland and put 5000 miles on my beat-up Subaru in the process. I’ve also nearly destroyed the thing. In Chicago the breaks and routers had to be replaced. In Minneapolis my window got smashing in and someone stole my camping gear (luckily my camera gear was all locked up in my friend’s apartment). The window got replaced in Omaha as I tried unsuccessfully to get into College World Series. They wouldn’t let me into the game with my camera gear, which I wasn’t going to leave in a car with a busted window. Finally somewhere between Wyoming and Oregon a piece of plastic on the bottom came loose. They were two little pieces of plastic hanging down. When I took it to a mechanic today he gave me the greatest answer a mechanic could ever give. The part they were from was essentially useless and while he could order me the part for $140, he suggested I just take a pair of scissors to it and keep going.

I’m taking an extra day to unwind, catch up on things at my friends house in Portland, followed by two days in Seattle and finally off to Alaska.

Lake Denton

Yesterday I went to photograph to now empty, Lake Denton in Wisconsin. The heavy rains and floods in the Midwest this week have been causing flooding all over Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Iowa. The build up of water, knocked over trees, etc…crashed through one of the 267-acre lake’s dams and it just completely drained. A couple houses were washed away and others simply split in half. Lake Denton was created a little over 80 years ago and is a major resort area. Since the lake is gone, they are offering a 50% discount on most everything if you stay at a local hotel. So it is your chance to get a deal on Tommy Barlett's Ski, Sky, and Stage Show, minus the ski (no water).

Off to Alaska

In pursuit of glacier photos, I am off to Alaska in my somewhat beat-up Subaru. I just finished leg 1 of the journey, NYC to Chicago. Leaving NYC at 5 in the morning to humor of the bartenders at ReBar who I passed on the way out the door. 15 hours later I made it to Chicago and two days of working here.

NYC Nature Photographer

There is an irony about being an nature and environmental photographer based in NYC (Brooklyn really). Most people in my field are based in the West or up north in Maine and New Hampshire. There are exceptions but I am not really near any of the classic nature scenes. Gary Braasch has made fun of me for it more than once. 

It was brought home to me when I bought a new tent for an upcoming expedition to Alaska. It is a solid 3 season tent. But as I don't want my first experience putting the tent together to be in a torrential downpour in Alaska, I have started practicing in my photostudio.  Getting past the fact there is no place to stake down the tent, I've been turning off the lights at night, putting my headlamp on and practicing the setup. 

It reminds me of when I was shooting a portrait of a NASA oceanographer recently. We were joking that we should pose her with a scuba mask on the desk. I asked her to pull one out and she said she didn't have one. When I asked aren't you supposed to have scuba gear as an oceanographer? Her response was "No, I'm a theoretical oceanographer." 

The Glacier Project

As this is the first post on the blog, let me offer a brief description of the goals, purpose, etc.... About a year ago I started planning "The Glacier Project." The goal is to photograph as many glaciers as possible to capture their beauty, complexity, and enormity. As they are rapidly retreating, they are often talked about in various media when talking about climate change. The problem is that very few people have seen them in person. My goal in documentary photography is to present the world in a way that makes people think. 

A couple parameters to the project:

1. The project is being shot almost entirely on 4x5 film. Thats right, old school large format cameras with bellows, focusing hoods, etc... (An exception will be made for aerial photography...I'll post later on how I almost got myself killed shooting 4x5 in a prop plane in Argentina).

2. I hope to make the project self-sustaining off print sales.  So each photograph will be available in a variety of sizes ranging in price from $100-$500. The hope is that people will use their walls as a further method of distribution for the work.

3. To complete the project I will photograph glaciers on every continent.

What the project will not be:

1. Complete...there is no way I could possibly photograph every glacier in the world. That is also not my goal. The goal is to capture what make glaciers, well glaciers, not a catalog.

2. The photos are not supposed to be documents of the glacial retreat. For that check out the work of my good friend Gary Braasch. We created posters of his before and after shots of glaciers a couple years back for an exhibit and still have boxes full of them.  If you can think of any good venues for them, send an email, I'm running out of space in my studio. (We're selling them for $10 a piece but I will make exceptions for classrooms ect...)