Scott Dickerson

Tag: Alaska

  • Alaska Aviation Trade Show ’08

    Dreams of flight at the Alaska Aviation Trade Show 2008After first hearing about the Alaska Airmen’s aviation trade show last year I looked forward to attending this spring. Last month I attended, photographed, and had a booth at the show. With such a concentration of aviation types and businesses, it was a good opportunity for me to get to know the aviation market for photography in Alaska a little better.

    The event is all about aviation with lots of airplanes on display ranging from historical and modern military aircraft, helicopters, cargo jets, sea planes, experimental bush planes, and private jets. Dick Rutan tells the story of his non-stop flight around the world in voyager IAlong with the airplanes is a hangar full of manufacturers and dealers of aviation supplies displaying their wares. As a bit of an aviation nut myself I really enjoyed the weekend there in the hangar chatting with other flying enthusiasts and oogling over all the fancy toys that make my cameras look cheap for a change!

    A highlight of the show was hearing Dick Rutan tell the story of his non-stop flight around the world in Voyager I, an aircaft designed by his brother Burt Rutan.

    A few photos from the weekend:




  • AlaskaFolio in The Surfer’s Path

    Alaska surfing photo copyright Scott Dickerson. Magazine layout copyright \"The Surfer\'s Path\"

    The surf has owned me since I was a youngster. Even after I started photographing professionally I never actually thought I would stay on the beach during one of those very rare and precious surf days in my Alaskan hometown. Sure, I loved making photos, but as I told my friends, when pressuring them for some company in the water, ‘the surf waits for nobody.’ It was about half way through last year that I had to break the news to my surfing obsession that yes, I had fallen for another. Now don’t take this wrong, it’s still all about the waves, I just found my hypothermic brain wandering at times, thinking about what an amazing photo I was in. Wondering if I captured an image of this moment, could it be traded for a warmer wetsuit?

    The paragraph above introduces the “AlaskaFolio” – an eight page spread that was published in The Surfer’s Path issue 65 (March/April 2008). This marks the real debut of my Alaskan surfing photos, and I’m proud to have them released in such a respectable surfing magazine with a strong commitment to environmental sustainability.

    I’m eagerly looking forward to more surfing adventures in the ‘Last Frontier’ and may the excruciating decision of whether to surf or photograph live on!

    Alaska surfing photo copyright Scott Dickerson. Magazine layout copyright \"The Surfer\'s Path\"

    Alaska surfing photo copyright Scott Dickerson. Magazine layout copyright \"The Surfer\'s Path\"

    Alaska surfing photo copyright Scott Dickerson. Magazine layout copyright \"The Surfer\'s Path\"

  • Air to air aerial photos of Homer Air

    aerial photographer - air to air photo of airplane in Alaska

    A local air service, Homer Air, recently had one of their Cessna 206 airplanes repainted- a great reason to get up and make some new aerial photos to show off the sharp new look. The photo above shows the plane flying over Kachemak Bay with the Homer Spit and the town of Homer, Alaska in the background. The blue ocean is a nice contrast for the white plane which turned out to be a challenge to photograph against the snow covered mountains this time of year. I’m looking forward to another aerial photo shoot with this plane when the mountains turn green and black later this spring.

    Tech notes: For this aerial shoot I was using the Canon 1DmIII digital slr with a canon 70-200mm 2.8 IS lens and a circular polarizing filter. The exposure was 1/2500 at f/4, nice and sharp. The two lenses I use most when shooting aerials are the canon 24-70 2.8 and the lens used here, the 70-200 2.8. Occasionally I also use a Ken-Labs gyro stabilizer, but on a bright sunny day like this it’s not needed.

  • Super Cub and the Kenai Mtns

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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.

  • Snowy surf session

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    Saltwater swirled around my feet erasing the tracks as it turned the fresh snow to slush.

    “Yep, them are neoprene bootie tracks all right, a sure sign of surfers in the area. It can be hard to get a visual on them when it’s snowing like this though– with all the snow in the air you gotta get within about a hundred yards of ’em.”

    Snowy winter surf session in Alaska.Standing out on the snow covered beach yesterday looking for the surfers I was there to photograph I had time to think about how strange it was. There I am in a near white out, the normally dark grey beach is white with fresh snow, looking out towards the rumbling surf I can barely make out the surfers in their black wetsuits. The sky was dark with heavy snow clouds, the waves were still messy from a nearby storm. Every once in a while I’d look back up the beach towards the cars and another black shape with a big white object would emerge from the greyness heading my way, every patch of skin covered up except a little red face. The surf wasn’t really very good, but after a slow fall season there were a handful of eager Alaskan surfers out there trying to see the sets coming through the blowing snow.

    Vince Tillion smiles after a snowy winter surf session in Alaska.It is incredibly inspiring and enjoyable to photograph unique subjects like this. Standing out there stomping my feet to keep the blood flowing I couldn’t stop smiling thinking about it, surfers and a snowstorm, what a contrast. Though winter is our surf season, it’s not that often that we get the pleasure of surfing during a heavy snow. I was glad to be able to get out and photograph in the few short hours we had before the sun dipped back below the mountains.

    UPDATE 11/27/08:  I’ve launched a little hobby blog for sharing more session reports, location info, photos and stories about surfing in Alaska. Check it out here –  www.SurfAlaska.net