The other morning we drove up to Chilkoot Lake outside of Haines just to check it out. We never expected to have another very cool eagle encounter up there! The Chilkoot River runs from Chilkoot Lake down to the Lynn Canal and where the river runs out of the lake there were several eagles on the bank of the river. We saw two immature eagles and a few adults, all of which were eating a fish that had been drug out of the water. The eagle shown in these photos was perched on a frost-covered tree branch which made for a really nice photo. I waited patiently with my lens focused on this eagle, as I knew eventually he would swoop down for his turn at the fish. Eventually he did leave his perch, but instead of going down to the fish he flew across the river and landed in another tree. I caught him just as he was flaring his wings for a landing. It sure was another cool eagle experience, and a great start to another wonderful day in Alaska!
I can't believe the luck we've had so far on our Alaska trip! We've had this trip planned since January and in the last month leading up to the trip I've been checking the forecast every few days for Haines and it showed nothing but RAIN. But, since our arrival in Juneau, the weather has turned and it's been sunny! Even the locals have commented on how nice it's been since we got here. They were getting quite sick of the rain and talking about how awful it's been, rain every day for as long as they can remember. So, we feel pretty blessed to have had clear skies so far on our trip!
As an added bonus, our second night in Haines gave us some beautiful northern lights! The locals were talking about the chance of lights, so I went out just after midnight to have a look. Sure enough, the lights were visible but difficult to see from the parking lot of our motel. We didn't have a rental car yet, but thankfully the harbor and shoreline were not far from our motel. So, I went for a walk and within 10 minutes was on the shoreline of Portage Cove overlooking Lynn Canal and the mountains beyond. The lights put on a very good show for a couple of hours, dancing and waving throughout the sky. The rising quarter moon added another nice element to the scene. What an amazing trip so far, I can't wait to see what surprises the remainder of our time here will bring!
Well, after a few days of travel (with some unexpected flight complications between Chicago/Juneau and an absolutely BEAUTIFUL ferry ride up the Lynn Canal) we arrived safely in Haines, Alaska! We have been in Haines for the past 3 days and we've been seeing plenty of what we came here to see: Bald Eagles! Haines is home to the Alaska Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve, an area of almost 50,000 acres that protects bald eagle habitat along the Chilkat, Klehini and Tsirku rivers.
Each year in the fall several thousand eagles congregate in this area to feed on the late run of Chum Salmon that come up the river to spawn and die. It's one of the best places in the world for viewing and photographing bald eagles. We've had a blast so far watching the birds. Often times, as shown in this photo, the birds will clash over a piece of fish. What we've noticed is that one eagle will be on the shoreline of the river ripping apart a piece of fish when another eagle will fly in and try to knock that eagle away from the fish. These are the most exciting moments to photograph, as often times the eagle that was on the fish will jump up and flip upside down in an attempt to fend off the incoming eagle. We've seen this happen countless times each day, so far this has been my best capture of the clash between two eagles.
I can't believe how lucky we are to be here! It's an amazing place, with incredible wildlife and spectacular scenery! Look for some images of the scenery to be posted soon :-)
In preparation for our upcoming trip to Alaska, I rented a just-released Canon 7D Mark II camera. I'm hoping the 7D will allow me to capture more "keeper" images of the bald eagles (it will also be nice to have a second camera body on hand in case one of them fails for some reason). The main reason for our trip is to see the naturally-occurring gathering of bald eagles along the Chilkat River just outside of Haines. My 5D Mark II camera is not the best at capturing high-speed action (like eagles flying through the air), so I decided to give the 7D Mark II a try. It has a much more advanced autofocus system than my 5D and shoots a lot more frames per second. I've already had the camera for a couple of days and I've been trying it out on some of the local critters, like this squirrel in Grand Portage State Park. It was my first opportunity photographing an animal with the camera and I think it performed quite well.
The autofocus is indeed quick and should be a lot more accurate with its 65 autofocus points (compared to 9 in my 5D). In fact, the limiting factor here is my budget-minded Tamron 150-600 lens. The Tamron needs really good light and good technique to produce exceptionally sharp images. I think I did a pretty good job with this squirrel. The light wasn't the greatest, but it wasn't the worst either. I shot this image at 600mm and ISO 1000 with the lens aperture set to f/8. A lot of people have been curious about the image quality of the 7D Mark II, especially at ISO's above 800. With this image, shot at ISO 1000, I'm very impressed with the image quality. There seems to be very little noise at this ISO setting. Even up to 1600 it seems to be quite acceptable. The camera has a native ISO range of up to 16,000 but I haven't tried anything above 1600 yet. I am really anxious to get up to Alaska and give this camera a try on all the eagles!
It was a beautiful morning as I made my way to work the other day. My morning commute takes me past one of the most beautiful overlooks in the state of Minnesota. A view that looks out over Lake Superior, the Susie Islands, Isle Royale National Park and Rock of Ages Lighthouse. Sometimes I just can't resist stopping and making a photograph of the view as I pass by. Seeing these sun rays out on the horizon shining down on the lighthouse was one of those views that I simply couldn't pass up!
Every now and then I like to dabble in creating abstract images using creative panning/tilting motions with the camera. The other day while taking a drive through the woods I tried the technique on a stand of birch trees off in the distance. Using my 150-600mm telephoto lens I combined a slow shutter speed with a panning motion of the camera, where I panned the camera up and slightly to the left while recording the exposure. This photograph is the result of that technique. I hope you enjoy the result as much as I enjoyed creating it :-)
Here is a "simple" photograph that I want to share with you today. Something that caught my eye yesterday while driving around the back roads of Grand Portage. It was another gray, overcast day and I was driving by an area that had been logged when these birch tree trunks caught my eye. They were far across the logging opening but still the lines of this particular clump of trees caught my eye and made me decide to back up and make a photograph of them.
