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Aerial photos of a legendary Alaskan Bush plane, the Piper Super Cub, in a classic Alaskan setting.
Last week I was treated to an aerial photo shoot by two pilot friends. We flew across Kachemak Bay from our hometown of Homer to spend thirty minutes flying amongst the dramatic mountain peaks and ice fields making up the Kenai Mountain Range. I’m always shocked by the majestic beauty of this mountain range that is just a ten minute flight from my house.
The weather conditions were ideal allowing us to make the most of the few short hours of sunlight we get this time of year, and topping it off was the company of a rising moon.
Aerial and air-to-air photos are certainly some of my favorite images to make. Something about the challenges of the quickly changing subject matter, the feverish search for the next fleeting moment of divine composition, the cold wind in my face, the entirely different perspective, the technical challenges of making a good photograph in these conditions. . . this is the kind of landscape photography that an outdoor adventure photographer can appreciate.
Some technical details for those of you that are interested – all the shots in the slideshow above were taken with a Canon 1D mark II digital SLR using a Canon 70-200 2.8L IS zoom lens. I typically shoot in manual exposure mode, occasionally aperture priority to give me the fastest shutter speed possible with my chosen ISO speed and aperture. I usually have the aperture at its smallest number in an effort to get the fastest shutter I can without pushing the ISO up too high. This day we had bright sunshine and a white plane on snow, this allowed for comfortable shutter speeds at ISO 250 and even allowed me to keep a slightly smaller aperture (5.6-6.3) giving me a little better depth of field. Looking over the EXIF data for a few of the shots I see I was shooting between 1/1,250th of a second to 1/5,000th.
Our photo shoot started with a flight in a Cessna 206 from Homer across Cook Inlet to Hallo Bay in the Katmai National Park on the Alaska Peninsula. This aerial photo of the Barren Islands was taken as we crossed Cook Inlet. Though they are often surrounded by stormy seas, the islands look rather inviting here. Plenty of birds find them appealing also, East Amatuli (top left) is home to one of the Gulf of Alaska’s largest populations of nesting seabirds.
Our pilot landed the airplane on the beach in Hallo Bay where we hiked out into the fireweed looking for Brown bears that feed on sedge grass and salmon. Hallo Bay is a striking setting, surrounded by the mountains and glaciers of the Aleutian Range. The air was very still the during our visit and the heat of the mid August sun was too much for this Alaskan boy.
One of Homer Air’s offerings is overnight ‘air-trekking’ adventures, so the shot list included a tent on the beach with the aircraft. We had just enough light left in the day after photographing the bears to get the shot of the tent and airplane, as well as a few camping lifestyle images.
Once the sun went behind the mountains, we piled back in the Cessna and climbed to an altitude where the sun was still shining (gotta love that trick). The aerial photo at left shows three active volcanoes lined up: Mt. Douglas, Augustine Volcano, and Mt. Iliamna. Augustine has been very active lately with major eruption events in the last couple years. We also made an orbit around Kaguyak Crater allowing a a great opportunity to shoot some aerials of this incredible bit of scenery. Kaguyak crater epitomizes one of my favorite things about Alaska, until this I don’t recall that I’d ever even heard of it, if this crater was anywhere else in the US it would likely be the crown jewel of the state. Here in Alaska though, it’s just another one of the hundreds of incredible sights waiting to be discovered.