By pole or by drone, images I captured with a new perspective above the ground
Flying above Misty Fjords National Monument near Ketchikan, breaks in the late-summer cloud bank revealed dark lakes and forested ridges thousands of feet below. The shifting weather opened and closed the landscape by the minute, offering a fleeting glimpse into one of North America's most dramatic coastal wildernesses before the mist reclaimed it. It’s also vast and silent – about the size of Connecticut – with no buildings or development.
I used aerial cameras for this, flying in from several miles away over Deception Pass at the North tip of Whidbey Island, Washington. I was thrilled to turn the camera down and capture the 1935 bridge that floats almost two hundred feet above a silvery spring afternoon.
This was my first aerial photo, other than the roof of my house. We launched from about a mile down the Snoqualmie River - my first time navigating over distances. I thought I was getting close, and swiveled the camera – and saw Snoqualmie Falls with Mt. Si in the distance and a perfect early spring day.
Aerial photography allows you to “rehearse” a route once and then use autopilot to repeat the circle. Of all the angles, I love seeing the 1905 Coupeville Town Wharf in front of the town it symbolizes. And for my friends back in New England, this is Whidbey Island, Washington, not Maine.
Driving through the Yukon the day after our wedding, Michelle and I stopped along the shore of Tutshi Lake. The view wasn't obvious from the roadside, hidden behind a band of scrub brush, but we suspected there was something special beyond it. Without a drone, we improvised by mounting the camera on a fifteen-foot painter's pole and raising it above the vegetation. Michelle held and rotated the pole while I framed the composition remotely, making this photograph a true collaboration. The effort revealed a sweeping view of lake, forest, and mountain, shaped by immense geological forces over thousands of years.
Carcross Desert is an ancient dry lake in the Yukon, and Michelle and I shot this (again) from a painter’s pole atop a dune on a clear September afternoon. I’ve long been fascinated with infrared film, so I used an infrared filter to bring out the sky’s depth and the radiance of the pines. Another image from my Alaska/Yukon honeymoon series.