I’m off on another adventure – this time to the Antarctic. It’s an exciting opportunity to spend ten days touring the Falklands and South Georgia Islands in the Antarctic Sea with National Geographic Expeditions. The ship departs from Ushuaia – the southernmost city in the world – near the tip of Tierra del Fuego.
Most of the trip is aboard the Lindblad ship Endurance, which just returned from an amazing trip in that region. Indeed, just last week the Endurance came across a huge pod of fin whales foraging near Antarctica – likely the biggest congregation of baleen whales seen in more than a century. Read more and watch this brief video. I hope we’ll be that lucky!
We spent the holiday week on Kiawah Island, outside Charleston South Carolina. As in much of the U.S. it was an unusually cold week; here, where winter temperatures rarely dip below freezing, we had several days where the thermometer never rose above freezing. Nonetheless, it was clear and sunny and beautiful, and I managed to explore and capture some fun photographs – of a beautiful sunset and some of the island wildlife. Check out the gallery!
Sunset from Captain Sam’s Spit at the western end of Kiawah Island.
I enjoyed photography in 2022 and decided to share my pick of favorites. It was not easy! 12 photos for 12 months – not one per month, but just the twelve that I felt were especially beautiful or interesting. See the full gallery – where I recommend clicking the “play” button to see them as a slideshow – and read on for some commentary about each one.
A quick post to share a few photos from my visit to Seattle earlier this month. As you may recall, I arrived on a weekend in time for a short hike in the woods at Tradition Plateau. Later, I rambled around Pike Place and out by the Space Needle before a dinner at Chihuly Gardens. The gallery includes a few snapshots.
Photo galleries from our trip at the end of August.
Some of you will recall that in early September my father and I visited Katmai National Park on the southern coast of Alaska, as part of a Muench Photography Workshop focused on photographing the Coastal Brown Bears that feast on the annual salmon run along the southern coast. I wrote a summary of the trip – and posted a few teaser photos – shortly thereafter, but then became busy. Since then, I have struggled to find time to complete the work of selecting and editing a few photos out of the 8,000 shots I snapped during the trip. I finally finished. Read on!
After leaving Anchorage I stopped in San Francisco for a few days of business and alumni events, then hopped down to Laguna Beach, south of Los Angeles, for a retreat with about 50 other provosts. They have a longstanding tradition of hosting this retreat at the Surf & Sand Resort, right on the beach.
Sunset view from Surf & Sand Resort, Laguna Beach.
It’s quite a nice place to visit – when the weather is good. Unfortunately it was cloudy and rainy for most of my visit. And the waves were pounding the shore, and indeed the base of the hotel itself, so hard the building would shake. All day. All night. It was quite impressive – check out the video clips in the gallery, most of them taken from my balcony a few floors above the spot where the waves crashed under the bottom balcony. On the other hand, the surfing community was out in great numbers (video).
The moon was full, which always leads to higher tides. Furthermore, I heard others mention a storm out at sea, which I later learned to be Typhoon Merbok. It was west of Hawaii at the time and then slammed western Alaska a few days later. The satellite imagery is quite impressive – as were the reports of waves exceeding 50 ft.! (I hope the good ship Dreamcatcher and its crew rode out the storm in a safe harbor.)
This post was written a few weeks later and thus benefits from some hindsight reporting, but is backdated to the final date of my visit to Laguna Beach.
I’ve been traveling in Alaska for nearly two weeks and have another week of travel ahead, in California, before I return home. Long overdue for a haircut, I noticed a tiny shop beside the TSA entrance here at Anchorage airport: the Bush Pilots Barbershop. Two older men were seated inside, shooting the breeze, while Fox News blared loudly on the overhead television. Decades of memorabilia were pinned to the walls – photos of a younger barber holding a massive fish (95 pounds), well-fingered maps of Alaska, postcards from bush pilots, stuff animal heads, antlers, and more. What the heck. I’ll go all-in for the Alaska experience. I stepped inside, waited for a break in the conversation, and asked for a haircut.
Many thanks to Steve – a fellow Dartmouth alum and long-time Anchorage resident – who took me along for a hike in Chugach State Park, on the east side of Anchorage. We climbed up the slopes of O’Malley Peak and into an alpine plain called the “ballfield”, to an overlook of the Williwaw valley. It was a beautiful day with plentiful sunshine and some clouds passing through the peaks. Great views, near and far. More photos in the gallery!
A week off the grid on the coast of Alaska – photographing bears.
This post is part of a series about our photography trip to Alaska.
The full group of photographers on our Muench Katmai Bears expedition. L to R: Kevin, Pam, Jeff, Gene, Jerry, Caryn, Jeff, Allen, Dave, Jack; kneeling: John. Photo by Kevin Lisota.Continue reading “Katmai finale”
A week off the grid on the coast of Alaska – photographing bears.
This post is part of a series about our photography trip to Alaska.
Thursday (September 1) Geographic Harbor: We visited the beach (and bears) in the morning. It was a beautiful day, with the clouds passing over and through the hills surrounding the bay. Read on, though, for photos of the bears and other wildlife spotted this day!
David Kotz 