Jim M. Goldstein must be in an Alaska frame of mind this week – I see he posted again on this topic. The more recent post reminded me of a couple of interesting things about Alaska photography, regarding the light in particular – not that there aren’t scores of other things also worth mentioning.
Near the summer solstice the days are extremely long no matter where you are in Alaska. While the daylight is continuous above the arctic circle, even further south it is light almost all the time. The first time I visited I was accompanying a couple of my kids on a week long backpacking trip with a school group. We flew into Juneau and camped at a lake very close to a glacier. (That’s another thing that is different in Alaska – our camp site was within hailing distance of a huge glacier… but we could also send someone down the road a few miles the other way to pick up pizzas. :-) The next morning the kids were trying to figure out if it ever got dark. “I was up at 11:30 and it wasn’t dark. How about you?” “I was up at 1:00 a.m and there was light. Anyone up at midnight?” In the end, while it got “darker,” it never got dark. Later, I was out in Skagway in the middle of the “night” and it was more like dark twilight.
All of this means a couple of interesting things for photographers.
First, you’ll have more shooting time than you can probably handle. When it is light for 21 or 22 hours per day you’ll likely end up completely exhausted if you shoot the way you would at lower latitudes.
(A non-photographic story: We hiked over the Chilcoot Pass one day. We got up at 3:00 a.m., but this wasn’t the problem you might imagine. Sure, it was early, but the sun was already up and it didn’t feel like 3:00 in the morning. We got up, quickly ate and packed, and hiked for hours. I think we crossed the pass sometime in the middle of the morning. After killing a lot of time on the pass we finally headed down the other side, stopping along the way for lunch and general trailside stuff. We finally encountered one of the camping huts on the Canadian side and pause there for awhile. We moved on and arrived at our intended camp near a lake. We began to set up but were informed by a Canadian ranger than his “clients” would need our campsites. Hmmm. We went ahead and spent a couple hours more here fixing dinner, repacked, and headed on down the trail 3 or 4 more miles to another campsite. Here we finally set up camp and I recall finally finishing my day at 10:00 p.m…. with the sun still in the sky!)
Second… what amazing light! While the days are very long, the sun never gets all that high in the sky. The sun doesn’t “rise” as much as “rotate” around you. Consequently “golden hour” light goes on and on and on for hours and hours. Perhaps “drunk on light” might describe your reaction to this.
Finally, an illustrative story from a conversation I had at Beaver Creek near the Yukon/Alaska border. We had come in late in the day after riding through scattered thunder showers. Rather than camp we decided to get “hostel” rooms. In the evening we were hanging out in the lodge and I remember asking one of the locals about the weather. The answer was, more or less, “thundershowers in the evening, but the sun should be out by midnight.” He was right – the sun came out at about 11:30.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.
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