Alaska Photo Tour - Getting off the boat for some hiking and Eagles!

This weeks blog post is being written at the airport as I head back home from almost a month in the rain forest of Costa Rica. But this post is still sharing images from my photo tour to Alaska, as there was so much to show you all from that trip.

Most of the Alaska photo tour was us shooting from the boat, but there were a couple of times when we departed the boat and headed to shore for some walking. On this particular day, our captain told us about this amazing island where we could get off and hike through the bog. He described it as "like Narnia" and it was as amazing as he said it would be. 

Before even walking up into the trees, we walked around the shoreline and looked at all the really cool things that we saw at our feet. We saw so many starfish like this one. They were much larger than the starfish I have seen in California and with way more tentacles. This one was a really amazing purple color...

...but we also saw orange ones...

...and vibrant red ones.

Once we left the shoreline and walked into the forest area, the beauty was just overwhelming. They had given all of us boots to wear and once we stepped foot into this area we found out why. It was not wet, but our feet sank at least 6 inches with every step.  The entire ground was like a soft pillow!

Everywhere we looked we saw cool foliage, mushrooms, and more.

We all walked around and photographed things big and small.

Most of the guests was there for this group photo.

All of this looks like it would be growth on a hard surface, but when touching any of it, it would sink under the pressure of our touch or our feet.

I did bring my drone and flew it numerous times. This area is known for the rock that looks like a face, but that was not obvious from the boat. Once I flew the drone over to the other side, we could clearly see the face in the rock formation.

At another stop we hiked onto yet another island and saw the Bald eagles up in the tree tops.

I was tracking this juvenile eagle as it flew past us, and luckily kept hitting the shutter button as it came down for a landing. It was at this moment when it approached an adult eagle with it's talons out. What a cool scene!

A couple of us saw this younger eagle on a rock and we walked up slowly to get photos of it. I figured that it would fly off soon, so we put our Canon R5 Mark II cameras (with the RF 100-500mm lens) into "pre continuous" mode and waited for it to take off. As you can see from the next set of images, we were rewarded with some really nice shots of the eagle in flight.

It was so much fun for all of us to get out and explore the real Alaska. For so many years, people would ask me if I had been to Alaska and my answer was always "well...sort of." This is because the only time I had been to Alaska previously, was on a cruise ship and I really did not feel like I saw the true Alaska at all. 

But after these experiences, I felt like I truly saw Alaska, and we all returned to the boat with some great photos and memories. 

__________________________________________________________

• 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.
_________________________________________________________________

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.

__________________________________________________________

• 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.
_________________________________________________________________

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!

__________________________________________________________

• 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.
_________________________________________________________________

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!

__________________________________________________________

• 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.
_________________________________________________________________