Zoom Lens

My new camera has a zoom lens that also takes close up pictures.  Not really sure if it is a macro lens but I can get things focused in super close (like the blueberries in the last post).  I am not used to having a zoom lens.  My Leica has a lens fixed at about 35, and I have gotten used to using my feet to get to the right distance to frame the picture.  So this camera with a zoom lens - it goes to 210 or so - is kind of fun.  Suddenly I can take pictures of squirrels in trees or of the dogs way off down the beach.  It also blurs stuff in the background nicely.  All that said, it is pretty bulky so I bet I continue to use my MUCH smaller fixed lenses.
Patrick

Wednesday Walk

Yesterday I took my camera along for a little photo safari with the dogs in the park.  Nora and I have been picking blueberries in the park for almost 2 months, and on the hike I went to an area where we have not picked lately.  I was wondering, 'still blueberries here?'  And yes there were lots of blueberries there (see bottom photo).  I did not have a berry bucket and just gorged on the berries hand to mouth.

It's amazing - I ate my first berries this year on June 29th, and here it is September and we are still eating berries.  What's doubly amazing is that people have not picked all the berries.  I did notice that there were lots of berry pickers in the park in early to mid August, but the numbers have slacked off as of late.  I think people assume that all the berries have been picked.

The berries have also gotten huge.  Back in early July the berries were pinky nail sized and not very sweet.  These days they are thumb nail sized and super sweet - like grapes!
Patrick

Last Pictures of Summer

Yesterday the kids started school, and in the park I noticed that there are no salmonberries left on the bushes.  Just moldy ones - grim reminders of tasty opportunities lost.  These berries were once tasty too!  And yet in the mornings the sun is still rising out of the sea - for now.  I know that in a week where it rises on the horizon will have migrated south behind Spruce Cape and there will be no more ocean sunrises until next April.  I also know that in a month or so I will look back at these photos of Nora and I hiking and think, 'wow it was still pretty darn green'.  Compared to summer everything is brown and tinged red, but it really is not quite Fall - yet.. ..

Uksuaq Taiyuq - Fall is coming

Patrick

Deer in the alpine - no bruisers

On our recent goat/deer hunt we did not see all that many big deer.  In years past the same area was crawling with big bucks.  This year I saw more big bucks on a road system hunt than I did on our alpine fly out hunt. We also found another party's dead deer, and noticed signs of recent camping.  It seems our lake has been discovered.

It does not take much hunting pressure to make a difference and we found that there were very few big boys near the lake we landed on.  We did find one bachelor group of very big bucks - including a HUGE 4 by 4 - but they were a long ways from camp and ran away before we got close.

But less deer was not all bad - it meant we got to do more hiking and exploring.  In years past we never got all that far from camp before we had a deer down.  And it was not like there were no deer - just not very many big deer.  Every day we knew that we would eventually find deer and we could still afford to be picky.  In the mornings we would pass on small bucks, but by late afternoon it was 'forks or better'.

Still in the end we hunted deer for just 2 days and brought back 3 deer.  That's not so bad.  We brought home the meat!

Also I made a video of the hunt - check it out on Youtube click here


Patrick

Spooky Bunker with Trump Graffiti

The weather here on Kodiak was a little unsettled over the weekend.  Rain, high winds and sunshine all mixed up.  Yesterday morning it looked like a gorgeous sunny day, but by the time we were ready to go on an alpine hike it was looking ominous with rain imminent. And so we opted to go for a hike in the trees instead.

We picked up cousin Leo and headed to the Boyscout Lake area to check out a WWII bunker with flashlights.  We had not been in this bunker for a long time and we have never gone there with proper flashlights.  The bunker is still a very spooky place, but seems way less scary with proper flashlights.

The place has been hit hard by a pro Trump graffiti artist which seems a little weird.  When did Trump supporters start to do graffiti?  And scrawling 'MAGA' on the walls of what was the army headquarters bunker for all of Kodiak just seems like an oxymoron.  The WWII generation 'saved America' and really did make America great - for real.  This is the 'Greatest Generation' after all, and the WWII bunker is a touch stone to their proudest moment.  And now some punk scrawls 'MAGA' and 'Trump' on the walls? Really?
Patrick

Camp and views

Still a couple more posts to come from last week's alpine deer/goat hunt.  It has been super busy of late around here!  This hunt post highlights the scenery and camp.

Rather than the old Kifaru 8 man teepee that we have always taken on the hunt this year we took a Seek Outside tent made from dyneema fabric.  It is our new elk hunt tent and should sleep 4 of us comfortably.  It is the same tent I used on a bunch of my archaeological surveys this year (click here  for a post featuring tent and here for a youtube video of tent on same survey surviving a storm).

I like the tent because the fabric does not absorb water or 'relax' when cold.  Nor does it shrink when hot.  You just set it up super taut and it stays that way.  In the wind it never flaps.  It is pretty much bomb proof in a storm.  Tent and stove all together weigh something like 5 or 6 pounds.

On this trip we did not need to go super light weight but it was nice to know that if we did get socked with a super storm that the tent would hold up.  It was also WAY big enough for the three of us, and as usual quite cozy late at night with the wood stove cranked and the wicky flowing.  This was the first camping trip of the year where I really needed to use the luci light lanterns.  Fall is here and it is getting dark at night in Alaska.  Patrick

On the second day we came across no water and drank from this stagnant puddle

Fall colors - Red

It's Fall and here on Kodiak all the plants are coloring up into some form of yellow, brown or red.  I tried using the 'color filter' on my camera to just capture the red colors.  In the top two pictures of red currants in my garden you can see how the filter changes the feel of the image and emphasizes the red color.  The next 2 are fireweed photos which look super red - this is the plant that is turning whole hillsides red - but the red filter actually did not capture all that much red in the images.  Maybe the 'red' is more of a 'rust brown' color?  And finally the bottom photo is of bunchberries (cornus species) - this plant has red berries AND leaves turning red too!  Patrick