Photographing Alaska

Who hasn’t dreamt of a trip to Alaska? It may not seem such a big deal for residents of west coast or NW USA, but for the rest of us it seems as far away as the moon. Even so, wherever we traveled we’d run into someone who waxed lyrical about their Alaskan cruise. Finally, the opportunity of snapping those images of bears catching leaping salmon was too much to resist.

NIKON D610 @ 70mm, ISO 400, 1/2000, f/5.0

Once I started researching the trip, it became apparent that a cruise wasn’t the best option for us – even though the entire tourist infrastructure seems geared to cruise ships, and traveling independently can be a real logistical nightmare.

So, everything eventually planned and booked – but what gear? There were a couple of journeys planned on small planes with weight and space restrictions, so I couldn’t pack everything. The final choice was my much-loved Nikon D800 for landscape duty, and D500 for wildlife. Lenses were the Nikon f/2.8 “trinity”: NIKKOR 14-24mm f/2.8G for those amazing wide-angle landscapes, NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G for “everyday” use, and NIKKOR 70-200 f/2.8G VR (i.e. 105-300mm effective on the D500) for the wildlife. The NIKKOR 200-500mm was no-go because of the weight. I’d also thought about the Sigma 24-35mm plus 50mm f/1.4 Art duo instead of the 24-70mm, but since each of them weighs as much as the Nikon…

Our first stop was Juneau (via Seattle) on the SE coast. Why they chose to build