It has been a long, snow-less autumn. As a landscape photographer, I hate the shoulder seasons. After the snow melts in the spring but before things get green, it’s an ugly, brown, muddy mess. The departing winter has revealed six months-worth of trash lying around. It’s not a pretty time. The same goes for the transition from autumn to winter. Once the leaves drop, it’s just a bunch of dead brown lying around. Well, here in Anchorage, the leaves dropped over a month ago. We’ve had a record-setting warm October, and finally the temperatures are starting to drop. Now, as crazy as it sounds, I am eager to greet the ice and the snow and the darkness. Here’s why.
A common misconception about the aurora borealis is that it only comes out when it is cold. The fact that it is cold is purely coincidental. It only gets dark enough to see the aurora in Alaska from about August through April, and that also happens to include the coldest months of the year. But even as far south as Anchorage, you could easily spend twelve hours of the day out photographing the aurora because the skies are dark enough to see them. See more in my Aurroa Borealis gallery.
When the sun is low and the mountains (and landscape) are covered in snow, a magical thing happens, called “alpenglow.” The result is a landscape aglow with a bold pink hue. The presence of ice and the Earth’s shadow on the horizon before sunrise and after sunset add blue hues to the landscape. The result is a luscious combination of pinks and blues that make for a wonderful tableau of color.
Despite the extreme cold temperatures, there are many areas of Alaska that have open sources of water throughout the winter. From moving water where streams and rivers collide to coastal zones, these open waters add moisture to the air, creating low-lying fog that clings to branches and plants. The result is “hoar frost,” a thick, crystalline structure of delicate ice that turns any plant into a work of art.
It’s always interesting to combine movement with a static object. In wintertime, you can have water be both the movement and the stable object. Whether it is icicles clinging to logs over a flowing stream or tidal ice moving out with a retreating tide, there are plenty of opportunities to capture interesting compositions with movement.
Usually in December when the air takes its first dive into deep cold, they come in waves to Anchorage. Hundreds of feathered bodies swirling and moving together, Bohemian Waxwings move from tree to tree, usually picking at the frozen red berries of the mountain ash tree. See more Bohemian Waxwings in my Birds gallery.
I do not know what it is, but there is something very magical about sunsets in Alaska in the winter time. It’s probably a combination of the all-day low light as well as the length of time it takes the sun to set. But when you add in snow drifts, ice, alpenglow and all other variety of factors, winter sunsets, especially along the coastal areas, are simply awe-inspiring.
It’s the official state sport and it is a load of fun to watch and photograph – a team of high-energy dogs doing what they were born to do; pull a sled. There are a lot of opportunities to photograph dog mushing at various competition events throughout the year – Iditarod, Yukon Quest, Fur Rendezvous, and various regional races. Some people will simply mush for recreation, like can often be found in Anchorage’s Far North Bicentennial Park area, particularly at the Tozier Track. And with the magnificent landscapes, dog mushing subjects allow any photographer to capture an iconic Alaskan image.
The absolute best time to photograph a moonrise or moonset is when they correspond with sunsets or sunrises. Why? It is easier to get a balanced exposure– with detail in the landscape as well as the moon – when the moon is rising or setting while there is some light in the sky. And as it turns out, there are some periods during the winter months – January is my favorite – when the moon is rising or setting at that perfect time.
News flash – it gets cold in the winter in Alaska. The record cold temperature in the United States was registered at Prospect Creek Camp in Alaska in 1971. It was -80 degrees Fahrenheit. The Prospect Creek Camp is located along the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in the Endicott Mountains of the Brooks Range, way north of the Arctic Circle. While that temperature may be rare, certain parts of the Interior of Alaska will routinely see temperatures in the -50 to -60 degree range. In Anchorage, we routinely get long snaps of below zero, and frequently see -20 degrees Fahrenheit. Cold temperatures tend to thin the herd of photographers gathering at photo hot spots. That is just fine with me, because cold is not a deterrent; it is to be embraced. Photo magic happens in the cold, so long as I keep my spare batteries warm
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