Thursday, March 10, 2011 at 3:04PM We had quite the show here in Alaska last night. Actually it was the best northern lights I've ever seen here. And the best part is that it started early, sometime around 10 and peaking around 11 or so. These shots were taken just north of Anchorage in Palmer, AK. It looks like the next few days could be good, so I may be headed out again over the next few nights.
Saturday, February 26, 2011 at 8:36PM The Anchorage Fur Rendevious started yesterday. It's a week long event comprised of numerous individual events bringing people from around the state to Anchorage More on the Fur Rondy can be found on their site.
It was a pretty cold day today and the wind seemed to pick up as the day went on. It didn't seem to keep many people away though.
Here's a few from today. More tomorrow.
Sprint Dog Races
Blanket Toss
Outhouse Races
Anchorage Winter Fur Rondy in Trips Friday, February 11, 2011 at 11:23AM It started with this video, Dave Black's YouTube video of shooting motor cross with a bank of Nikon Speedlight's. The sight of 8 lights toghether is pretty impressive, let alone the images you can create with it. Lightware Direcet makes an aluminum bracket that holds four flashes in a square pattern, hence the name FourSquare. Bolt two of those together and you have an eight square. And finally add the center mount for a ninesquare.
So I had to make my own, and one-up it by adding a ninth speedlight in the center. This happened to coincide with the release of the new TTL Pocket Wizard's. These Pocket Wizard's are radios that allow you to fire flashes remotely, up to to several hundred feet. I've had PW's before that allow you to fire the flashes, but these new units allow for control over the power of the flashes. In addition they also allow high speed sync, which is a great feature when shooting action. Normally flashes max sync speed is 1/250 or 1/200 of a second, these will go much higher. Great for stopping the action.
Up until the Pocket Wizards were delivered I'd been firing the flashes with a 30' TTL cable. While it does work and is inexpensive, it's very limiting. I wish I could say I never pulled over the stand with the cable, but I can't. This new remote system will be much better.
The system definitely looks a little crazy but it's amazing how much light you can get out of AA battery flash units.
5- SB900's
2- SB800's
2 -SB700's
Mounted with two of Lightware Direct's foursquare blocks.
Nikon's commander unit SU-800 behind nine flashes. I was hoping this unit attached to a Pocket Wizard would control the flashes, sadly it does not. Back to the drawing table, either buy 9 pocket wizards or build a giant daisy chain TTL cable. I'll be trying the latter soon.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011 at 10:30AM It's almost that time of the year again. The Anchorage Fur Rendezvous starts in just a few weeks. It's a great time with many events that bring people from all over the state and country.
They'll be many photographic opportunities to keep me busy. I've got some new photography tools that will help to get some different shots this year. More to come on that in the next week.
It should be a very busy week and I'm looking forward to it.
Here's a few of my favorites from the past few years.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011 at 11:41AM We took a weekend trip down to Seward. I'd never gone down to Seward in the winter, so it was good to see what's going on there this time of year. The town is pretty sleepy in the winter, as it's mostly a fishing and tourism hot spot.
The weekend featured mostly sunny weather and extremely frigid temperatures. Add high winds to that and our time outside was pretty limited. I did manage to take a few photos in between times spent at the Railway Cantina. Here's a few of my favorites.
Resurrection bay at sunset.
4 Second exposure. The waves and fog look almost like a painting.
Resurrection bay at sunset.
Portage Lake, cracks in the ice.