{"id":941,"date":"2013-09-12T12:06:22","date_gmt":"2013-09-12T20:06:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/?p=941"},"modified":"2013-09-18T13:06:30","modified_gmt":"2013-09-18T21:06:30","slug":"over-the-noatak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/2013\/09\/12\/over-the-noatak\/","title":{"rendered":"Over the Noatak"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Canon 5D iii, Canon 24-105 f4L IS, ISO 400, f8.0, 105mm, 1\/640th sec, handheld.<\/em><\/p>\n

This August, for the third year in a row, I guided a canoe trip down the Noatak River in Gates of the Arctic National Park for\u00a0Arctic Wild<\/a>. Every year has been different. Two summers ago, the weather was endless blue skies, a rarity in the western Brooks Range. Last summer, I spent 17 days on the river, and in that time we saw 4 days of sun. The wind blew fiercely, the rain lashed our tents for days on end. This year, it was mix, and every day was different, just how I like it. Tim (pictured in the image above) was the second guide on the trip. The two of us were fortunate to have a great group of clients who were also enthusiastic hikers. We spent a lot of time high on the mountains above the river, climbing peaks and following ridges.<\/p>\n

The day I made this image, we took the longest hike of the trip. Above the upper Noatak sits one of the few glaciated peaks of the western Brooks Range. Oyukak is a 7,192 ft mountain. It rises a thousand or more feet above the surrounding peaks, and its dome-like summit is covered in thick, blue, glacial ice. From the first time I saw that mountain, I wanted to climb it. An attempt from the river, is a daunting task requiring a hike of some 15 miles with 5500+ feet of climbing. With no real hope of reaching the summit, this year, our group headed up. As expected, we didn’t make the top. But a small subset of us did achieve the summit ridge from which we could admire the last 1500 feet of the mountain, and the no-longer-distant glaciers of the uppermost dome. Next time, I’ll start a couple of hours earlier and, by God, I will stand atop that ice. Who wants to go? Arctic Wild<\/a> is taking bookings for next year’s trip right now.<\/p>\n

Some thoughts on the image<\/strong>: Getting up high changes things photographically. The sky gets bigger, the valley smaller, the peaks more abundant. Compositions change with a need to show the enormity of the landscape. When I noticed Tim atop a small rock outcrop, I saw a great opportunity to provide some perspective. Even at 105mm Tim is tiny in the frame, the ridge he stands on angles out to the right, providing a sense of continuation, the background is mountains and clouds, still sharp due to my distance from Tim and the f8.0 aperture. They provide a sense of the wide-open space below. I cropped to a panorama because it emphasizes the sense of distance and space and eliminates distracting foreground and sky. What are your thoughts? Feel free to share.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Canon 5D iii, Canon 24-105 f4L IS, ISO 400, f8.0, 105mm, 1\/640th sec, handheld. This August, for the third year in a row, I guided a canoe trip down the Noatak River in Gates of the Arctic National Park for\u00a0Arctic… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15,21,14,11,147],"tags":[33,29,49,148,50,48],"class_list":["post-941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arctic","category-images","category-landscape","category-recreation","category-travel","tag-adventure","tag-alaska","tag-alpine","tag-arctic","tag-hiking","tag-noatak"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/AK-GAAR-Alatna-Noatak-1083-347.jpg?fit=800%2C292&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8wo3z-fb","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=941"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":954,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions\/954"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}