The Afognak Landscape

 

Afognak is a beautiful place and up there it is sort of hard to take a bad landscape picture. That said, this year I am not happy with my elk hunt landscape pictures. Mostly this is because the weather did not cooperate. It's hard to take good landscape photos when it is overcast and/or raining. Also with the poor weather conditions I was a little adverse to using my good camera, and it was often in my pack. I was worried I'd get it wet. So I ended up using my really old water proof camera that has a tiny sensor. The quality of the waterproof camera images is about the same as with an iPhone (or maybe even worse!). And this year some of my favorite pictures were taken with smartphones.

I think the top photo is probably my best landscape photo. There are others below that might have compared if I had just taken the time to stop and grab the good camera out of my pack instead of sticking with the handy waterproof camera. In particular, the ones below of the morning frost and dead spruce trees. I took those with the waterproof camera and they just lack dynamic range. The colors do not pop, and they seem kind of grainy. They are not sharp and colorful like the ones taken with my good camera.

It's funny but I only started to take my good camera along on the elk hunts about 10 years ago. Prior to that all of my photos were taken with a waterproof camera with a small sensor. Back then I was happy with what I got out of the camera with a small sensor - I guess I have gotten more picky with age!

Patrick

Someone's smart phone scenic