Alaska Photo Tour - Our chance to photograph Black bears!

When I reached out to my Alaska photo tour guests and asked them what they wanted to see the most, one of the top answers was bear! We knew that we would be seeing glaciers, icebergs and whales since we were on a boat in the inner passage, but the bears were a big question mark. As it turned out, we did get a chance to get off our boat and head into a really small town called Kake, Alaska. There is a spot there where the Black bear frequently visit a river to catch salmon.

We took out Zodiac to the town pier and walked through the small town and up towards the river. And there we waited, but did not see any bear. It was no more than 10 minutes but I was starting to think that we would not see any bear at all.

A couple of minutes later, my worries were put to rest as four Black bear arrived. They were pretty far from where we were standing, but we all took photos of them (with most of us using the Canon RF 100-500mm lens) in case we could not get any closer to them.

They stayed far from us, but they were not far from a small bridge. I decided to walk to the bridge to see if there were better photos from that spot...

... and there were. I called the rest of the group from my cell phone and had them join me on the bridge.

From this vantage point, we could stand over them and get photos looking down on the bears.

It was a unique vantage point and we all had a blast capturing these images.

We moved around the bridge to get different angles on the bears.

Originally the two cubs stayed closer to the shoreline...

...but eventually ventured out to the water to share some salmon with mom.

The cubs were curious about us and would look up often. 

We all watched as the larger bear would chase and catch the salmon in the river. Once again, shooting down on them gave us this great view of the bear and it's catch.

After they were done eating, we got some more nice photos and then headed back to our boat to continue our trip. We did this with big smiles on our faces, knowing that we had some cool photos captured!

 

If you are looking to photograph bears with myself (and Bob Davis), we just announced a new photo tour to Northern Minnesota next May where we will be doing just that, and more! You can find more information HERE.

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• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Alaska and more.

• You can purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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Alaska Photo Tour - Lots and lots of whales!

In the last blog post I mentioned that we saw some whales on our first day at sea. Well...we ended up seeing hundreds of Humpback whales and a couple of pods of Orca as well.

At first we were content getting some nice tight shots of the whale tails as they arched their bodies and prepared for their deep dives. I was once again using the Canon R5 Mark II camera with the Canon RF 100-500mm lens.

We took photo after photo at different angles.

Once we had a plethora of tight shots, I encouraged everyone to get photos showing the whales and the surroundings. This background helps to show that we are in Alaska, otherwise these whale tail photos could be taken anywhere and not put in context.

We also worked hard to get multiple whales in one shot. But we still wanted more.

And we did get more. At one point this Humpback whale came right next to the boat, swimming upside down to catch fish that were swimming near the surface of the water. It was an awesome sight for all of us.

We had numerous Humpbacks around the boat, at it was great to get some face shots as well.

This one came up head first out of the water. So cool!

We were hoping to get a good breach (jumping out of the water) shot, and we all did.

It was especially helpful when a whale would breach and then do it again in the same spot. This allowed us to be a little more prepared to capture images like this. 

Even our most novice shooters got great breach photos!

Even I was very excited to get photos like these. I have photographed Humpback whales in Monterey, CA, the Hawaiian Islands, and in Costa Rica, but I have never gotten a great breach photo until now.

After capturing a ton of photos of the whales from our boat, I thought it was time to launch my drone and try to get some overhead shots of these huge mammals. The water was so calm, and so easy to see through, that it made it easier for me to locate the whales on the screen of my iPhone (which acts as the monitor for my drone). 

These photos came out really nice but the video was a highlight for me! Click on the photo above or HERE to see that video of both the porpoises riding the bow of our boat and the overhead shots of the Humpback whales. To me, the drone video was some of the coolest content I captured in Alaska on this trip.

Towards the end of our trip, I decided to photograph the Humpbacks in a different way, capturing just the spray of the water being expelled from their blowholes, lit by the setting sun.

In all of my whale watching trips off the coast of California I have never been lucky enough to capture photos of the Orca whales, but that all changed on this trip. We had a chance to capture images of two adult Orca and two youngsters.

This one young whale popped up to see what was going on.

This last shot was in better light and shows all four of the Orcas as they passed by our boat. It was another awesome moment for my photo tour guests. Regardless of the photos, it was just amazing to watch them swim by the boat. At one point, they came right up to the boat, turned upside down and went right underneath us. They were so close that we could not capture photos with our long lenses, but we all loved taking it in with our eyes.


More Alaska images to come!

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• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Alaska and more.

• You can purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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Alaska Photo Tour - Wow the landscape!

This was my first photo tour in Alaska and myself and my guests were all looking forward to photographing, whales, bears, icebergs and more. Even though we did capture all those things, we also found ourselves captivated by the landscapes. In this blog, I want to share with you some of the beauty that we saw on the tour.

The day before our boat headed out, we all met in the small town of Petersburg, Alaska. This is a small fishing town which also has a pretty harbor. We watched as sea planes went in and out of the area. In this photo you will see lots of seagulls feeding in the water. That is because the local fish processing plant has a pipe which sends all the excess fish parts back into the water. The birds love that!

We walked around the harbor and enjoyed the fresh air and peaceful sites.

This is a view of Petersburg and the majestic mountains in the background.

This one of the few photo tours where I packed a drone. Late in the afternoon, I sent the DJI Mavic 2S up into the sky to get an aerial shot of the small town.

The next day, we boarded our boat and started out of the harbor. As we did, we watched as the clouds danced across the tops of the local mountains. 

It was fun to capture the beauty surrounding us.

Great reflections.

Once we left the harbor and headed out into the inner passage, we went through some really dense fog. I was a bit worried since we could not see anything and I really wanted my guests to get some good photos on our first day.

After an hour or so, we came through the fog and everything opened up. We also saw Humpback whales for the first time. We all had a great time photographing the whale tails as they came up out of the water. In the days to come, we got much better whale shots, but hey that is another blog post.

At the end of our first day we saw the late afternoon sun coming through the clouds. I taught everyone the best camera settings for capturing the "gods rays". It was an awesome way to end Day 1.

In the following days, we saw endless photographic landscapes.

Once again, we enjoyed photographing the clouds amongst the mountains.

We saw this pretty waterfall (with an iceberg in front of it), and I thought it would make a pretty photo. Usually for waterfalls, I try to photograph them at 1/2 second to show the motion of the water. In the past we would not have been able to capture this at such a slow shutter speed. You can't use tripods on a moving boat and it would have been tough to handhold a camera at this speed. With these newer cameras (with in-camera stabilization and stabilization in the lenses), it is now possible to handhold a camera even at 1/2 second or even longer. I encouraged everyone to try this. I was mostly using the Canon R5 Mark II on this trip.

We had numerous sightings of rainbows.

This rainbow was captured on the last morning of the trip. All of us were in the boat looking at our images when Laura went outside with her cup of coffee and saw this beautiful sight. We all scampered outside and captured this moment. This was another good lesson of under exposing the camera to bring out the colors of the rainbow.

This last shot was taken from outside the tiny "airport" as we were all leaving Petersburg. We had some time before our plane arrived so I grabbed the Canon R5 Mark II and RF 100-500mm lens and took this final image. Not a bad view from the road.

And just wait to see the other photos from this photo tour!

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• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Alaska and more.

• You can purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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How to take one photo and create AMAZING art!!

I was scrolling through Instagram and came across this really cool company and had to stop and take a full look at what they were doing. The company is called Wirestyle and what they do is really amazing! They literally take a regular photo and turn it into a piece of art using nails and a single line of string.

I talked to the founder of the company (in Germany) to get more information about what they do, and to determine which images look best using their technique. After careful consideration, and their advice, I decided that this elephant photo from Botswana would look the best.

The first thing I did was convert the image to black and white (using Adobe Photoshop) and then I uploaded that image to Wirestyle. 

They sent me a confirmation that they received the image, and they also sent me this rendering showing how it would look once completed.

Two weeks later I received a delivery from DHL all the way from Germany, with my artwork inside. You can click HERE or on the image above to watch the video of me opening the well-packed box.

This is what the artwork looks like from a distance...

...but when you look closer, you see all of the nails and the single piece of string. 

The varying amounts of string are what create the dark and light parts of the image. It is really amazing to see up close.

Each piece of art comes with a time lapse video of it's creation.

You can click HERE or on the image above to see that video.

The packaging is more than sufficient to get the artwork delivered without any damage. I will say that the frame is not substantial and looks a little "cheap". Since the frame is a simple screw-together metal frame, I recommend replacing it with something nicer. I am going to do that for sure. I may also enclose mine in glass so that I don't have to worry about dust forming on the string.

If you would like to have one of your photos created using this string art technique, go to www.wirestyle.com and let them know that you found out about them from me. Also, if you would like to get one of my elephant photos in this string art, email me and let me know.

If watched the unveiling video, you may have noticed the other elephant image on my wall. This was created by a good friend of mine in the Chicago area. Jason has a unique technique where he takes his images (and mine) and prints on a special "rice paper" and then wets and dries the paper into a 3 dimensional image. 

This is equally cool and I have numerous images from Jason proudly hung in my house.

Hopefully you can see the way that the elephants are raised on the paper. It is truly beautiful.

If you are interested in these one-of-a-kind pieces, you can click HERE.

If you are a photographer like me, you probably get tired of seeing your own work, so it is really fun to see the same images created in new ways. Both the Wirestyle art and the images that Jason creates are totally unique. I love that they are conversation pieces hung up at the house. People are drawn to the unique creations and want to know more about them.

Let me know what you think!

__________________________________________________________

• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Alaska and more.

• You can purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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