Anyways, Fairbanks was a little different than we expected. Was good though once we got used to the layout. Downtown was pretty run down and not much going on, but elsewhere was fine. We headed up to see the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, something I’ve wanted to see for a long time:

Something else we both wanted to see was the Northern Lights. On our way north of Fairbanks, I stopped to watch the Ice Road Truckers make their way home:

A little after midnight, we finally got to see the Aurora:

We were like 40 miles north of Fairbanks and totally on our own. It was pretty awesome! We got a couple of short shows which kept us happy:

On Friday we headed 20 miles or so out of Fairbanks to North Pole, which was quite a surreal place. The street lights were colored like candy canes, trees had lights and decorations on them, streets were named ‘Santa Claus Lane’, etc. No trip there would have been complete with going to Santa Claus House (though Santa himself was on holiday…):

To get over North Pole, on Saturday we drove out to Chena Hot Springs, which was just awesome. It’s nestled away in the mountains all by itself, and has geothermal hot springs which feed a couple of pools. The outdoor rock pool was very, very relaxing. Surrounded by snow capped mountains and trees whilst in the warming pool was great, and it was about 45F out, so even lying on the rocks in the sun kept us fairly warm. It was also nice to then wander around the resort and check out all the old and rusty machines and gold panning area and stuff:

For more photos, check this flickr set of Fairbanks

Overall, it was a great few days. Felt weird once we landed in Anchorage and were waiting on our flight back to Bethel. Would be the last time I would be flying out here (assuming I don’t get roped in to helping with Cama’i for Pat’s final year next March). Plus, it matched up that 7 weeks to the day I would be flying back in to Anchorage from Bethel for the last time, and then 8 weeks to the day, I would be leaving Anchorage to the lower 48. I’ve flown to Bethel something like 20 times over the past 5 years, and will be weird leaving. Last night I sold my snowmobile, and have my boat up for sale too. Hopefully that will sell soon. I’ll be mailing off the last few boxes in a couple of weeks when I’m done with my desktop computer and winter clothes and stuff, and then that’s it

I made sure I got to photograph some of the dancers though, one of the advantages I guess is seeing which groups are really cool when they first perform so I could get down by the stage to photograph them later on in the weekend These are some from the first batch I processed last night, starting out with the amazing Mary Ann Sundown of Scammon Bay:

Well dressed dancers from Marshall, including the elder sitting at the front (of which I have some more close-ups to come):

I checked out St Mary’s a couple of times as they were quite lively. This is an overview of how we had the stage, lights and video projectors set up:

And bear in mind, this is a pretty big high-school gym where a district-wide basketball tournament was held a couple of weeks ago!

Tomodachi Diako Taiko Drummers were really impressive, a group of Japanese immersion students out of Anchorage:

One of their leaders was very friendly as we hooked up a wireless mic for him, and his flute playing was awesome:

And here’s one of Marty starting to look a little tired by 8pm on Sunday evening:

Overall, it was a great festival, and as with last year, I really enjoyed being part of the sound + light crew and being able to help put on such an awesome show. Pat is retiring next summer and leaving Bethel, so Cama’i 2011 will be his last show after doing it for 25 or so years. He’s already trying to convince me to fly back up for it!

Here’s Mitch Seavey, two-time K300 champion taking a corner weaving through University Lake:

With the trail fairly narrow, mushers often ended up close together and with no way of passing. Here, Dallas Seavey, son of Mitch, pulled over to let Sonny Lindner pass. As the teams aren’t racing, I guess Dallas was just wanting to enjoy himself and take his time:

Aliy Zirkle, along with her trailing-sled rider also enjoying herself:

Rookie Dan Kaduce:

A good looking and happy team of Tom Thurston:

I’ll finish off processing the photographs from Sunday’s official restart in Willow over the next few days. To check out more of what’s online so far, head over to this Iditarod 2010 set on flickr

As they can’t sweat, their tongues swell up to allow them to cool, which is quite safe.

You then had this guy who just wanted to keep running, not stop on the trail for a minute or so whilst the musher untangled some lines:

Peter Kaiser of Bethel was running his first Iditarod, with his father, Ron, riding the second sled:

Mike Williams Jr of Aniak is also running his first Iditarod this year. Both are currently doing well in the middle of the pack.

Up in Willow, we got to mill around the teams as they were setting up thanks to the press passes we had, which got some great candid shots of the puppies like this one after sneaking a little snack from a way-ward food tub lid:

Some mushers were more stressed out than others as they got ready for the start of the ‘real’ racing, such as Martin Buser, barely able to contain himself:

And once everything was underway, great to see all the mushers and teams make their way across Willow Lake to begin the journey, such as DeeDee Jonrowe:

I’ve processed and uploaded around 50 or so photos now, with hundreds more to go. I’ll slowly be uploading them as I go, again, check this flickr set for more now and over time. Any stand out ones I’ll also post here. I’m really going to miss photographing sled dogs. I guess that’s why I did so much with the Kuskokwim 300, Bogus Creek 150, Akiak Dash, Holiday Classic, and now Iditarod the last couple of months. I just love being around the dogs! I had been hoping to get up for the Akiak 150 this weekend, but there’s a little too much going on at work to have taken more time off so soon after the Iditarod. Hopefully I’ll be able to get another local sled dog race around Bethel before the end of winter.

After dinner on Saturday evening with friends Beth + Loren, we snagged their press passes which meant we could wander around amongst the mushers and teams setting up for an hour or so which was awesome! We then headed over the lake to where the teams pull off and in to a little wooded area. It was really good fun seeing the teams start their Iditarod journey, and I’m now resigned to following the race progress via the GPS tracking on Iditarod Insider.

Today we had a lazy day around Anchorage as the weather wasn’t too good for heading down Turnagain Arm, but it was still good fun. Back to work tomorrow, and with 3 x 8Gb memory cards full of photos to process on the evenings. At least it’s Spring break at UAS so I don’t have much college work to get done over the next week or so and have time to process them. I’ll have photos on flickr as slowly over the next few days hopefully.

I haven’t packed any clothes yet, but at least am checked in on-line and have my camera gear packed I’m taking a little more than I had for the K300 races and Holiday Classic where I stuck with the 18-200 the whole time, as I’m hoping to get a little more landscape shots done around Turnagain Arm and such, we’ll see. My poor MacBook is rapidly running out of space and will barely hold one 8Gb memory card, let along the three of them I carry! So, it might need to wait until I get back to Bethel to post some photos.

Of course, it’s blowing snow and IFR here in Bethel right now, and the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center and Alyeska Resort are closed along Turnagain Arm due to severe weather, but hopefully we’ll be okay and have a great weekend! If nothing else, will be nice to get out of Bethel for the weekend. Heading up to Fairbanks for 4-5 days at the start of April, so at least gives us a couple of trips out of the delta to keep us going as winter rolls on.

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ifinishedmyfirstsemesteratuaswitha4.0gpa
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iphotographedtheheckoutoflocalsleddogracesandhadmultiplefeaturesraninthetundradrums
ipassedmyapplecertifiedtechnicalcoordinatorexamsinosx10.6havingneverseenwithsnowleopard
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iwillhavecompleted18collegecreditsthroughuasbytheendofjuneafterregisteringformoreclassestonight
ihavetakentostudingthebibledailyandevenwenttochurchlastsunday
iamgoingtotheiditarodacoupleofweeks
ihaveanothertripbookedtofairbanksatthestartofapril
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I will try to blog more. I usually can’t be bothered and end up with short updates on twitter or Facebook. If you’re wanting to keep up, that’s probably easier. And my flickr photo stream.

That weekend I found out one of my best friends from school had died in a car crash. Finding out by reading such seemingly meaningless posts on Facebook and having the comments going back and forth made it all seem so impersonal and frustrated me a lot. Partly why I haven’t blogged for a while. The one plus point was at least I had some kind of a connection, regardless of how impersonal it seemed.

A few days later, a friend made it in from Anchorage to photograph local events for the paper. That was fun, and gave me an opportunity to try heading home from work on a sunny day, hook the boat up, drop it in the water, and go play for a couple of hours. Knowing I have that kind of freedom makes such a difference, so we had fun going down to and exploring Napaskiak and Oscarville. Plus, she also made a good photo of me:

Since we’ve had a few good spells of weather and fishing opportunities, we also headed out with Captain Macy (and Erin…), Brian and Bethany to go fishing.

With four of us out there, it was a fun afternoon, though the little noseeums gave me some grief! This is me fishing with Bethany:

Last weekend Jeff and I decided to go explore the Gweek River in anticipation for moose and bird hunting. We did a little fishing, but not much around there except pike, but we had a good day exploring a new area. An hour and a half out of Bethel, quite a way’s up the Gweek, we stepped ashore and found a bunch of moose tracks in an area quite unlike anything I expected of the delta, and very reminiscent of Scotland:

The photo’s don’t do it justice as I just had my little point + shoot, but it was quite a beautiful area. Jeff is certainly going to return in the 10-day moose opening from September 1st onwards.

I also then purchased a Remington 870 12-gauge shotgun this past week to get out bird hunting. The act of purchasing and owning a gun doesn’t phase me anymore, but to walk in to the AC grocery store on a lunchtime and walk out 20 minutes later with a gun was a little weird. So, Wednesday night Jeff + I took a walk out across the tundra just getting used to it (he’s been great in going over the safety aspects, the gun components, hunting methods, etc. and is looking forward to a partner this fall), and Nikko ended up leading the duck count, managing to retrieve an already injured white-fronted goose. Bird hunting doesn’t officially open until September 1st, so we weren’t really looking at doing much ourselves, but again, is nice to have more options for getting out on an evening and weekend now.

This weekend Erin is moving, which is helpful, as Bethany is then moving in to her old place the following weekend. Means Iain’s Moving Services are required for two weekends, but beer and pizza are good forms of payment. If this fairly okay weather holds that we have today, am sure Jeff will be forcing me to go out on the river too. Which would be just awful I have a few more snowmobile parts coming in soon too to get my Indy 500 ready for the coming winter. The temperature dropped below freezing and gave a good frost a few days ago, so we’re definately easing out of summer.

Yesterday I moved the seats round in the boat, as is more natural for driving from the opposite side. Hopefully is a little easier driving like that. But, the engine itself ran just great, a lot better than I was expecting, very little vibration so the prop is good, and was okay on gas too. A little loud with it being a 2-stroke, but not uncomfortably so. Overall, very happy with it!

We then swapped out boats and headed way up the Kwethluk River with Jeff and the dogs to go camping. The weather was just great, and with a little breeze, very few bugs either. After a little battle with the fishies, I finally landed a pike which went straight on the grill Tasted great:

Our camp site was in a really nice spot, on a little beach and getting enough sun whilst still staying fairly cool:

My tent was a bit small for the dogs as well, though just fine for Jeff + I, so we will need something a little bigger to have those guys getting a more comfortable night away from the bugs. But, overall, was a good shakedown trip to figure things out for next time now we know what we gear have that works and doesn’t (and not to leave stuff in the boat unless you want it covered in dew in the morning!). Am tired today, but good fun!

There was another 172, a 207, Maule and Aviat A-1B docked along the shore, plus this Piper PA-18 belonging to the State Troopers or Fish & Game, looking just awesome in HDR with such intense blues:

I’d set up a function key on my EOS 50D to allow the AEB switching to be easily able to shoot more than 3 bracketed exposures, so these photos and others on Flickr were from a 1EV 5 exposure sequence in Photomatix. This gave a much more even tone and less graininess which I experienced doing a 3 exposure sequence last week with the abandoned Army truck and burned down house. There’s definitely some great uses out here to capture the range of tones, especially blue skies. I can imagine in the winter time especially there could be some fantastic opportunities at sunrise and sunset!

Being around whilst people in the parade were getting ready gave the opportunity to get Iditarod 2009 musher Harry Alexie to pose in a dog-sled cart:

I pretty ran the length of the parade route, meaning I got to a bunch of shots from different parts around town which although tiring, was actually pretty good fun. No-one seemed to mind the idiot sitting the middle of the road whilst a dog team or truck was coming right towards me. Which was nice. Here is the well adorned Girl Scouts float:

At the carnival itself, the were some fun little market stalls set up, food vendors, raffle tickets for sale, etc. I managed to find a fun shot of Brian Kay adorned in the stars and stripes:

One more photograph I made mainly for the newspaper was of a couple of elders enjoying the festivities going on around them:

All in all, I was really happy with how the day turned out. I filled an 8Gb CF card in like 3 hours with 360+ RAW photos and then spent pretty much all Sunday processing them to get them in to the paper for the the 8.30a.m Monday deadline. But, they ran 6 photos in full color which was cool. More photos from the day are detailed in this flickr set. I’d then ended up spending the rest of the 4th out on the river with Jeff, so was a great day!

There must be a fantastic story about this old army truck. I will try to pick people’s brains tomorrow on it!

Right next to this location, there’s also a burned out house just sitting having never been cleaned up. Again, would like to find out a little more about it. I can only hope everyone got out safely. This is still my biggest fear with living out here:

These HDR images were created using the awesome Photomatix software, which I realized very quickly, and with HDR in general, not just this piece of software, requires a good number of images to work with. The Canon EOS 50D by default only does 3 auto bracketed shots at up to +/- 2 stops exposure. I have found a good tutorial to quickly adjust this to 9 to 12 shots which I hope will reduce the graininess present by a lack of range in the tonal adjustment processing. 5 to 9 images seems to be a good standard for creating HDR images. The tripod and balllhead were awesome in setting these up, with ballhead so much easier to quickly and precisely line up what you wanted, and the quick release plate meaning I could also easily move to somewhere else lining up shots.

I’m looking forward to experimenting more. I know with the right conditions or filters, I may seemingly be able to achieve results close to these, but even photographs I made at what I would consider the right settings and looked very respectable pale alongside an HDR composed shot now. Check out the large resolution versions on flickr to see what I mean It works really well, and just the effect I was hoping I’d be able to achieve.

And we may not have KFC in Bethel, however there was a QFC at one point:

But, the important thing was getting another front page photograph on the Tundra Drums of my shot of Joseph repairing his salmon nets:

Very happy I have a few extra photos on flickr I got from Friday night which were fun. Tonight I had some friends over for poker which then moved on to Rock Band which was great fun too!

I did head out to Pinky’s Park on Tuesday to watch a little softball:

Four night’s a week there’s a fairly informal league for teams to play in which was good fun:

Wednesday night I then took a ride down to the river to check out the boats moving in + out from people fishing. The last week or two there has been a good run of salmon, with fish drying all over town outside houses:

I also met a cool old local called Joseph that I watched repairing his salmon nets with the traditional tools:

He let me hang around a good 10 minutes or so watching and making some photographs, with one his dogs also keeping watch on the proceedings in case anything good happened:

On Friday, Jeff had Dennis and I round for a roast dinner. I got to play with my new Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens which I have fallen in love with! This is Dennis playing barman and making sure not a drop of tequila was spilled:

And then the chef himself taking a break after dinner to drink + chat:

I submitted a few photos in to the Tundra Drums after they got in touch asking for some possible photos to run in next week’s edition. Hopefully they like some of them and they get printed. Large sized photos of these ones here are on my flickr account.

Very, very cool! I wasn’t expecting to get a front page photo published Really cheered me up. I got home, left if for a while, then actually sat down to read the paper, and then flipped open a two-page feature like page 6 which had another 4 of my photos, one whole page just of mine:

And the second page had one of mine in the bottom right too. Cool State of Alaska provided photo of the guy wading through with a kid on his back from a Yukon village:

Overall, a pretty cool issue! Very happy to have so many photos printed, think it’s actually all 5 that I submitted to them. Am quite proud to have so many published, and especially since they all look like they should be there too! I pretty much set out that night to make a certain set of photographs after Beth suggested what to look for with regards to what would work well in a photo feature, and managed to pull if off better than I hoped for.

To make things even sweeter, ’tis a 3-day weekend!

After loading up the boat with more boxes and playing around with the kids in the sunshine for a little, we then pushed out and headed back out along the slough:

We made the most of the sunshine and blue skies, as by the time we got back to Bethel it was starting to rain. Thankfully we got the boat unloaded and then back out the truck in my house before it got too heavy. This was mid way up the Kuskokwim to Bethel:

Captain Macy decided to take the helm for a while too (though Erin was still at the wheel…):

Really is one spoilt puppy

Was a fun evening though, nice to get out on a boat down the river for a little bit. The pizza + beer when we got back was a nice way to round off the night too!

Last Thursday I headed out for drinks with a friend which became early morning walking home with the sun still up. That was just weird. Friday night we then celebrated Jamie being crowned intercontinental teacher of the year (well, teacher of the year at ME, but Jeff + I didn’t think that sounded quite as grand), that rolled on til gone 2a.m. Normally, such a finishing time would be respectable, however when you are then woken up less than hour in to bed by firefighters coming in your house and up the stairs telling you to get out, it does not bode well. My neighbour had a small fire in the chimney flue which was cause for concern with smouldering roof timbers, and my side of the duplex being the only way way in to the attic. Cue fire hoses dragged up the stairs, through my bedroom, and getting to sit in a fire truck and look at the purty buttons and dials. At 4a.m after drinking a tad, this was the best I could figure with the camera:

I finally got back in the house around 5a.m, but then had to be up at 7a.m to get out to the airport to head to Anchorage for the weekend. When you’re boarding the plane and the stewardness says “don’t worry, sir, there’ll be coffee shortly” you know you look rough So, I made a sensible choice of not renting a car and called Beth for a ride. I spent the day with her and Loren before heading out for a meal at Orso and some drinks, before the draw of Chuck E Cheese won us over and we went to play skeeball. Quite surreal, but incredibly good fun. I won a bunch of coupons so traded them in for activity books and stickers which the guys in the office didn’t seem impressed with…

After poker til 3a.m which gave me a few of those green beer vouchers, Sunday was a lazy day with shopping, a barbecue with Beth + Loren’s friends, then off to the hockey game to see the Aces play in the conference final (which they ended up taking 4-0 a couple of days ago and now go to the Kelly Cup!). Tim Miller and a friend met up with us, and was a great game with plenty of fights. More poker ensued until the early hours of Monday morning, and then a quick medical appointment on Monday before heading back to Bethel. Where I needed a canoe to get home:

There was a waist-deep water down 6th avenue which was bizarre, especially since it ended up all clearing away within a couple of days. But, was fun whilst it lasted. Got some awesome photos too, some of which I’m hoping get printed in the Tundra Drums, such as Katrina Dominic rescuing Spencer:

I spent Monday night at a friends to let the water recede a little, then Tuesday evening went out canoeing around the slough with Sarah which was good fun. Figured since I could just about walk home with water boots on, was a good sign. Wednesday all hell broke seemed to break loose, but stayed remarkably together. I had a lot of stuff hit me at once I wasn’t quite sure how to deal with, but getting out the office with Dennis for lunch helped diffuse things to the point I can smile about it now. Opened my eyes up a lot and made me appreciate those I have around me. Feel like I’ve become a lot closer to some people as result of the trust and friendship they’ve shown.

Thursday night brought guy’s night at Ted B’s, so I snagged a ride to ACE to pick up a couple of cases of IPA to donate and save on a cab ride! It was a good warm up for last night, since my house was picked to host happy hour, which was really good. Was so nice to be able to have all my best friends round, plowing through case after case of beer, and munching on pizza. We also found the buzzer on the dryer, when bumped in to, is a perfect signal for everyone to take a drink! I also managed to get Bethany and Brent to don a Sunderland shirt to start the Bethel branch of the the Sunderland AFC Supporters Association. Honestly, I don’t think they had a clue what they were wearing:

Outside, a highschool graduation was quietly going on (seriously, they were all very well behaved) with a bonfire as the focal point. By 1.30a.m, we were like moths to a light bulb and being drawn in. For what it’s worth, wearing a cap on backwards does not let you blend in. Even as the youngest of our mob, I felt old! But, we had a good few minutes hanging out before deciding we needed another drink and some snacks and retreated back home.

By 3a.m I made it to bed, and then got to deal with the clear-up this morning, generally involving an insane amount of empty bottles + cans! Good times though. Thinking a barbecue is in order next weekend. Anyways, my plan is to leave the house as little as possible this weekend and spend as much time on the couch as I can.

Yesterday was just beautiful weather (well, for May 2nd in Bethel!) at 60F, so I decided to walk up to Suzi’s house for the K300 volunteers party so I could play with my new camera. Those unacquainted with Bethel will not realize the hike it is out past Larson Sub! Starting out, the river itself is still pretty frozen solid, with a little standing water seemingly flowing on top of the ice on the far bank:

Elsewhere in town, fire truck #1 was outside the fire station in the sunshine:

The visitor center and museum for the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge was also enjoying the warmer weather and big, blue skies:

Coming up on Larson sub, which is way the heck out of town, you got a good overview on how spread out in general Bethel is. This small size doesn’t show the detail, but pretty much everything along the horizon is houses, stretching from Tundra Ridge on the left through the center of town and out to Blueberry on the right:

On the final climb up to Suzi’s, I came across a stack of abandoned vehicles. This is definitely tripod territory for some HDR shots in the future!

So, I decided I hate the Tokina 12-24mm F4 DX lens It’s fantastic – I love how crisp the photos stay, even handheld at 12mm. This is certainly a lens that will deliver some awesome results with the Manfrotto triopd + ballhead!

The K300 volunteers party was thrown to thank all those that helped put on the K300 races, and the great weather meant everyone was enjoying themselves lying around in the sun. A huge sled packed with snow and beer helped, as did the big grill! Games, music and dancing rounded things off. I’m not one to post photos of random people on here, the K300 site can carry those, but Suzi did steal my camera (that’s trust right there!) and grab some photos worth sharing, first of me and Casie:

The Sunderland shirt was down to the fact no-one would realize how well we’ve been playing lately Anyways, here’s another with Angie and Erin:

I then got bored with trying to smile for the camera! But, it was a good afternoon/evening. After wandering home gone 1.30a.m, I then didn’t appreciate Jeff waking me up at 9.30a.m asking if I wanted to go for a walk later But, after lunch we headed out for a ‘little stroll across the tundra’:

Yeah right. Only in Alaska could you have been going from thigh-deep snow to knee-deep water in a couple of steps whilst wearing a short-sleeve shirt… But, I did get to fire off a few clips with a .22 semi-automatic pistol:

The ear plugs were mainly for this beast of a .44 Magnum, which although ridiculously good fun to shoot, scared the crap out of me with it’s recoil!

After making it back to dry land, it had filled in 2-3 hours on a Sunday afternoon, so we rewarded ourselves with a beer. Nothing like shooting guns to build up a thirst. I’ll put up some of these photos on Flickr in higher resolution, and I love my new Canon EOS 50D! Some of the photos from the K300 party were awesome with having the full control of a DSLR, and I’m very excited for what else I can produce with it once I get used to all the features, especially next winter with all the sled dogs.

A very short, sub-10 minute flight brought us in to the Atmautluak, a pretty small village west of Bethel:

There was quite a bit more snow down than around Bethel, was quite weird. At least the airline agent took the X-serve on a sled to the school whilst we took the 10 minute or so walk there, as I did not fancy carrying a 50lbs server box through the snow! There are signs of melting though, and these dogs are soon going to be swimming if they’re not moved to slightly higher ground:

After some minor networking issues, we brought their new server online without too many problems, got it replicating back to the district office in Bethel and then began migrating some of their staff. We managed to get a good half a dozen staff running against the new server which was most of their teaching staff and our goal. Even more surprisingly, Yute were seemingly on time to pick us up at 4.30p.m, so we grabbed a ride out to the airport. It’s a tough life sometimes working in Alaska – this was Ted + I in the back of a sled whilst Brent clung on to the snowmobile (the sled was a lot safer!):

On the plane, a rather curious navigation device that managed to maintain it’s position throughout the flight back to Bethel:

But, at least we were back in Bethel by 5p.m, a good end to the day. Good ol’ Yute Air finally managed to redeem themselves though – a couple of boxes we were bringing back for the media center never made if off the plane (even though we were the only passengers on it, the pilot helped us load them on, and in fact, had to move one of the boxes to get our bags off in Bethel…) and instead went completely the opposite direction down to Eek and Quinhagak That’s our last Open Directory deployment for the school year though, we’ve now got four deployed outside the district office, and a good spread of users running off them. Will give us some valuable testing before rolling out more users across those sites after the summer and then deploying the technology to more sites across the district.

Guess what I got in the mail today ? This was with the Tokina 12-24mm F4 DX on the front of my new Canon EOS 50D. It has been a day of silly photos, I admit, but I’m more than a little tired from the weekend. If I have the energy in the next couple of days to start lugging all this gear round town I might make some photos with it once I’ve figured out all the little buttons, knobs, and doodahs.