Here is the link:

My Google+ Page

Thank you.

When I arrived Dakota had already bagged a nice bull moose and it was hanging near camp. He was a very happy young man. It was good to see my other grandchildren, too, and I think they were glad to see their Grandpa, even though he always seemed to have a camera in his hands.

During the time I spent with them we bagged two more moose, both much smaller than Dakota’s, and by the time Saturday rolled around we were out of room in the vehicles and had to quit hunting. But that was all right because it gave me some time to take a few hikes looking for interesting pictures to take.

We headed out of camp at 10:00 a.m. Sunday, fully expecting to be back to the trailhead by 4 or 5 o’clock, but because of some difficulties and mechanical problems along the trail it was after 8:00 in the evening when we reached our destination. Needless to say we were all pretty tired by that time. It felt good to slide behind the steering wheel of my pickup and feel that soft, comfortable seat cushion beneath me as I made the two hour long trip back to my home in Wasilla. I was ready for a hot shower, a warm comfortable bed, and other modern conveniences, if you catch my drift.

Following are a few photos from this wonderful adventure.

We passed through many mud holes on the way in and occacionally had to stop to clean the windshield on the buggy, which belongs to Randy's father, Roy. Here Ben, Randy's brother, gets the job done for us.

Randy and his dad Roy, enjoy the warmth of the campfire early the next morning before the rest of the crew got up.

A bit later Destiny rushed out of the tent to visit with her Grandpa. She's relatively clean here, but only because it's still early in the day.

Firewood was running low so we took a short drive with the buggies and found plenty more. Brittany is on the left in the red sweatshirt. Ben is using the chainsaw while Randy and Roy load the wood.

Brittany, looking cute as always, at the firewood stop.

Later we traveled up the Big O'Shetna River to a favorite hunting spot. That's Ben riding up on the top.

Randy glasses a hillside for bull moose. Both of the young bull we bagged while I was there were taken near the sunny area on the mountain.

My grandson Dalton.

This was our camp on the Big O'Shetna River. We spied several nice moose from here on the mountainside across the river.

Brylan, another of my grandson's, and Ayden, Ben's son, anxiously await a buggy driver so they can go hunting.

This was Aydens first experience at the moose hunting camp and he thouroughly enjoyed himself, even though the temperature was a bit nippy at times.

Roy looks over a bull moose he's spotted in the distance.

A cow moose crosses the river on a frosty autum morning.

Destiny looking pretty normal after a few hours into the day.

I took some of the kids on a short hike one evening. Finding a big boulder overlooking the river I let them clown around on it for pictures. Brittany, Dalton, Ayden and Brylan.

A nice campfire scene late one evening. I told them I was going to take their picture and that they needed to hold perfectly still for about ten seconds. In reality the exposure was nearly 40 seconds. Some of them couldn't quite hold still that long and I'm not quite sure who they are because they became blurred. Left to right: Julane, (Randy's mother), Jenny, Destiny, Brittany, Randy, Brylan, Don't Know, Roy, Ben, Dalton.

A night shot of the tent we slept in, complete with smoke coming out of the wood stove's chimney. They called this the Big O Lodge.

Randy, Destiny, and Dalton enjoy good times around the campfire.

Jenny and Randy's family gathered at the fire. Left to right: Dalton, Randy,Destiny,Brittany, Jenny, Brylan, Dakota.

The younger boys watch intently as Randy finishes field dressing a moose.

Destiny smiles sweetly from the cab of the buggy while she waits for a moose to be loaded into it. She would smile for me but would never sit on my lap around the campfire.

Brittany has become grandpa's number one model. Here she's sitting across from me at an old table left at a nearby camp.

Near the river we found this big rock which looked somewhat like an easy chair. Brittany is trying to look comfortable in it but I'm pretty sure she wasn't.

Same chair rock but this time a close up of her face. I think her Daddy will be worried when he see's this.

Brylan standing beside the Big O'Shetna River......just being Brylan.

Dakota and I took some short hikes together. Here we're upstream from the camp, just goofing off and talking.

Brylan and Destiny.

Everyone gathers around the campfire to enjoy a much anticipated treat, fresh water mussels dipped in melted butter.

On Saturday evening two rigs drove by our camp on their way to another location. Although everyone gathered around and had a nice chat I never did discover their names. In the center from left to right are Randy, Destiny, Dakota, Brittany, Julane, Jenny, Ben and Roy. The man on the left and the three people on the right are unidentified.

Typical campfire scene every evening. Here Jenny is preparing chicken for our dinner while Brittany, Randy, Destiny, Dalton, Ayden, Roy and Dakota look on.

For entertaiment when things got boring we always had the kids to look forward to. Here Brittany pretends to be something she isn't with food containers from the kithen tent.

I don't think Dakota really liked my idea for a picture of him and his moose antlers, but he was a good sport as usual and let me do it anyway.

Sunday morning, making our first river crossing after we'd packed up everything and headed back to the trailhead on the Glenn Highway. Roy is in the passenger seat while Ben drives.

Taking a break after a couple of hours on the trail. It was a beautiful autumn day and the scenery was spectacular.

Dakota's antlers mounted on the front of the Surburban drew lots of attention from the other hunters we met along the trail.

The quarters were tight but comfortable inside the Surburban. I rode out seated next to Destiny, she even let me rub her feet occasionally.

Julane rode most of the way out seated on one of the chairs atop Roy's buggy. When I saw the beautiful clouds in the sky I was quick to grab a wide angle lens to make some dramatic pictures.

Another rest stop along the way out to let the kids run, stretch, and otherwise use up energy.

We're at the top of a mountain called Monument here. Climbing it with the buggies is the last real challenge, and probably the most frightening part of the long trail home. From here it is an easy hour and a half to Eureka and the trail head.

Thanks for sharing this adventure with me. If you would like to leave a comment for me just click on the word link at the end of this sentence. [Link]

We did all right on both counts.

Along the way I stopped to show Becky where I should have been standing last autumn when a semi hauling a load of propane missed a corner and sent its trailer nearly 200 feet

Becky frames a photo from the exact spot where I should have been standing when a semi went over the guardrail, sending its trailer full of propane 200 feet down the embankment in front of her. You can probably see why I like to stop there in the fall. Beautiful scenery everywhere you look.

down a steep embankment. It was at a spot I’d been stopping to photograph quite regularly last year, and by my calculations would have been there at the exact moment of the accident except for some unexpected events that kept me at home that day. The long scar in the forest where the trailer slid down the mountain is still there.

Becky seemed quite impressed, and a little nervous about standing there.

On our way we also stopped by our son’s cabin for a while, and even talked about buying a piece of property up there ourselves.

Wasilla just doesn’t have that “Alaska Feeling”  anymore. We’ve been missing that feeling quite a bit lately. Maybe we should look into some property along the northern reaches of the Glenn Highway.

Becky took this picture of the Matanuska Glacier. I like the way she's included a lot of pretty blue sky and colorful foliage, and yet still kept the glacier as the focal point of the image.

We were back home in about four hours, early enough to catch the sunset and to watch the full moon rise from behind the far reaches of the Chugach Mountains.

It was a good getaway, especially for Becky. I’m pretty sure she needed a little break from her regular weekly routine.

Have a good day everyone.

One of the autumn photos I took yesterday at a favorite location along Alaska's Glenn Highway.

Yesterday I drove up the Glenn Highway aways, to one of my favorite locations for shooting fall scenery. It was pretty as usual, but the lighting wasn’t quite right, too intense and steady. What I needed was just a few more clouds interacting with the sun to create some interesting shadows, and some hot spots of sunlight in the beautiful foliage all around me. But that didn’t happen though, so after a couple of hours I drove back down the highway to the Hicks Creek rest area, hoping I might find something of interest there.

And that’s where I met David Scheidt of Valdez, Alaska.

David Scheidt and the Harlan's Redtail hawk he is currently rehabilitating.

I was walking back to my pickup after a short and unproductive hike, thinking of going back home since conditions weren’t really very good for the kind of photography I wanted to do, when I noticed another vehicle besides mine in the otherwise empty parking area. Nearby a man and his dog were walking towards a brushy hillside, studying the ground as they walked along. That was all pretty normal, something you see nearly every day in Alaska. What wasn’t at all normal was what was tethered to the man’s arm with a short cord.

A hawk. Not just any hawk but a beautiful one to boot.

As they got a little closer to me the man smiled and asked me if I’d seen any rabbits while I was out walking around.

I hadn’t, but I wasn’t really looking for them either.

He said he was looking for rabbits to give the hawk a chance to capture his own meal. Usually, he said, if there were rabbits in the vicinity his dog, a black lab I believe, would become very active, working the underbrush until he flushed one. When that happened the hawk would be released from his tether to take to the sky and perhaps bag his own meal.

David told me he has rehabilitated many wild raptors such as this bird, a Harlan’s Redtail Hawk, and that capturing their own food was one of the things they must re-learn  before being released into the wild once again.

David encouraged the Harlan's Redtail Hawk to spread it's wings for the pictures I wanted to take, and it obliged beautifully. This was taken at the Hicks Creek rest area along Alaska's Glenn Highway. In the background is Anthracite Ridge in the Talkeetna Mountains.

We chatted for quite a spell, David and I, and I must say that I learned many new things about raptors in that time. It was quite educational for me.

Before we parted I asked if I could take a few pictures of the beautiful bird to put in my blog. David was more than agreeable and even encouraged the it to spread its wings for a more dramatic photo.

It was, as I said, a beautiful autumn day and the pictures I took of David and the hawk more than made up for the somewhat ho-hum landscape photos I’d taken earlier.

Thank you, David. I truly enjoyed the short time we spent together yesterday, and the conversation we shared.

About these pictures

When I asked David if I could take his picture the only lens I had available was the one I happened to have on my camera at the time, an old Nikon 50mm 1.8 Series E manual focus lens from the 1970′s. I’ve really become attached to this old lens for landscape pictures in recent weeks because of the beautiful colors it renders,  and for it’s incredibly sharp optics.

But normally, for landscape photography, I’m shooting distant object and don’t have to worry about it being manual focus. I just twist the focus ring until it stops at the infinity mark and that’s what I get, perfect infinity focus. There is no focusing involved at all, and that’s a good thing for these old eyes of mine.

Yesterday was different though. David and his bird were much closer than infinity, they were only 10 or 12 feet away from me. Although I did my best to quickly bring them into sharp focus I just wasn’t sure how accurate I’d been. From looking at the camera’s LCD screen I knew I had some good shots but I still worried all the way home that they would be soft and fuzzy when they appeared on my computer monitor.

I needn’t have worried. They are amazingly sharp and beautiful. So good in fact that I called Becky out to my studio to look at them. I am so thankful that I was able to my part with the old lens, and in return it did it’s part, giving me some beautiful portraits of David Scheidt and his Harlan’s Redtail Hawk.

All of the above pictures were taken with the old lens, including the landscape photo at the top of the page. The picture of David holding the hawk in the air is basically how it looked right out of the camera. The only post processing was to apply auto contrast with Photoshop Elements and a little re-sizing to open more rapidly in this blog. I did no sharpening at all.

To view it at a larger size you can click here.

Camera specs for all of them are basically the same:

Camera: Nikon D300S, Lens: Nikon 50mm 1.8 Series E manual focus. The lens was set to f8 which is where, I have discovered, it takes the best pictures for me. ISO was 200 and the shutter speed, approximately, was 1/200th. second. My camera doesn’t record the shutter speed with this old lens, that’s why I’m only guessing. Lighting on these photographs was natural. No fill lighting nor auxiliary lighting was used.

I really love this lens.

Ken Rockwell has a review of this old school manual focus lens. You can find it here if you’re interested:

Nikon 50mm f/1.8 Series E

My lens is similar to the one in the top photo on his page.

Thanks for visiting Alaska At Sunrise today. I hope you found this article interesting. If you would like to leave a comment please feel free to do so by clicking on the word Link at the end of this sentence. [Link]

We celebrated the second birthday of our youngest granddaughter, Destiny, yesterday with a party, presents and cake. Here she gives Grandpa just a second or two to take her picture while she enjoys her cake.

To view all of the pictures that I took at this special event please check out this SmugMug Gallery

Destiny’s Second Birthday

Pioneer Peak on the right. The pointed mountain in the far distance is Mt. Goode. This was taken from my deck this morning, after I'd visited with the creatures of dawn.

For no apparent reason that I could think of I awoke at 3 a.m. this morning & couldn’t get back to sleep. So, an hour later, I got out of bed & got dressed. After making myself a large cup of instant coffee I walked out to the studio then stared at my computer monitor for a while. That got kind of boring pretty quick. Then I remembered that I’d been wanting to try taking pictures of star trails and since the skies were clear, with lots of visible stars, I gathered up my camera equipment & went outside into the darkness.

After my eyes adjusted I picked out a likely looking patch of star studded sky, pointed my tripod mounted camera at it and stared an exposure of 4 minutes using a Nikon MC-36 remote release. At the end of the the exposure, when I looked at the LCD screen, I saw nothing but blackness.

“Hmmm.” I thought to myself.

So I tried it once more, but this time I set the exposure for 20 minutes. Then I sat down in a nearby chair to begin my long wait.

It was very quiet at that time in the morning. I could barely hear any traffic from the nearby highway. I like quiet, and I listened to it for a spell, feeling my shoulders relax as I closed my eyes and slumped further down into the chair to enjoy the sounds of nothing at all.

And how very nice it was.

Gradually I began to hear real sounds, sounds not man made. Owls, several of them, and in all directions from me seemed to be calling out to each other.

“HOOT HOOT…hoo hoo hoo,” one would say say. Then another, a little further away, would answer using the same exact phrase.

“HOOT HOOT…hoo hoo hoo.”

These conversations kept up more or less continuously and I really enjoyed listening to them.

But then, suddenly, I heard a much different sound, and much closer to me.

“Mehhhhhhhhh.”

At first I wasn’t sure I’d really heard something, so I listened closer. A few seconds later I heard it again, clearly this time.

“Mehhhhhhhh.”

It was a lonely cow moose in the nearby woods, calling out for another moose, a gentleman preferably, to keep her company.

She continued calling at regular intervals for quite some time. But she never did get an answer. Each moan she made sounded sadder, a little lonelier, than the previous one.

“Mehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” she cried.

But no one answered her.

No one at all.

“Mehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,”

I thought I could hear her sobbing between calls, but I wasn’t sure.

Finally, her calls got further and further away from me as she walked across the valley.

“Mehh.” I heard her say one last time. Then she was gone.

“So long.” I said under my breath, wishing her good luck & hoping she’d find some happiness very soon.

It was quiet again, except for the owls of course. They were still talking to each other.

Trying to decide who was buying breakfast I guessed.

Finally, it was time to end my exposure of the stars. This time I could actually see white lines on the screen, star trails I was sure, and was quite pleased with myself for that. It wasn’t exactly a breathtaking photograph, far from it I suppose, but at least I knew I could do it and approximately how much time to set the exposure for. Now, the next time I couldn’t sleep and the stars were out, I could give it another try, trying a little harder to be more creative perhaps.

By now it was getting much lighter out, I could see a brightness in the sky to my left as the sun crept up the backside of the distant mountains. Pastel colors began appearing in various regions of the sky too, so I just stayed out there on the deck, enjoying the rest of the morning, and taking many more pictures of another sunrise in Alaska.

I’m actually glad I got up early. I enjoyed feeling like I was a part of nature for a while.

Before the rest of the world woke up and started making noise again.

Feel free to leave comments for me. Just click on the word Link at the end of this sentence. [Link]

I don’t have any plans for today. Maybe I’ll think of somewhere to go to take some pictures, depending on the weather of course. If not I guess I’ll just hang around the old homestead & goof off.

I hope all of you have a pleasant day also. Take care.

Like to leave a comment for me? Click here [Link]

Summit Lake. This is the shot I finally decided I liked best out of the seventy or so I made during my two plus hours waiting for the sun to finally set.

I spent most of the afternoon and evening yesterday at the top of Hatcher Pass just hanging out, waiting for perfect clouds and sunset. I arrived much too early in the day, around 3:00 p.m. I think, and therefore had to find something to keep me occupied so I wouldn’t get discouraged and go back home. So I parked in a rather popular parking area, one that offered a trail to a hilltop overlooking Summit Lake, and spent most of the afternoon making silhouette photos of various visitors as they hiked along that trail. The clouds were dramatic, to say the least, and they made very interesting backdrops. These photos were really easy to take. I simply sat inside my pickup and shot through  the windshield whenever I thought the composition looked right. And since the wind was brisk and chilly outside I was more than happy to stay warm, listen to the radio, and eat my sandwich as I took pictures. It was a pretty pleasant way to spend the afternoon.

After a while though, I got bored, so I drove a few miles down the road and found some nice colorful early autumn leaves looking like they wanted me to take their picture. And I did. But then I began to feel some sprinkles of rain falling on my head. Since it was 6:00 p.m. by then I nearly decided to give up waiting for sunset, still nearly 3 hours away, and head back home. Sometimes I don’t like rain very much.

However, by the time I got back to the Summit Lake area the sun was shining again.

“What the heck,” I said to myself, “I’ve been here this long, I may as well stay until dark and see what happens.”

So saying, I parked my pickup in a handy little pullout beside the road, gathered the gear I thought I’d need, including a tripod, then hiked up a steep, rocky, moss covered hillside nearby until I had a good view of Summit Lake, with a beautiful vista behind it where I hoped to see the sun set among beautifully colored clouds.

Two hours later, perhaps a little more, I was still sitting there. Waiting.

But presently the sun finally did go behind some mountains and the sky and clouds began taking on some color, not as beautiful as I’d hoped for, but colorful enough for some decent photos. Finally, sometime after 9:00 p.m., I realized it was getting dark, so I folded up my tripod and made my way down the hillside, being very careful not to slip on the wet moss and stones then tumble to the bottom of the hill. By then everyone had left and I was on the mountain all by myself, with no cell service. The last thing I wanted to do was spend the night up there by myself with a broken something or other.

But I made it safely, and at a little after 10:00 p.m. I walked into the house to be greeted by Schnitzle and Becky, who were just going to bed.

I was still cold from my photographic marathon, and pretty tired too, so I was more than happy to join them.

One of the silhouette photos I made from inside the cab of my pickup yesterday. I shot all of them in color of course, but later decided that I like them best in Black & White.

The small parking lot on the right is where I waited while I took the silhouette pictures. Visitors would walk along a well marked trail, where you can see two people walking in this photograph. When they'd reach a certain point at the crest of the hill the sky full of clouds would be directly behind them. It was then that I'd snap happily away.

When I grew tired of making silhouette pictures I drove a few mile away where I found some rather nice early autumn scenes. I liked the velvety cascading water and colorful autumn leaves combined together here.

Some distance away from the little stream I spotted this hillside covered with colorful Fireweed plants. A short hike brought me close enough to take this photo using a telephoto lens.

My beautiful surroundings, as I waited patiently on the side of a steep and slippery hillside, for sunset last night. That's summit lake on the left. The small hillside on the far side of the road is where many visitors would walk after I'd taken their pictures from inside the cab of my pickup.

Thanks for the visit. I appreciate it very much. If you would like to leave a comment concerning this post just click on the word Link at the end of this sentence. [Link]

Have a wonderful day day everyone.