Tag Archives: Juneau

Looking Through the Ice

by John Thurston

Scan000074This is a different kind of ice shot. This is a glacier segment which has calved, floated out into the lake, and been trapped in the lake ice when winter arrived. We skated out to the trapped bergs, before shedding our skates to investigate. It was at least 15′ from the surface of the lake to the tunnel roof.

Based on the size of the tunnel, and the shape of the scallops on the walls, I suspect this began as a vertical shaft (moulin) draining water from the surface of the glacier to the interior. The wind and sun continue to work on the ice even in the winter.

Tripod mounted TL120-55

Two Modes of Travel

by John Thurston

Scan000073Juneau is a government and a tourist town. In the summer, it is all tourists. You arrive by boat, or by plane, and both are common day trips for tourists. The Otters in the background will be loaded with folks heading south of town to the Taku River. They are 50(ish) year old De Havilland aircraft which have been repowered with turbo-props. The steamboat is a fiberglass hulled vessel built in the style of a 1900-vintage launch, but is powered by a 2000-vintage boiler and engine. They run hour-long harbor tours most days of the week.

Tripod-mounted TL120-1, taken on one of my noon-time walks.

Windows on the World

by John Thurston

Scan000075Several years ago (2006), a disgruntled man set fire to a homeowner’s boat (on a trailer behind their house). The fire spread to their house and the adjacent church and burned both to the ground. If the winds had been different, a large section of Juneau could easily have disappeared that night. Three years, and many contributions later, enough of the church had been rebuilt to begin services again.

This was shot from the sidewalk during reconstruction, probably hand-held, during a noon-time walk.

Not Too Close / Plowing Prow

by John Thurston

The winter ice has been terrible at the Mendenhall Glacier this year. The combination of snow, rain, and avalanches has meant I haven’t ventured near it, much less tried to cross it to get new winter images of the glacier. These two views from 2008 (captured with my TL120-55) will have to suffice. The area of ice pictured here is now long gone. In the summer it is open water. In the winter, it is lake ice.

Not Too Close

This image is taken about a mile and quarter across the lake from where I laced on my skates. Because of the current lake level, Scan000010there is a patch of stable, rocky beach here. Because of cliff and creeks, it isn’t possible to walk around the lake to get to this bit of beach. Crossing the lake is the only way. Everything off that bit of beach is in flux and subject to change at any moment.

The cracks parallel to the shore show that the lake ice has sunk, and may again. The white froth beside the green glacier is a flowing and frozen waterfall. There is another stream coming down closer to the camera. Both are flowing under the ice, taking relative warmth, and creating areas of thinner lake ice. The glacier is calving from above and below, even in winter. Because of all this, approaching the glacier is a dance with an uncertain beast. I hunt for images and capture them as I approach, never certain when I’ll decide I’ve gone close enough and its time to retreat.

This image was made early in the morning’s dance. The colors and textures beckoned me closer despite the poor ice conditions.

Plowing Prow

Closer (and farther to the left) than the previous one, I captured this image. My exploration is stymied. The lake ice has been broken and refrozen several times, Scan000009and there is water between the farther cracks. The advancing glacier has plowed up the lake ice like I might my driveway. Farther back there are pieces of lake ice resting 10′ out of the water, having been lifted there by the rising glacier. The textures in the ice in front of me still beckon, but I declare the dance done and retreat.

All in one place

by John Thurston

Today, we’re going back to the ice but we’re not going to move much once we get there. All of the images here were made within 50-feet of each other. The subject is a fairly stable ice cave. I say fairly because it was created by an active creek so there is water flowing into it. The ground is mud, silt, ice, and gravel and is sliding into the cave and under the glacier. The ceiling is made of ice and is full of mud, silt, and gravel and is falling onto the floor. While I was working, some nice ladies stopped in to visit the cave. I used my Fuji to get a set-the-scene snapshot.

Deep V

In The Groove

Just inside the cave, the layers of the ice are obvious. The younger ice is above, the older ice is denser and is funneling the melt water out to the edge. The running water has carved a Deep V in the ancient ice. The mud and sand is trapped between the layers of ice and is being washed down and dropped on the floor. When working under the ice, the water running down your back is really mud (of various dilutions).

A little to the right, and closer to the ice, In the Groove better shows the layers in the ice and the sand and silt trapped between them. We can also see melt water pouring in to join the creek farther inside the cave.

Farther in the cave but looking a little up, we can see Below the Surface(BW). There is sand and silt embedded inside the ice, and the layers are evident from the back just as well as the front. (Now’s a good time to wish we had carried a helmet with us. The roof is melting, remember?) Finally, we can move a little farther in and get in close. That sand in there has been trapped in the ice for a couple hundred years. It’s just itching to get out so it can slide down into my camera.


Below the Surface (BW)
Below the Surface

All images were created with a tripod mounted TL120-1. I don’t record exposure times but the fastest time used was 1 second. They were shot on Provia 100F, Provia 400X, or Ilford HP5.

Nugget Falls Revisited

by John Thurston

After visiting Nugget Falls, and seeing the other visitors on that cold November day, I started thinking about the presence and absence of the camera-toting tourists. With that idea, I returned to Nugget falls in the height of the tourist season to try to capture some Alaskan Wildlife.

I approached the project in two ways. In the first, I went among the tourists. I openly carried my camera and snapped pictures as I saw fit. I didn’t try to be obscure or secretive, and I my TL120-1 was certainly not discrete. I was able to capture some characteristic tourist activities. These included primping for the camera, chimping the group shot on the camera, bickering over the camera, and arguing over the correct way to operate the camera. You get the idea. I fit right in.

In the second case, I set up a blind on a common game trail. I tried to get my 20′ air-release to work, but it failed me and I was forced to work with a 10″ cable release.  I aimed the camera, set its exposure, and settled back onto a boulder. By kicking back on the rock with my arms crossed, I was able to hold the cable release in my fingers and trip it when I felt the scene before me was set. Too bad the TL120 lacks a motor advance or I wouldn’t have needed to get up and break my repose. One person called me out on the rig he spotted in the rocks and correctly identified the device as a “big stereo camera”.

Return to Nugget Falls

by John Thurston

Back in loop-17 (2005?), I contributed a couple of images taken from midway up Nugget Falls on the Mendenhall Lake. I liked the subject and wanted to try with wider lenses.

In November 2011, I went back with my son and we both shot some images. A couple of his shots are provided here to help set the scene. I was using my TL120-55, he was using a Canon 7D.

It was November, so the lake was just starting to freeze and the sun was low even at mid morning. He climbed up the scree pile beside the falls while I loaded film and prep’d my gear on more stable ground. Then I came up shot a roll looking across the face of the falls, across the freezing lake, and into the powered sugar covered mountains.

Stuart caught me while I was framing, so after I had shot my scenics and was climbing down, I turned the camera on him. I had already slung my tripod for the descent, so this was a hand-held shot (with neck strap).

The other visitors to the falls were a fortuitous accident. But when I saw them down below, I stalled my framing for a few seconds hoping they would spread to better fill the frame. My gamble paid off and I was please with their contribution to the image.

Black and White Blue

by John Thurston

This is my first effort with DR5 processing and I’m extremely pleased with the results. I’ve been very happy with the sharpness I get with Provia 100, and reasonably happy with the sharpness with Provia 400x, but with Ilford HP5 at 400 I can see the grains of sand on the rocks. It is expensive to process, but I hope to shoot some more HP5 next year.

The cave below the Crack of Doom, persisted for at least three months. I first visited it in August. This image was made in October. The ceiling was higher and the space more open, but the cave was still there. This is almost the same vantage point as Streamside Snapshot. The rise in the very center of this image is off on the right side (and touching the ceiling) in Streamside.

Tripod mounted TL120-1, Ilford HP5 at ISO 400, DR5 processing

 

 

Streamside Snapshot

by John Thurston

Back in August, I had found an awesome cave at the edge of the ice. I had been under the ice for about 30 minutes trying for some images of the stream running at the bottom of the cave. The light level was low and I was having to guess at 1.5 or 2 second exposures while the melting roof falling all around me. These two ladies climbed and slid down to where I was and asked if they could take a few pictures without disturbing me.

“Sure thing!”, I said. They weren’t going to interrupt my process, and I really wanted some pictures of them against the blue.

While they took each others’ pictures, I tried to advance to advance the film, open the aperture enough to get the shutter-speed down to a more realistic number, compose a new image, and focus for the shallow depth of field. I think I got off three exposures before they were done and ready to climb out and head home. This is the only one which is close to useable, and it’s still too dark. I really need to carry a small flash and learn how to use it 🙁

This is in the same cave in which I made Crack of Doom. I’m turned 180 degrees and thirty feet farther in.

Tripod mounted TL120-1, Provia 400X, un-recorded aperture and shutter.

 

Crack of Doom

by John Thurston

Some glaciers are relatively stable. The Mendenhall is not one of these. At this fissure, the race is on between the melt action from the outside edge and thinning ceiling caused by the increasing depth of the crack. When I found this ceiling crack, I knew I had to try to get an image of it before it disappeared.

It’s shot on Provia 400X with about a half-second exposure. Because of the height of the ceiling and the orientation of the crack, I was unable to get everything in focus with the TL120-1. Yep, the foreground is soft, but I feel it isn’t too distracting. A greater distraction is the stream of water very near the camera. Again, there was nothing I could do about it, so I made the image as best I could.

This is one image I whole-heartedly suggest experiencing inverted. Flip that slide over and see what’cha’ think.

This is also an image which I have found impossible to color-match between the slide and the computer screen. The colors just don’t exist in the sRGB space to present the colors on the film.

August, 2011 – Tripod mounted TL120-1, Provia 400X

Hanging Ice Cubes

by John Thurston

This is another image from under the Mendenhall glacier. I have done several images of the surface and the caves. Here, I’ve screwed up the courage to actually get in the gap between the ice and the bedrock, put a camera on a tripod and try to compose some images. It’s pretty hard to concentrate on images when the ceiling is melting and the resulting ice-water-rain is running down your back. Then there are the streams (a little visible in the middle-ground), tumbling rocks, and falling ice-bits to keep you jumping!

I really wanted to get more light so you could see the distance better. Even though I had brought my flash (and all of the cables to make it go) I was unable to control it enough to get any light in the distance without blowing out the rocks in the foreground. What I needed was a Chimney Boy to slither in and rig a couple of remotes part way down the cleft.

Created with a tripod-mounted TL120-1

Decker Way

by John Thurston

Juneau has more than a few steep streets, and quite of few of these become too steep to remain a paved roadway. Decker Way is a downtown street which becomes a staircase to finish its run down to South Franklin St. The staircase streets are named and numbered just like the roadways, and commonly have  houses along both sides. I visit them on my lunch break, and I don’t envy the folks who live there who get to carry their groceries up (or down) in all kinds of weather.

This is not labeled, but is probably from my TL120-1.

Tours!

by John Thurston

Down on the docks, the cruise ships tie up and the passengers disembark. Those who bought package tours on the ship need to find the right person with the sign for their tour. Those who didn’t buy their tickets on the ship, can talk to one of the tour representatives in the kiosks. The cruise lines would rather sell the ticket on-board (as they pocket a large commission on each sale), and make a point of warning their passengers of unscrupulous dealings elsewhere. I’d rather deal with these guys who are here rain or shine, every day of the week.

This was a fun image to make. I was framing the image and chatting with the barkers in their kiosks.  All day long, they see the tourists clicking away with cameras, but my TL120-55 on a tripod was a bit different and caught their attention. I tried framing this with the TL120-1, but I really think the 55mm lenses let me better capture the scene.

Tripod mounted TL120-55, April 2010.

Cranberry Crush (with crabapples)

by John Thurston

The back of the mount says “TL120”, but it lies. This dates from 2005 and I didn’t have a TL120 until 2006. I found another unmounted image from this same roll and it is obviously from my Rolleidoscop.

The girls are working on crushing Crabapples (which they have just picked off the tree in the yard). They had a recipe for “Cranberry Crush”, and lacking any cranberries, decided to see what they got using local ingredients.

I am working on framing an image, and trying to figure out how to drive the flash. My flash technique is terrible and this marginal success I can attribute only to luck. I have no idea how I managed to get the exposure this close with a Vivitar 285 bounced off the ceiling.

Wall

by John Thurston

In some earlier folio offerings, I’ve shown the raining ceilings and the smooth rocks. This image is all about the ice.

Up close and personal with the face of the glacier, you can see the facets and scallops created as it melts. The sand and rock in the ice has possibly been there for thousands of years. Its journey is nearly over and it will soon melt out and fall to the ground.

I’ve been trying some different methods of duplicating slides. This is a Gammatech duplicate made from a flat-bed scan on my Epson 4990. While it isn’t bad, it can’t compare with the original. But, for $10, it certainly isn’t bad.

August, 2010. Tripod mounted TL120-1.