The "After I Retire" files, part 1

Photo tours that look groovy but occur during the school year. I'll edit this post as new gems appear.

National Geographic's Tibet/Nepal Photo Expedition

National Geographic's Bhutan Photo Expedition

Squiver China Landscapes (link will need updating after 2017)

Mosquito repellant: NPR Report

What's The Best Way To Keep Mosquitoes From Biting?

Cutter/Repel Lemon Eucalyptus Insect Repellent was right up there with the best of the DEETs. REI Link

One of my photographs is now a textbook cover

My solo sojourn through southeast Utah's red rock country in spring of 2004 yielded a bounty of photos taken with my then-new Canon EOS 10D DSLR.

On my way out of the Needles section of Canyonlands National Park, an afternoon rainbow arched across the anti-solar horizon. I pulled off to the side of the road and did my best to capture an image. It was raining, and there was occasional motor traffic. And I wasn't keen to soak my expensive camera. So … challenges.

Years later, Conceptual Physical Science co-author, John Suchocki, saw a potential textbook cover in one of the images. He made it work, and the author team approved. So here it is, the cover of Conceptual Physical Science, 6th Edition, by Paul G. Hewitt, John Suchocki, and Leslie A. Hewitt: © 2017 by Pearson Higher Ed. ISBN 978-0-13-406049-1.

Alaska Ultimate Wildlife Photo Safari 2015

At year's end, the family is wont to gather. And I find a need to spend a bit of time sharing a curated collection of media from the year's big travel.

The video below is an exported Apple Keynote presentation, with the shortcomings of an "autoplay" video export of a preso baked in. It was produced as a multimedia slideshow that I would annotate with snippets of narration. In practice, I would be clicking to advance when appropriate.

It also suffers a bit from loss of audio/video sync, which is an artifact of Keynote 6's QuickTime export process (as far as I know) I haven't overcome yet. (Keynote 6 has many shortcomings.) It doesn't have a soundtrack, either; so it's not a polished bit of standalone entertainment. Sorry! In truth, a soundtrack would become unwieldy when a videoclip was playing, so the omission isn't entirely a bad thing.

Caveats aside, it's a fun recollection of the summer's sojourns. It weighs in at 36min. and is best viewed at highest resolution (1080p). I may (or may not) modify it further in the future. If I do, I will link to the most up to date version here. The YouTube video is "unlisted", so it cannot be searched for or stumbled upon at random.

Alaska 2015 [HTML export from Keynote]

Alaska 2015 [Movie export from Keynote]

I toured Alaska with Natural Habitat Adventures, guided by Eric Rock.

SMUGMUG ALBUMS

2015 06 Alaska Gold***

2015 06 Alaska Silver**

2015 06 Alaska Bronze*

2015 06 Alaska Etcetera

In 2026, I remastered many of the images using DxO PureRAW and Adobe Lightroom.

Alaska 2015 [Remastered 2026]

Our Katmai Lynx

This post is entirely out of order, but is here for the benefit of my Natural Habitat Ultimate Alaska friends.

While returning from our Monday evening photo shoot at Brooks Falls, our guide, Eric Rock, spotted this lynx ahead of us on the trail. He alerted the rest of our group without startling the cat. Despite some initial fumbling and bobbling, I clicked in a few serviceable shots. The lynx was very patient and remained in place for several seconds.

Here's a quick album with a few nice ones with minimal post work (denoise, contrast, saturation). The shooting conditions were poor and my skills are limited.

2015 07 Katmai Lynx

AUWPS 12 - Our Final Day, at Brooks Camp

The river ran thick with salmon today, and by the time we arrived at the falls for our morning shoot, the bears had gorged on fish and were sleeping it off in the brush.

The salmon had the run of the falls and were jumping at rates we had not previously seen. So we trained our cameras on the cascade (water going down and salmon going up), hoping to catch the salmon mid-jump as they strained to return to their spawning waters.

At one point, I found myself shooting next to Len Rue, Jr.. (We was leading a group from Joseph Van Os Photo Safaris) We laughed at how in-sync our shutter releases were as we reacted to the jumping fish seen through our telephoto lenses, and we commiserated over how many deletions we were generating for ourselves. I made an attempt at Salmon Slo-Mo (see below).

As it was our last day traversing the mile-long trail between the lodge and the falls, I indulged in a few trail shots. Technically, you're supposed to keep moving (and talking) on the trail because bears.



After the morning shoot, it was off to lunch and (sadly) back on the float plane to King Salmon and then back to Anchorage. We had a slight delay out of King Salmon, so we took in a "true Alaska bar" experience at Eddie's Fireplace Inn.



In Anchorage, we gathered for our farewell dinner at Sacks Café.We did our best to let the good food and laughter suppress the realization that our adventure together ha dome to an end. With all the scenery, travel, and photography, it seemed like our welcome dinner (less than a fortnight prior) had been at least a month ago.

We were grateful to have a night in the deluxe accommodations at the Historic Anchorage after our time in the spare barracks of Brooks Lodge. After a breakfast at the hip and delicious Snow City Café, we scattered to our various separate post-safari destinations.

Jumping Salmon and Return to Anchorage


Salmon Jumping in Slow Motion
COMING SOON

The Grizzlies of Brooks Falls, Alaska - Part 3


Brooks Falls LIVE WebCam

AUWPS 11 - A Full Day At Brooks Camp

The only traveling today was the walk back and forth to the falls. So here are some informative links and such.

National Park Service - Katmai National Park - Brooks Falls

Here's the layout of the camp. Meals are served at the lodge. Photo-ops are primarily at the popular but small Falls Platform. There were also scenes to be seen at the Riffles Platform and Lower River River Platform. There's a covered, open air structure at the junction of the elevated boardwalks to Riffles and Falls platforms called The Treehouse.

The cabin rooms were small, but packed four to a room. Spartan, but they did feature running water. Here's what our room looked like.

When we were gearing up or gearing down, I usually stepped out to the porch, where there was a small bench. There simply wasn't room for four grown men to sling camera gear and get into/out of rain pants.

One moment of excitement was had at the cabin (and I think it was had when upon our return to camp for dinner the first night), I opened the door to see an adult brown bear lumber past our cabin about 20 feet away. I went back in to alert our guide (and Team Swede). We naturally went back out to see, only to find two more following the first. That was a moment, but it passed too fast for photographs or video. Thankfully, an image like that sears into one's memory.

One that didn't quite get away was on our return from the evening shoot today. Eric was on point and came upon a lynx standing in the middle of the trail. We were all conditioned to be watchful and fearful of bears on the trail. So when he approached those of us in the rear with excited gesticulations, we instinctively went into retreat. But he summoned us forward to see this beautiful cat. My camera settings were all wrong, and I fired off a couple of losers before correcting things. Lucky for me, the kitteh was in stalking mode and we were a distance-keeping annoyance. So Mr. Landscape guy here captured a few keepers before the lynx slowly walked into the brush in pursuit of dinner.



Wow!

A Full Day at Brooks Camp



Grizzlies of Brooks Falls, Alaska Part 2


GRIZZLIES OF BROOKS FALLS, ALASKA-#2 from Timberpak Video Prod-Ken Roggow on Vimeo.