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Mendenhall Glacier, Juneau, Alaska #3127

During clear and full-moon nights, when I was younger, I would ski or snowshoe up Spaulding Meadows, past the John Muir cabin, and then up to Auk Mountain to wait for the moon to rise here in Juneau, Alaska. This night in January it was especially cold, maybe zero degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind was blowing. Once on top of the mountain, I had to wait over two hours for the moon to rise. I was freezing and chilled to the bone. A friend who joined me in the trek had long ago deserted me. I ...

Iceberg, Tracy Arm, Alaska #3125

I love traveling to Tracy Arm, which is just a day trip from Juneau. I think I have visited almost all the tidewater glaciers in Alaska, and in my mind Tracy Arm offers the best glacier blue ice experience anywhere. The light of a cloudy overcast day works really well for accentuating the blue ice. The gray clouds and gray green water really help the blue colors pop. Additionally, I love where the shallow ice just below the waterline makes the water, full of glacier silt, glow effervescent ...

Cow and Calf Moose, Denali National Park, Alaska #3124

Just like the image of the rainbow in the waters around Juneau in the previous post, this image of a cow and calf moose hung around for a number of years before I found a place for it. I am happy it found a spot as the April image in my 2020 Alaska Calendar. I often shoot around 10,000 images per year and I go crazy trying to cull my images to a manageable collection. I often overlook some really good images during the first pass. While continually culling my files I look for gems that I ...

Rainbow, Admiralty Island, Alaska #3123

I love rainbows and I wish I had more opportunities to capture their amazing colors. The best I can do photographing rainbows in the Juneau area is about one great image every four to five years. I wish rainbows were as consistent as northern lights in our area, which seem to happen a good ten to twelve times per year. Before writing this caption I never really thought about just how rare rainbows really are, and how lucky one is to see them, much less get a good image. I shot this photo ...

Humpback Whales, Kingdom of Tonga #3122

Thanks for the overwhelming response to the whale photo I posted yesterday. It was my favorite from the shoot. I would like to share just one more. After feeding all summer in Antarctica the southern hemisphere humpbacks travel to the tropical waters in and around the South Pacific to mate and birth. The mother whales are incredibly caring for their newborn calves. It never occurred to me that I would not just be swimming with adult whales but would also experience whale mother and baby ...

Humpback Whales, Kingdom of Tonga #3121

For the past 40 years I have been photographing whales in Alaska but only above the surface. There are almost no Alaska photos of whales under the sea because the underwater visibility is so low, barely 20 to 30 feet deep in the summer whale season. The place to see whales under the sea is in tropical areas where humpback whales go to birth and mate and where visibility can be up to 300 feet. Swimming with whales is mostly banned in the world without government permits, and those are only ...

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“As a kid in Buffalo, New York, I always wondered what it would be like to encounter a whale,” says Mark Kelley. Learn more about Mark...