Tag Archives: Lake

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.

Glare From the Noon Light

by John Thurston

Yes, this is the noon light, not the moon light. Early in January, the sun doesn’t get very high in our sky. It rakes in very low, and there are often shadows mid-day caused by the sun being obscured by some mountains. In earlier folios, you have seen where the ice meets the land. This is where the ice meets the lake.

Catching the dawn light on the glacier is a tricky business. By definition, it involves starting the mile and quarter trek across the lake (either by skate or by ski) before dawn. It requires a bit of nerve to lace up my skates and set out across the lake in the dark with a pack loaded with camera gear. Once there, in the pre-dawn light, the challenge is to find the image that will be there when the sun arrives.

In this case, I caught the light on the extreme face of the glacier.  There is nothing for scale, but the hummock to the right is probably only four feet high. That makes the face about 30 feet high. The lake ice in front of it (as well as where I’m standing) is a mass of re-frozen crumble. At any time, the glacier may slide forward and wrinkled the ice for many yards. The lake is also littered with bergs which have fallen off the face. If that should happen, the resulting waves will leave broken ice for half a mile. I have never been there when it happens, but the evidence that it does happen is recorded in the ice at my feet.

This was shot with my TL120-55 on a tripod in January, 2010.