LeConte Bay, Alaska

[Lance Warley]

Canon 5D II + 70-300 @95mm, F11, 1/1250, ISO 400

We just returned from a wonderful trip to Alaska's Inside Passage on the National Geographic Sea Lion. It's a small ship that holds 60 passengers plus 6 naturalists and three professional photographers, including a National Geographic photographer. We sailed from Sitka up to Juneau and then back down to Seattle. They put us on zodiaks and kayaks to explore inlets and bays each day.

We saw numerous humpbacks and killer whales, along with brown bears and black bears hunting the waters for salmon. It was amazing. We also saw two glaciers - the Johns Hopkins glacier in Glacier Bay National Park and the Mendenhall glacier in Juneau.

The most amazing thing of all was the sheer sense of remoteness. Some days, we saw no other people and no other ships.

The entire area is one huge temperate rain forest. There was good light for maybe a total of 30 minutes out of the whole 12 days. The National Geographic photographer told us he generally gets good light on 3 days out of every 100 he spends in the field. The local saying is, "There's no such thing as bad weather, just inappropriate attire." You gotta love it.

The weather wasn't the only photographic challenge. It's really interesting to try to get long exposures of landscapes from a moving boat or zodiak. Tripod? Yea, that's a good one.

The entire experience was incredible. I'll probably post another one or two shots from the trip here and then I'll put all of them on my web site.

Thanks for looking, everyone.

[Morkel Erasmus]

love the sense of cold you get here Lance. the ice tones, the depth, the steel blue water and of course the rolling clouds over yonder...one of my dreams is to visit Alaska and the Yukon someday.

[denise ippolito]

Lance, Really beautiful colors in the ice and the crystal clear block on the right side with the lines going thru it reminds me of a crystal formation. Your image really does portray the sense of remoteness. Nicely done. I look forward to the others.

[Harold Davis]

congrats on the trip, lance! you did really well here from the moving boat. water looks a little choppy. you used your settings well. the icy colors look cool. :)

couldnt you get a lower perspective here!! hahaha!!

[Dave Leroy]

Sounds like a wonderful trip Lance. I really like the job on the ice; the texture, colours, shape and cracks really pass on the sense of coolness. Not sure if cropping out the blue sky adds much or not. Very nice. Dave

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Lance,
Nice job composing the ice and really nice depth to the blues in it. I see you had the classic Alaska weather......mostly cr***y with a .001% chance of nice! Always a challenge off a boat so you chose well. Ideally I would prefer that you got the ice in the dark mountain range....but do realize you were out of options! As presented I may take a bit of the darker blue chop off the bottom (about 2/3)......and if you have it....add the sky. If not I feel this will be more effective in a pano with a bit less water. All in all this will make a very nice pano!

[arash_hazeghi]

Very beautiful, love those shades of blue in the ice. I'd prefer a tad less contrast

[Julie Kenward]

You sure made the most of it, Lance. Those blue tones are superb! It really gives you a feeling of deep down cold when you look at it.

[Robert Amoruso]

Lance,

Agree with Roman's points. I do think you captured the word COLD here well.

Looks like you have a strong blue color cast. I did a gray point balance and then reduced green saturation (green is showing up in the shadows.

Toggle back and forth in PS, I can see the differences but not as evident here.

Downloading, post-processing and then upload never gives me what I want - so just check out the color balance on you TIFF.