Seward Highway Scenes
Driving to and from Alyeska along Turnagain Arm can be surreally beautiful. On a sunny day, like those of the improbably clear past month, the surroundings are particularly distracting. Raw and frigid in winter, it is still chilly today, even though Spring has officially arrived. The first three images were all from today.
The knife ridges and high snow fields of the mountains across Cook Inlet from the highway are vividly sharp in the cold air.
An icefall near Indian thaws in the day and refreezes each night, leaving feathers and miniature ice towers that glitter in the sun.
The icefall's surface takes multiple shapes, from smooth flows left when the water flowed freely, to crystalline spikes and transparent icicles left when the sun warms the stream enough for it to spray the existing flow.
This was taken January 2015, on a cold early morning before a ski race. Despite my rush to get to Alyeska, get ski and camera gear together, and get on the hill to photograph the race, the sunrise was too good to pass up. The warm colors of sunrise contrast with the blue-white of mid-day, when I took the first three photos.
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After a lifetime of mainly expressing myself with words, my postings here will mainly rely on images. They will speak for themselves to some extent, but I'll usually add a few comments of explanation. I've taken photographs for decades, since the 1950's, inspired in part by my father's photographic skill. Four years of photo assignments and quality darkroom time eventually gave way to decades of casual and family picture-taking. I re-immersed myself when I left film and turned to digital.