Sunrise, White Creek Basin, Eastern Alaska Range

Fall comes early in the Alaska Range. Come to think of it, fall comes early in all of Alaska and it doesn’t last very long. Up in the high country, where there are no trees to change, maybe just a few short willows, all you have to tell you that the end of summer is here are the thin patches of ice that sit on top of small pools of standing water, the quickly shifting hues on tiny tundra leaves and the increasing chill in the morning air.

I shot this photo as sunrise last week while camped in White Creek basin in the Eastern Alaska Range mountains near Tok. For as much as I love shooting landscapes, I don’t find myself doing it nearly as often as I’d like to, for whatever reason. I get busy. I get lazy. I get caught up in assignment work and marketing for assignment work. Who knows.

One of the things that keeps me inspired, though, is looking at work by some of my other photographer friends and some of the many shooters that I follow on Twitter, Facebook and Google+, people like Carl Battreal, Olivier du Tre, Bret Edge, Russ Bishop, Younes Bounhar, just to name a few. Yep, even I need a little prodding sometimes and so I grab motivation wherever I can get it.

Shot this with the Nikon D700 body and trusty Nikon 24mm f2.8D lens on top of my new Manfrotto 732CY Carbon Fiber Tripod and Giottos MH1302 Quick Release Ball Head. I like the overall darkness in the foreground. I tried lightening up the stream in Lightroom, but it just seemed to wash out. Plus it gives it that cold, dark feeling, which matched the feel that the scene had in real life.

You don’t always have to bring everything up to make a nice even histogram. This one’s pretty left heavy, but that’s the way it looked to my eyes. Works for me anyway, what do you think?