Fighting weather and Challenging Shooting Conditions

Tracy Arm Wilderness in Alaska Richard Lewis

Tracy Arm Wilderness #4 by Richard Lewis 2014

Tracy Arm Wilderness Alaska Richard Lewis

Tracy Arm Wilderness 6 by Richard Lewis 2014

Tracy Arm Wilderness Alaska Richard Lewis

Tracy Arm Wilderness 8 by Richard Lewis 2014

Tracy Arm Wilderness Alaska Richard Lewis

Tracy Arm Wilderness #3 by Richard Lewis 2014

Of all the places we visited in Alaska, the Tracy Arm Wilderness was probably the most beautiful. Unfortunately, it rained the entire time we were there. While it is not fun to shoot in the rain, the upside was that Tracy Arm looked like a fantasy landscape with mist and hundreds of waterfalls. You can see them spilling down the mountains in the images above.

With rain comes the need to keep the camera dry and functional as well as cleaning the front of the lens frequently to keep water droplets from accumulating. While fighting the rain was one thing, the real challenge was shooting landscapes from the ship we were traveling on. The entire time we spent in Tracy Arm was in motion, either on a moving ship or skiff. This was an exercise in what I call “High ISO Creative Aerobics.” It involved hand-holding the camera and composing quickly before the ship moved past the ideal shooting spot. A tripod would have slowed me down. This type of photography really raises one’s creative heart rate.

This was an exercise in learning to work quickly and methodically to get photographs that define a place. I liken it to adapting the instincts of a sports photographer to landscape photography. I didn’t know if I’d be back there again, so I needed to be sure that when we sailed out of the Tracy Arm Wilderness I had well-composed and technically correct photographs that met my creative vision.

Click here to see another photograph of the Tracy Arm Wilderness from a previous post

Enjoy