Chatham Strait, Southeast Alaska
Our week-long expedition is coming to a close on National Geographic Sea Bird. With so many lenses available to us from our friends at B&H Photo in New York City, we all had the amazing opportunity to see Southeast Alaska from many different perspectives.
Wide-angle lenses allow us to take in the grandeur of this wild and wide open space. From the massive Fairweather Mountain Range to the Tongass National Forest, wide angle allowed us to expand our minds in order to wrap around the vastness that is Southeast Alaska.
Macro lenses in the diffused light of the temperate rainforest, gave us the chance to get down on our hands and knees to photograph everything from nagoon berries to fresh brown bear prints in the mud. Narrowing our vision to search out the details, we perhaps paused long enough to see what we might otherwise have overlooked.
Mid-range zoom lenses allowed us to meet and come to know some of the pioneering spirits who inhabit the remote communities that are sprinkled along this watery edge. Fishermen, bush pilots, shop-keepers, and park rangers all were captured by our desire to hear their stories about life from a unique point of view.
Long glass allowed us close-up looks at the magnificent wildlife that makes Alaska their summer home. Humpback whales, killer whales, black bears, wolves, brown bears, bald eagles, Steller’s sea lions, sea otters, harbor seals, river otters, tufted puffins, and mountain goats all revealed themselves to us through the power of tele-photo lenses.
As we kayaked, walked in the forest, watched humpback whales and sailed the narrow passage between Baranof and Chichagof islands with new friends, we used our cameras as tools to record the images that touched each of us personally. Cameras allow us to see the world from a variety of angles and viewpoints. Maybe one of the truths of photography is that no single perspective is the one and only way to see anything. Trying out different lenses reminds us that there are also many ways to view the world and those in it.
No single lens covers all scenarios. We are enriched as we pause and see the world in new ways.
